And here, at last, some spark gleams in the man's black eye. It's as if that dimming of her disposition had by some arcane transitive quality passed that slaked enthusiasm into him instead, as if he is pleased to have taken a chip out of her.

"Don't say that too loudly here, girl. Someone will overhear and call you a treasonous dissenter." The stick remains exactly where it is, but the man leans over by a half degree as if to relay a secret to her in confidence despite the assembly in the hall about them: "They still hang people for that charge, you know."