You speak and look like such a child, as if you
expected each moment at least to be severely scolded, if not beaten,
without knowing your fault."
"Not yet," she murmured, with a smile which seemed to me more painful
than tears would have been. "But please don't speak as if I should
fear anything so much as being scolded by you. We have a saying that
'the hand may bruise the skin, the tongue can break the heart.'"
"True enough," I said; "only on Earth it is mostly woman's tongue that
breaks the heart, and men must not in return bruise the skin."
"Why not?" she asked. "You said to my mother the other day that Arga
(the fretful child of Esmo's adoption) deserved to be beaten."
"Women are supposed," I answered, "to be amenable to milder
influences; and a man must be drunk or utterly brutal before he could
deal harshly with a creature so gentle and so fragile as yourself."
"Don't spoil me," she said, with a pretty half-mournful, half-playful
glance. "'A petted bride makes an unhappy wife.' Surely it is no true
kindness to tempt us to count on an indulgence that cannot last.
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