He rubbed his eyes again, and I noticed that they were red-rimmed from too much rubbing. “Maia, you’re one of the few people here who really can follow my thought, who’s really capable of being an equal. So it’s very frustrating when you disagree without a logical reason behind it. Won’t you forgive me and let us start again?”

I considered that. “I don’t know whether I can trust you,” I said. Perhaps it was true that before Klio explained he just wasn’t capable of understanding. His world had shaped him as badly as mine had shaped me. In a better world, in the City we both wanted to build, we could both have been philosopher kings. Perhaps then we could have loved each other as Plato wanted.

“Are you afraid of me? I don’t want you to be afraid.”

The children were mangling their scales behind us. Crocus went past carrying the window glass for the new crèche. “I’m not afraid that you’re about to ravage me here and now. But you make me very uneasy. Today is the first time you’ve ever acknowledged what you did. You always laughed about it and dismissed it.”

“I didn’t understand. In my time women had no way to say yes to anything except marriage and keep their self-respect, so they had to make formal protests without really meaning them. That’s what I thought you were doing. Klio had to explain to me that if people can’t say yes, they can’t say no either. It was a new idea.”

“I understand that,” I acknowledged. “But I’m afraid you’re apologizing now because you want something, that you’re trying to manipulate me. And you’re making up all these theories about why I disagree, just like you make up all these theories about the gods, and none of it has any basis in reality. What do you want from me?”

“I want you to be my friend,” he said, with no hesitation at all. “And I would like you to forgive me, if you can. And I don’t want you to leave this city.”