‘I have long ceased to love you, O Thol,’ she said in a low voice.
He stared at her blankly in the moonlight. His slow mind strove hard. ‘But you are my wife,’ he said at last. ‘I am your husband. O Thia, is it indeed true that you have ceased to love me?’
‘O Thol, it is most true.’
Then, by stress of the great anger that rose in him, his mind worked more quickly—or rather his tongue was loosened. He told Thia that she had never loved him. She denied this coldly. He said that she had never understood him. She denied this warmly. He reminded her that even when she was a little girl she had once called him a coward; and this too she denied; but he maintained that it was so; and she reminded him that after he had been beaten by his master for seeing the dragon he said that she too ought to have been beaten for seeing the dragon; and he denied this; but she persisted that it was so; and he then said that she ought to have been beaten; and she replied that she could be now, and she challenged him to beat her; but he did not accept her challenge; and this, she said, proved that he was a coward; and he asked her to repeat this, and she repeated it, and he then reminded her that he had slain the dragon; and she, stamping her foot, said she only wished the dragon had slain him; and she made a face at him, and rushed out of the cave, and if there had been a door she would have slammed it; and really he was quite glad that she had gone; and after she had run far she lay down upon the grass and slept till dawn, and then, rising and brushing the dew off her arms and legs, went in search of some lonely spot where she should build her a hut of clay and wattles.
And perhaps it was a sign of her alien blood that the spot chosen by her was in what we call Soho. It was the spot on which, many years later, many of my coævals were to dine in the little Restaurant du Bon-Accueil, half-way along Gerrard Street. Gone, as utterly as Thia’s hut, is the dear little Restaurant du Bon-Accueil. But again I must hark back.
‘Very surely,’ thought Thol, some moments after the sun had waked him and shown him the empty cave and brought back last night to his memory, ‘I shall find her by the pond.’
Thither, with much dignity of gait, but with the promise of forgiveness on his brow, he presently went. She was not there. There only her geese were.
These he unpenned and let go into the pond, and then, having freed his goats also, sat down and waited. He waited all day long. She did not come. Nor was she there for him in the cave when he went back to it at sunset. Neither was she at the pond next morning. Not even her geese were there now.
That she had wanted them, and not him, was a bitter thought to Thol. He had not, till now, known how much he loved her. That she had been here this morning, or in the night, made the ground somehow wonderful to him. But he frowned away from his brow the promise of forgiveness. He would not forgive Thia now. Still less would he go in quest of her. He freed his goats, guided them to some long grass and, sitting down, tried to take an intelligent interest in their doings and a lively interest in their welfare, and not wonder where Thia was.