‘What dost thou desire?’ says Conaire.
‘That which thou, too, desirest,’ she answered.
‘'Tis a tabu of mine,’ says Conaire, ‘to receive the company of one woman after sunset.’
‘Though it be a tabu,’ she replied, ‘I will not go until my guesting come at once37 this very night.’
‘Tell her,’ says Conaire, ‘that an ox and a bacon-pig shall be taken out to her, and my leavings: provided that she stays tonight in some other place.’
‘If in sooth,’ she says, ‘it has befallen the king not to have room in his house for the meal and bed of a solitary woman, they will be gotten apart from him from some one possessing generosity—if the hospitality of the Prince in the Hostel has departed.’
‘Savage is the answer!’ says Conaire. ‘Let her in, though it is a tabu of mine.’
Great loathing they felt after that from the woman's converse, and ill-foreboding; but they knew not the cause thereof.