“What is it?” He asks her.
She does not answer, so he repeats his question with a bit more force. It takes a third time before she rasps, her throat dry, "Nothing."
“I dislike being lied to.”

She shakes her head, tears crowding her eyes.
“Tell me the truth, or I shall make you.”
When Petra finally answers, her bottom lip quivers.
“I am afraid. I have never before been alone with a man from outside my family.”

Siegfried folds his arms. “I doubt that. Why else would your father cut your hair to your skull? You haven’t lice. You told me yourself.”
His perceptiveness gives him the upper hand. It startles the truth out of her.

“Because he saw the neighbor boy help me carry water from the river. We walked in full view of everyone out in the fields. We were not alone. But my father was so angry it mattered little.”

Siegfried laughs. It is a mean laugh. “My, yes, what point was there in his anger? A woman without a dowry is worthless anyway. She can do what she likes with herself.”