"Remove you from the hands of butchers and offal-mongers; put you like a pearl in a casket in my own castle of Gambrevault." "You incur the greater peril." "Have I not told you that no woman loves a coward?" She was silent awhile, with her eyes wistful and melancholy, as though some spiritual conflict were passing in her mind. Bitterness escaped in the man’s words for all his tenderness and chivalry. He needed an answer. Anon she capitulated and appeared to surrender herself absolutely to circumstance. She began to tell Flavian of her adoption by Fulviac, of her vision in the ruined chapel, of the part assigned to her as a woman ordained by heaven. He heard her in silence, finding quaint pleasure in listening to her voice, having never heard her talk at such length before. Her voice’s modulations, its pathos, its many tones, were more subtle to him than any music, and seemed to steep in oblivion the grim realities of the last few days. He watched the play of thought upon her face, sun and shadow, calm and unrest. He began to comprehend the discords he had flung into her life; she was no longer a riddle to him; her confessions portrayed her soul in warm and delicate colouring--colouring pathetic and heroically pure. He had a glorious sense of joy in an instinctive conviction that this girl was worthy of all the highest chivalry a man’s heart can conceive of. Though he had a strong suspicion that he could humanise her Madonna for her, he refrained from argument, refrained from dilating on the iniquities her so-called crusades had already perpetrated. Moreover, the girl had opened her heart to him with a delicious and innocent ingenuousness. He felt that the hour had blessed him sufficiently; that personalities would be gross and impertinent in the light of that sympathy that seemed suddenly to have enveloped them like a golden cloud. The girl appeared to have surrendered herself spiritually into his keeping, not sorry in measure that a strong destiny had decided her doubts for her. They were to let political considerations and the ephemeral turmoils of the times sink under their feet. It was sufficient for them to be but a man and a woman, to forget the forbidden fruit, and the serpent and his lore. God walked the world; they were not ashamed to hear His voice. So they came with their glittering horde of horsemen to Gambrevault, and rode over the green downs with towers beckoning from the blue. The Gilderoy forces were still miles away, and could not have threatened the retreat on Gambrevault had they been wise as to the event. Yeoland rode close at Flavian’s side. He touched her hand, looked in her eyes, saw the colour stream to her cheeks, knew that she no longer was his enemy. "Yonder stands Gambrevault," were his words; "its walls shall bulwark you against the world. Trust me and my eternal faith to you. I shall see God more clearly for looking in your eyes."