Her hand had begun to ache along with the rest of her, her eyes were beginning to smart, and she had put her pen down, thinking she was finished, when another image darted into her mind, silky red and sinuous, like the dragons on Mark Roy’s robe. She picked up her pen again.I spoke with Mark Roy this evening before coming up to my room. Somehow he got out of me, in one of those moments in which politeness must disarm my tongue, that I am leaving tomorrow, and I was surprised to see that he seemed genuinely sorry. Perhaps he believes Centurion and Lord Gro. Perhaps my episode in the woods has helped prove to him that I am not willingly Rupert’s pawn, that I should wish better things for them—as if wishing had any weight. He was sorry, and urged me to visit them in Orzelon-gang’s capital some day. Of course I told him that I would—what else could I have said?—and he began to tell me of its beauty, a little like a man who is homesick, and the strange thing was that I felt he was painting a portrait of his wife as he spoke.
