She was more than ordinarily interesting to talk to, for she had known exile since she was a child and had travelled in many countries--over practically all the known world. To Hugh, fresh from his quiet backwater in far-away England, she was a mine of information. He listened breathless to her off-hand stories of courts and rulers and tourneys. But of Constantinople she seldom spoke. "'Tis a subject that irks me," she replied when he would have questioned her. "Forbear, Messer Hugh. An you were an exile seeing all that you loved and treasured seized by others, the glory and power that was rightfully yours in the possession of a usurper, you would know the sorrow that embitters me." Then her big eyes flamed and her hand opened and shut, as she dropped her horse's rein. "Oh, that I were a man!" she cried. "With a few stout knaves at my back I would storm the Triple-Wall and cast Alexius from his ill-gotten throne. I would bind him and his sycophants, tear out their eyes, and leave them to drag out their days with the rats in the dungeons of Blachernae." "Are they very terrible dungeons?" asked Hugh idly. The mask dropped across her face. "All dungeons are terrible," she answered colourlessly. She paused as if she expected him to ask more; but he said nothing, vaguely uneasy, with the feeling that comes when a hostile swordsman is faced. For all his reticence, his secret distrust, he could not escape entirely the subtle spell she wove around him. She was beautiful; she was interested in him; she made herself attractive to him. Often he pressed the hunting-glove that he carried beneath his hauberk, and breathed a quiet prayer. He was a simple lad, untaught in the world's ways, only his native honesty and singleness of purpose betwixt him and temptation. He required all his strength one night when she surprised him as he sat against a boulder on an Alpine hillside, the frosty stars twinkling overhead and a vasty silence below, wrestling with the contending forces in his heart. The first he knew of her was her hand on his mailed arm. "Ah, Messer Hugh, you are thinking of your love at home in England," she said softly. "Love? No--'tis not so," stumbled Hugh. "Then you have no lady you are pledged to?" Hugh held silent, and the fingers on his arm seemed to burn through the mail. "You do not answer," she sighed reproachfully. "There is nobody in England," he muttered. She laughed in a way she had, the persuading trill of lapping water in her voice. "Nobody? That is because there are so many." He did not answer, and she came closer. "Do the hills make you lonely, too?" she whispered. He shivered. It was uncanny. "Yes," he jerked betwixt clicking teeth. She waited, still very close to him. "You do not ask me to sit by you, Hugh," she suggested. "I--I----" He rose stiffly. "Let us seek a fire," he said, mastering himself by a supreme effort. "I am cold." She walked beside him without a word.