Well, I am a shrewd gaoler: he
shall not get out. No, even at the last, dear Freydis, there is the bond
of silence."
She said, impotently, "I am sorry--Even at the last you contrive for me
a new sorrow--"
For a moment they stood looking at each other, and she remembered
thereafter his sad and quizzical smiling. These two had nothing more to
share in speech or deed.
Then Freydis went away, and the accursed beasts and her castle too went
with her, as smoke passes. Manuel was thus left standing out of doors in
a reaped field, alone with his wife and child while Miramon's ship came
about. Niafer slept. But now the child awoke to regard the world into
which she had been summoned willy-nilly, and the child began to whimper.
Dom Manuel patted this intimidating small creature gingerly, with a
strong comely hand from which his wedding ring was missing. That would
require explanations.
It therefore seems not improbable that he gave over this brief period of
waiting, in a reaped field, to wondering just how much about the past he
might judiciously tell his wife when she awoke to question him, because
in the old days that was a problem which no considerate husband failed
to weigh with care.
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