‘You wouldn’t have been able to handle me,’ she says. ‘I am too fierce for you.’ He laughs. ‘And your husband?’ ‘He likes the fire. He isn’t afraid to burn.’ She says it lightly, with a smile, but she knows it is true. Odysseus strikes her as a man who is fascinated by fierceness, but also repulsed. He values himself too highly to come close to anything that might harm him.
