with you there?'

"'No,' she answers, 'this woman cannot go.'

"'Then I will not go,' he replies; 'gladly I would stand before the
Father of the Gods, gladly I would see my own father again and the
heroes and the daughters of the god, but not without her; I will not go
with you; leave us here.'

"If the daughter of the god were a woman she would understand all this,
but now it would make her impatient, if anything could. She cannot know
and cannot feel why this man, who has had only trouble and ill luck all
his life, should choose to stay and wait for more trouble and ill luck
with this one poor woman who lies at their feet, fainting and knowing
not even that she is alive, rather than to sit and feast with gods and
heroes. How little a war goddess can really know about brave men!

"Yet she does know that her father, whose wishes are her own, wishes
this woman to live, and that she will be in danger after her hero has
left her; so she tells him that he may leave his bride with her and she
will protect her. But the man is still more unreasonable. He says that
she is cruel and hard-hearted. That is unjust, for she is not cruel. He
says too that the woman shall die rather than be left with her. If he
must die, he will kill the woman, too, and he is about to do it, when
the Daughter of the God holds his hand. She thinks only now of how much
her father longs that this man may live; she resolves that in spite of
the command she will save him; she tells him that he shall have her
help in the fight, and she leaves him, just as there comes a noise and
a shout of the robber with his men and his dogs hunting for the hero to
kill him.