"No."
"You're an honest man, Hugh Starke."
"You want me to kiss you."
"Yes."
"You're an honest woman, Beudag."
Her lips were hungry, passionate, touched with the bitterness of tears.
After a while Starke blew out the candle....
"I could love you, Beudag."
"Not the way I mean."
"The way you mean. I've never said that to any woman before. But you're
not like any woman before. And--I'm a different man."
"Strange--so strange. Conan, and yet not Conan."
"I could love you, Beudag--if I lived."
Harpstrings gave a thrumming sigh in the darkness, the faintest whisper
of sound. Beudag started, sighed, and rose from the fur rug. In a
minute she had found flint and steel and got the candle lighted. Romna
the bard stood in the curtained doorway, watching them.