When he collapsed, exhausted but less than content, she calmly rose and drank thirstily from the gourd. He watched her easy, fluent movements, knowing she was conscious of him and of their embrace, knowing that it signified no intimacy to her, that she was untouched. "Won't you forgive me?" he begged. "Won't you speak, or at least show you hear?"
She combed her long hair with her fingers and twisted it deftly into place. She lifted one leg, bent at the knee, and studied her foot. She sauntered to the columns and stood at the edge of the temple looking out, her back to him.
He made himself get up and go to her, kneeling at her feet. Even in his abjection he could not refrain from embracing her legs, resting his cheek against her flesh. She stood quietly, as though waiting for his next move. When he did nothing beyond implore her pardon, she disengaged herself calmly, turned away, and walked to the opposite row of columns.
It no longer seemed imperative to keep the vines chopped down. He let them grow at will except on the one side he kept cleared. Though he knew no hunger save for her, he fished and fetched water for her to drink and bathe. He thought she must tire of the monotonous diet, remembering the berries he brought her gourdsful. She ate them greedily. When her mouth was stained with the juice he could not control his longing; he took her once more. She responded as before; as before she remained inviolable.
She grew no more, and this pleased him, guaranteeing as it did a continued mutual enslavement. In midcycle between his despair after forcing her and helplessness before doing so again, he gloated over her smallness, her estrangement from everyone but him.
He did not return to the pool. Instead, he made the longer journey to the lake for water. He went back to the poppies by a roundabout route, picked an armful, leaving the gems in which they were rooted undisturbed. She let them lie at her feet where he had placed them.
On his next homecoming to the temple she had made a fire, succeeding where he had failed. It burned swiftly on the mosaic, consuming the dried vines as quickly as she could feed them to it. He took the ax and cut some green boughs, chopping them into convenient lengths. With these and the vines the fire could be kept alive, smoking, not giving out any warmth, but adequate to cook the fish he caught.
She took a portion of whatever he brought her—fish, fruit, flowers—and sacrificed it in the fire. When she was not sleeping, bathing, preening or standing looking out, she sat beside the embers, quiet, absorbed. Though he knew her indifference was unfeigned, this additional withdrawal added to his torment. When it became unendurable—when his lust and pique and desire to master her overcame his submissiveness—he attacked her and met her raging passion.