As for the tall naked
men, they are of our own blood, and kinsmen to Face-of-god's new
friends; and they are of the best of the vanquished: it was in early
days that they fled from thralldom; as we may have to do. Now,
daughter, I bid thee be as joyous as thou art valiant, and then shall
all be well.'
Therewith she smiled on him, and he departed, and she stood a little
while, as the throng moved on and was swallowed by the Gate, and
looked after them; and for all her pity for the other folk, she
thought chiefly of those fearless tall men who were of the blood of
those with whom it was lawful to wed.
There she stood as the wind dried the tears upon her cheeks, thinking
of the sorrow which these folk had endured, and their stripes and
mocking, their squalor and famine; and she wondered and looked on her
own fair and shapely hands with the precious finger-rings thereon,
and on the dainty cloth and trim broidery of her sleeve; and she
touched her smooth cheek with the back of her hand, and smiled, and
felt the spring sweet in her mouth, and its savour goodly in her
nostrils; and therewith she called to mind the aspect of her lovely
body, as whiles she had seen it imaged, all its full measure, in the
clear pool at midsummer, or piece-meal, in the shining steel of the
Westland mirror.
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