Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/121

 But when I was a girl grown, almost a woman, it dawned upon me that your savagery was too fierce, too cold, too indomitable. It grew horrible to me. I still trusted you, for I believed you would never be savage to me. But I came to realize that if I stood in your way in one of your rages I should be nothing to you and your rage everything. Then I warned you."

"All vapors," said Clearchos, "evil misconceptions. You keep a grudge too long. And all for a dog a horse and a slave."

"I was angered," she said wearily, "but not so much angered as hurt. I did not care for the dog or the horse or the Helot. I must have held to my vow, but it was not that. I loathed your cruelty or hated your frosty implacability. I loved you, but I came to dread you. And I gave you three warnings."

"All for two beasts and a chattel," he reiterated.

"If you had done it in wrath," she went on, "I might have forgiven it, might not have noticed it, might never have applied it to myself and dreaded you. But you were not excited, you were not wrathful. You were only resolved. You must need teach that dog what you were determined upon. You might have killed the dog at once. I should not have cared. But you must break its spirit and bend it to your will.