Balthasar had found his tongue at last. He was jerked to his feet, and held up by force, with the handle of a poniard rammed into his mouth to stem his garrulity. Flavian read him an extemporary lecture. There was something like a smile hovering about his lips. "Go back to your missal, man, and forswear women. They are like strong wine, too much for your flimsy brain. I have more pity for you than censure. Say to yourself, when you patter your prayers, ’Flavian of Gambrevault saved me from the devil once.’ And yet, my good saint, I have a shrewd notion that you will be just as great a fool two months hence." The man gave a scream of delight, and attempted to throw himself at Flavian’s feet. His superlative joy was almost ludicrous. Half a dozen hands dragged him back. "Take him away--who cares for such gratitude!" As they marched him off, he broke like an imbecile into hysterical laughter. Tears streamed from his eyes. He mopped his face with the corner of his habit, laughed and snivelled, and sang snatches of tavern ditties. So, with many a grim jest, they cuffed Fra Balthasar out of Avalon. At the end of the drama, Flavian called for tapers, and marched in state to the chapel. He knelt before the altar and prayed to the Madonna, whose face was the face of the girl Yeoland. XX "Fulviac, I cannot fasten all these buckles." The man waited at the door of her room, and looked at her with a half-roguish smile in his eyes. She stood by the window in Gothic armour of a grandly simple type, no Maximilian flutings, no Damascening, the simple Gothic at its grandest, nothing more. Her breast-plate, with salient ridge, was blazoned over with golden fleur-de-lis. The pauldrons were slightly ridged; vam-brace and rere-brace were beautifully jointed with most quaint elbow-pieces. She wore a great brayette, a short skirt of mail, but no tassets. In place of cuishes, jambs, and solerets, she had a kirtle of white cloth, and laced leather shoes. It was light work and superbly wrought; Fulviac had paid many crowns for it from an armourer at Geraint. Her beauty, mailed and cased in steel, seemed to shine upon the man with a new glory. When he had played the armourer, she stood and looked at him with a most conscious modesty, a warm colour in her cheeks, eyes full of tremulous light, her masses of dark hair rolling down over her blazoned cuirass. A hand and a half sword in a gilded scabbard, a rich baldric, and a light bassinet lay on the oak table. Fulviac took the sword, and belted it to her, and slung the baldric over her shoulder. His hands moved through her dark hair. For a moment, her eyes trembled up at him under their long lashes. He gave the helmet into her hands, but she did not wear it.