"You let the Lord Flavian escape?" "I did." "Have you seen him since?" "I have." "Thanks for the truth." Her responses had come like chords smitten from the strings of a lute. She started away from the tree and began to walk up and down, wringing her hands. Her face was like the face of one in torture, and she seemed to struggle for breath. "Fulviac, I could not kill the man." The words came like a wail. "He was young, and he besought me when your men were breaking down the gate. What could I do, what could I do? He was young, and I let him go by the postern and told you a lie. God help me, I told you a lie." The man watched her with arms folded. There was a look of deep melancholy upon his face, as of one wounded by the truth. His voice was sad but resolute. "And the rest?" She rallied suddenly and came to him with truth in her eyes; they were wonderfully piteous and appealing. "God knows I have been loyal to you. The man tempted me, but I withstood him; I kept my loyalty." "And you told him----?" "Nothing, nothing; he is as innocent as a child." Fulviac looked down at her with a great light in his eyes. He spoke slowly and with a deeper intonation in his voice. "I have dealt with many bad women," he said, "but I believe you are speaking the truth." "It is the truth." "I take it as such; you have been too much a woman." "Ah, if you could only forgive." He stepped forward suddenly, took her hands, and looked down at her with a vast tenderness. "Little woman, if I told you I loved you, would you still swear that you have spoken the truth?" "God judge me, Fulviac, I have been loyal." A strange light played upon his face. "And I, ye heavens, have I learnt my lesson in these later days? Girl, you are above me as the stars; I may but kiss your hands, no more. You are not for worldly ways, or for me. Battered, war-worn veteran, I have come again by the heart of a boy. Fear me not, little woman, there is no anger in a great love, only deep grieving and unalterable honour." XXVI It was dawn; mists covered the forest; not a wind stirred or sobbed amid the boughs. A vast grey canopy seemed to tent the world, a mysterious veil that tempered the sun and spread a spiritual gloom over rock and tree. The noise of horns played through the misty aisles--horns many-tongued, faint, clamorous, like the trumpeting of forest elves. There was the dull, rhythmic onrush of many thousand feet, the hurrying, multitudinous tramp of men marching. Armour gleamed through the glooms; casque and bassinet, salade and cap of steel flowed on and on as phosphorescent ripples on a subterranean stream. Pike, glaive, gisarme shone like stubble over the forest slopes. The sullen tramp of men, the clashing clamour of arms, the blaring of a solitary clarion, such were songs of the great pine forest on that July morning.