Perhaps also how much he had promised to pay?
"There will be no recompense that you can ask at my hands which I shall not be
glad to give," he had said; and she had checked him, bidding him wait to see
if he would have more than pity. If he should have no more! She dared not look
at him but she felt that he opened his lips to speak, then turned away,
stifling a groan. It seemed to her that her breath ceased while she waited,
and her hands tightened on the coral chain so that suddenly it burst and
scattered the beads like rosy symbols of her hopes. If he should have no more!
At last he turned and came a step nearer her, courtly and noble as he had
always been. "I owe to you everything I have, even life itself," he said, "and
I offer them all in payment of the debt. May I ask the King to give you to me
for my wife?"
In its infinite gentleness, his voice was almost tender. For as long as the
space between one breath and the next, her spirit leaped up and stretched out
its arms to its joy; but she stayed it on the threshold of utterance to look
fearfully into his face, whose every shade was open to her as the day. Looking
into his eyes, she knew that it was no more than pity. He guessed that she
loved him and he pitied her; but he could not forgive her unmaidenliness, he
could not love her.
Slowly and quite easily she felt her heart die in her breast, leaving only the
shell, the husk, of what had been Randalin, Frode's daughter.
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