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Page 400
an eager learner. No mistress could ever be more desirous of pleasing you than I am now and always will be. But Walter, I cannot share you. The threat was wrong, but it came from the center of my being. If you cannot be wholly mine, I do not want any part of younot even if it be the greatest and most important part."
Sybelle's voice was trembling, and her eyes filled with tears by the time she finished. Walter took her hands and kissed them. The fragrance of the unguent that she had been using to rub his back was still on them, and the odor brought into his mind all the tender care Sybelle lavished on him, which led to a memory of how she had happened to come in time to save his life. The quick understanding, the willingness to admit herself wrong did not deceive him into thinking she would overlook a real and deliberate departure from her standards. But he himself had changed. He was willing to accept Sybelle's standards now.
Her hands unfolded under his kiss and cupped his face, and Walter thought back with amazement on the resentment he had felt only a few months previous, when Llewelyn had told him that Roselynde women cleaved like welded iron to their men but demanded faithfulness of the men in return. Joanna had warned him also. Perhaps those warnings had made all the trouble to begin with. He could not believe that even without warnings he could ever have been such a fool as to risk what he had for an ephemeral physical pleasure.
"You need not fear me," he said. "I love you, and I am wholly thine, for now and for all time."

 
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