It had been something of a relief to know that he had known. She had, after all this time, admired how he had kept it to himself. How long had he known? she wondered. In truth, she knew him so very little, and it was so obvious that she had had what he had called, rather scathingly, she thought, an "infatuation."
She breathed out, having arrived home. She took off her shoes and stockings, and pulled her skirts up her legs a bit, dipping her feet into the water of the stream behind her house. For the first time in a long time, she relaxed.
There was no more self-loathing, no more hiding. She had admitted to it when he broached the subject, in the no-nonsense manner he typically used. She had been shocked, the way he had examined her with his eyes, as though she were some sort of specimen to be dissected. A part of her had imagined herself an insect, some sort of cockroach--squirming its many legs as he picked it up with tweezers. She shuddered at the thought.
She moved her legs in the water a little, and found that, while cold, it refreshed her. And it was freeing to know that he knew, to know what she had known all along, from his very lips: he did not reciprocate, nor would he ever. He had spoken so plainly, that, had she been other than she was, she would have cried right there. But she did not cry.
Even now, she could not find it in her to cry. She had no desire. Rather the opposite. She smiled. It was at an end, and she need do nothing but put it away somewhere, file it away like a book on the shelf. She had realized, then, that she had been looking for something to ease her loneliness. He had been the perfect man to do that, with the stimulating conversation and his peculiar personality. It was possible that she had been, in some sense, dissecting him. It gave her another shiver.
Isulril looked into the small stream, peering into its clear waters. Things were better now. The only thing this whole thing had hurt was her pride, and she had little of that left anyway. She imagined herself floating through the water on the fins of a fish, the freedom there. It was the freedom she had now. She was no longer bound by the strangeness of her fascination with the man. She was at peace.
