"At dawn I might have had you slain," she continued, with some hastening of her tongue; "I confess to having pitied you a little. You are young, a mere boy, weak and powerless. I gave you life for a day." The man reddened slightly, glanced at the dead men, and screwed his mouth into a dry smile. "Most harmless, as you see, madame," he said. "For your magnanimity, I thank you. _Deo gratias_, I will be as grateful as I may." She stood considering him out of her dark, long-lashed eyes. The man was good to look upon, ruddy and clean of lip, with eyes that stared straight to the truth, and a pose of the head that prophesied spirit. The sunlight of youth played sanguine upon his face; yet there was also a certain shadow there, as of premature wisdom, born of pain. There were faint lines about the mouth and eyes. For all its sleek and ruddy comeliness, it was not the face of a boy. "Messire," she said to him at last. "Madame." "He who lurks over long in the wolf’s den may meet the dam at the door." He smiled at her, a frank flash of sympathy that was not devoid of gratitude. "Haste would be graceless," he said to her. "How so?" she asked him. "Ha, Madame Yeoland, have I not watched my arms at night before the high altar at Avalon? Have I not sworn to serve women, to keep troth, and to love God? You judge me hardly if you think of me as a butcher and a murderer. For the death of your kinsfolk I hold myself ashamed." There was a fine light upon his face, a power of truth in his voice that was not hypocritic. The girl stared him over with a certain critical earnestness that boasted a gleam of approval. "Fair words," she said to him; "you did not speak thus to me last eve." "Ah!" he cried, beaming on her, "I was cold as a corpse; nor could I whine, for pride." "And your shackles?" He laughed and held up both hands; the wrists were chafed and bloody. "It was ever a jest against me," he said, "that I had the hands of a woman, white and meagre, yet strong with the sword. Your fellows thrust a pair of wristlets on me fit for a Goliath, strong, but bulky. My hands have proved my salvation. I pulled them through while the guards diced, crept for a sword, gained it, and my freedom." She nodded, and was not markedly dismal, though the wind had veered against her cause. The man with the grey eyes was a being one could not quarrel with with easy sincerity. Probably it did not strike her at the moment that this friendly argument with the man she had plotted to slay was a contradiction worthy of a woman. The Lord of Avalon meanwhile had drawn still nearer to the girl upon the dais. His grey eyes had taken a warmer lustre into their depths, as though her beauty had kindled something akin to awe in his heart. He set the point of the sword on the floor, his hands on the hilt, and looked up at the white face medallioned in the black splendour of its hair.