[Achilles does not expect her to fling her arms around him so, and yet his sturdy body absorbs the force of her emotions: in her embrace he can feel both her frantic heart and her relief which gushes as does a river in spate. His own arms fasten over her shoulders, and in them her slight frame is easily enveloped.]

Indeed I am as real and as solid as the earth which lies beneath your feet. For you to cling thus, so like a child at her mother's skirts, you must have been stirred to fright by that which greeted your eyes. The face of death is unpleasant to gaze upon.

[She has not the blood drenching her hands that he has: she cannot learn as he has to sever herself from the rawness of death. Death shall never lose its heavy pall, but when one has seen fields filled with corpses as thickly as the sea teems with fish, he learns which lost lives deserve most to be felt - and all others blur to the peripherals, fade into forgotten almost as fast as their final breath slipped the guard of their teeth.]