Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/119



"And what may that be?" she queried.

"You," again said the man of few words.

"You will never have me, Clearchos," she said, calmly and seriously. "After all these years you are unchanged. No thought of anything except your purpose and no comprehension of how to attain it. But one instinct, to force compliance. Your brow-beating would turn even a willing woman against you. And I am not willing."

He stood silent and she went on.

"I should have given you a welcome. Be seated."

He sat upon a stool some yards from her, his eyes upon her face. She went on spinning, upon her distaff a large ball of wool, four times as much as a woman would usually take up, but which she held as easily as if the distaff were empty. She did not look at her visitor, but at her task or her children. They kept on with their play, the girl shooting her quiver empty and then going to the shield and plucking out of it the blunt target-arrows, the boy spinning. Clearchos followed her eyes toward the boy. At the moment a cloud shadow covered the yard and made even more pitiful the child's gray, leaden complexion, pimply face and deformed legs. As mother and guest shifted their glance their eyes met.