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part of it. The gesture of blowing them a kiss illustrated that. In the press directly under the balcony I saw an old polymuf road-sweeper called Dirk. He was not much of a sweeper, having arms little bigger than a baby’s to hold his broom, but there was no other work he could do: his mind was not much greater than a child’s, either. He stood and held up his tiny arms toward her, and tears flooded down his face unchecked. He had taken the kiss as his; as they all had.
    I looked at her, close by where they were far off, and still found no flaw. The pink and white of her skin, the delicate gold of her hair, were without blemish, as was the wide-eyed candor and radiance of her look. I thought of my own roughness beside her: no one could ever have praised me for my looks. But at least this beauty was to be mine, and I had a right arm strong enough to defend it against all threats or dangers.
    It took some doing but we escaped from them at last. And at last we were alone, in my parlor. She said:
    â€œI like your city, Luke, and your people.”
    â€œIt is plain they love you.”
    Now that we were together and on our own I felt my old awkwardness with her return. It was part of the awkwardness I had always felt with girls, but made worse by the power her beauty had over me, too. I had a strong arm to defend her, but I wished desperately for a readier tongue with which to talk to her.
    She smiled. “You have not given me much welcome yet. Are you not glad to see me?”
    She offered me her cheek, and I kissed it clumsily. Then I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her again, but she slipped from me. I said:
    â€œI am very glad to see you. You know that. But astonished. How do you come to be here?”
    She shrugged. “As you came to my city—through the wild country and over the pass between the Burning Lands.” She gave a small shiver. “That was the part I did not like—those smoldering black rocks and sand, and no life anywhere.”
    I burst out: “But how did your father permit it? To make such a journey and take such risks . . .”
    Blodwen smiled. “As I told you in Klan Gothlen, we women of the Wilsh are our own mistresses. We are not so easily bid as your southern ladies. My father did not want me to come but he did not try to stop me. He sent fifty of his finest soldiers to guard me, though. I was safe enough from the savages.”
    I could believe that: every one of the fifty would have given his life for her, and although at first I had been contemptuous of the Wilsh as soldiers I had reached a different view before we left their city. But I was still astonished that she should have come. Not only because of the hazardousness of the journey. There might also seem to be impropriety in it. It was not fitting for a girl, even though betrothed, to seek out and visit a man.
    She smiled at me again, and I reminded myself that these considerations were part of our southern customs. And I realized that even if that were not the case, even if such rules bound girls in the land of the Wilsh as well, they could not bind Blodwen. Nothing could. She did not live by the rules of others but framed her own.
    She said: “I will tell you why I came, Luke—apart, of course, from wishing to see you again.”
    She laughed at those last words, making a jest of them and taking away, though gently, some of the pleasure they had given me. She put her hand on mine, and I felt its soft warmth.
    â€œDo you remember,” she asked me, “when we spoke on the stairs above the throne room in my father’s palace?”
    â€œI remember.”
    â€œAnd how after faithfully promising to return one day and claim your prize”—she laughed again at this—“you asked me if I would rather you did not?”
    I nodded. She went on:
    â€œI thought a lot about you after you had gone, Luke. You came to our land as a stranger and stayed as a hero. The