Sforza quailed from him and ran to the oriel, where several men had lifted the woman in their arms. Her lustrous hair fell down from under her hood; her hands, stained with her own blood, trailed limply on the floor. She was a pathetic figure with her pale, fair face and drooping lids. The men murmured as they held her, like some poor bird, still warm and plastic, with the life but half flown from her body. Fulviac stood and looked down into her face. His sword still smoked with Balthasar’s blood. "Sirs," he said, and his strong voice shook, "hear me, I will tell you the truth. Once I loved that woman, but she was evil, evil to the core. To-night she came bringing discord and treachery amongst us. I have done murder before God for the sake of the cause. Cover her face; it was ever too fair to look upon. Heaven rest her soul!" XXV Two days had passed since the secret assembly in the house of Sforza, Gonfaloniere of Gilderoy. They had buried Duessa and Balthasar by night in the rose garden, by the light of a single lantern, with the fallen petals for a pall. It was the evening before the day when the land should rise in arms to overthrow feudal injustice and oppression. On the morrow the great cliff would be desolate, its garrison marching through the black pine woods on Avalon and Geraint. Towards eve, when the sky was clear as a single sapphire, Fulviac came from his parlour seeking Yeoland, to find her little chamber empty. A strange smile played upon his face as he looked round the room with crucifix, embroidery frame, and prayer-desk, with rosary hung thereon. He picked up her lute, thrummed the strings, and broke broodingly into the sway of some southern song: "Ah, woman of love, With the stars in the night, I see thee above In a circlet of light. On the west’s scarlet scutcheon I mark thy device; And the shade of the forest Makes gloom of thine eyes, God’s twilight To me." He ended the stanza, kissed the riband, and set the lute down with a certain quaint reverence. The postern stood open and admonished him. He passed out down the cliff stairway to the forest. An indescribable peace pervaded the woods, a supreme silence such as the shepherd on the hills knows when the stars beckon to his soul. Fulviac walked slowly and thought the more. He felt the altitude of the forest stillness as of miles of luminous, windless æther; he felt the anguishing pathos of a woman’s face; he felt the strangeness of the new philosophy that appealed to his heart. Nothing is more fascinating than watching a spiritual upheaval in one’s own soul; watching some great power breaking up the crust of custom and habit; pondering the while on the eternal mysteries that baffle reason.