She ran to him suddenly and seized his wrist. "GO----!" "I cannot." "Men are coming, I hear them in the woods, they will kill you!" "I hear them too." "Go, go, for my sake and for God’s." He kissed her sleeve, pulled his cowl down, and fled away into the woods. XVII The Lady Duessa stood in the chapel of water-girded Avalon, with Fra Balthasar the Dominican beside her. She had slipped in without his noticing her, and had watched him awhile in silence at his work. The jingling of her chatelaine had brought him at last to a consciousness of her presence. Now they stood together before the high altar and looked at the Madonna seated on her throne of gold, amid choirs of angel women. The Lady Duessa’s intelligence had waxed critical on the subject. "You have altered the Virgin’s face," she said. Balthasar stared at his handiwork and nodded. "The former has been erased, the latter throned in her stead." The words had more significance for the lady than the friar had perhaps intended. A better woman would have snubbed him for his pains. As it was, he saw her go red, saw the tense stare of her dark eyes, the tightening of the muscles of her jaw. She had a wondrous strong jaw, had the Lady Duessa. She was no mere puppet, no bright-eyed, fineried piece of plasticity. Fra Balthasar guessed the hot, passionate power of her soul; she was the very woman for the rough handling of a cause, such as the Lord Flavian her husband had roused against her. "I suppose," she said, "this alteration was a matter of art, Balthasar?" "A matter of heart, madame." "So?" "My Lord Flavian commanded it." "And yonder face is taken from life?" "Madame, I leave the inference to your charity." She laughed a deep, cynical laugh, and went wandering round the chapel, looking at the frescoes, and swinging a little poniard by the chain that linked it to her girdle. Balthasar made a pretence of mixing colours on his palette. Worldly rogue that he was, he knew women, especially women of the Lady Duessa mould. He had a most shrewd notion as to what was passing in her mind. Morally, he was her abettor, being a person who could always take a woman’s part, provided she were pretty. He believed women had no business with religion. To Balthasar, like fine glass, their frailty was their most enhancing characteristic. It gave such infinite scope to a discreet confessor. The Lady Duessa strolled back again, and stood by the altar rails. "Am I such a plain woman?" she asked. "Madame!" "You have never painted me." "There are people above the artist’s brush." "But you paint the Madonna." "Madame, the Madonna is anybody’s property." "Am I?" "God forbid that a poet should speak lightly of beauty." She laughed again, and touching her hair with her fingers, scanned herself in a little mirror that she carried at her girdle. "Tell me frankly, am I worth painting?"