“I do not care, and, besides, I can share the work. I can cook, I can shoot a good arrow, and I can make garments, yes, though they were cut from the skins of beasts and had to be sewn with backbone sinews. Because you despise fine clothes, and because you have seen me only decked out as fan-girl, you think I am useless. Bah, Deucalion! Never let people prate to me about your perfection. You know less about a woman than a boy new from school.”
“I have learned all I care to know about one woman, and because of the memory of her, I could not presume to ask her sister to come with me now.”
“Aye,” she said bitterly, “kick my pride. I knew well enough it was only second place to Nais I could get all the time I was wanting to come. Yet no one but a boor would have reminded me of it. Gods! and to think that half the men in Atlantis have courted me, and now I am arrived at this!”
“I must go alone. It would have made me happier to take your esteem with me. But as it is, I suppose I shall carry only your hate.”
“That is the most humiliating thing of all; I cannot bring myself to hate you. I ought to, I know, after the brutal way you have scorned me. But I do not, and there is the truth. I seem to grow the fonder of you, and if I thought there was a way of keeping you alive, and unmutilated, here in Atlantis, I do not think I should point out that Tob is tired of waiting, and will probably be off without you.” She flung her arms suddenly about my neck, and kissed me hotly on the mouth. “There, that is for good-bye, dear. You see I am reckless. I care not what I do now, knowing that you cannot despise me more than you have done all along for my forwardness.”
She ran back from me into the edge of the trees.
“But this is foolishness,” I said. “I must take you through the dangers that lie between here and some gate of the city, and then come back to the ship.”
“You need not fear for me. The unhappy are always safe. And, besides, I have a way. It is my solace to know that you will remember me now. You will never forget that kiss.”
“Fare you well, Ylga,” I cried. “May the High Gods keep you entirely in their holy care.”
But no reply came back. She had gone off into the forest. And so I turned down to the beach, and splashed into the water, and climbed on board the ship up the steering oars. Tob gave the word to haul-to the anchor, and get her away from the beach.