yet awhile she so tempered, as that we might rather suspect than she threaten. But when our wounds grew so as that they gave us leave to travel, and that she found we were purposed to use all means we could to depart thence, she, with more and more importunateness, craved, which in all good manners was either of us to be desired, or not granted. Truly, most fair and every way excellent lady, you would have wondered to have seen how before us she would confess the contention in her own mind between that lovely, indeed most lovely brownness of Musidorus’s face, and this colour of mine, which she, in the deceivable style of affection would entitle beautiful: but her eyes wandered like a glutton at a feast, from the one to the other; and how her words would begin half of the sentence to Musidorus, and end the other half to Pyrocles, not ashamed, seeing the friendship between us, to desire either of us to be a mediator to the other, as if we should have played one request at tennis between us: and often wishing that she might be the angle where the lines of our friendship might meet, and be the knot which might tie our hearts together. Which proceeding of hers I do the more largely set before you, most dear lady, because by the foil thereof, you may see the nobleness of my desire to you and the warrantableness of your favour to me.” At that Philoclea smiled with a little nod. “But,” said Pyrocles, “when she perceived no hope by suit to prevail, then, persuaded by the rage of affection, and encouraged by daring to do anything, she found means to have us accused to the King, as though we went about some practice to overthrow him in his own state, which, because of the strange successes we had had in the kingdoms of Phrygia, Pontus and Galatia, seemed not unlikely to him, who, but skimming anything that came before him, was disciplined to leave the thorough-handling of all to his gentle wife, who forthwith caused us to be put in prison, having, while we slept, deprived us of our arms: a prison, indeed injurious, because a prison, but else well testifying affection, because in all respects as commodious as a prison might be: and indeed so placed, as she might at all hours, {230} not seen by many, though she cared not much how many had seen her, come unto us. Then fell she to sauce her desires with threatenings, so that we were in a great perplexity, restrained to so unworthy a bondage, and yet restrained by love, which I cannot tell how, in noble minds, by a certain duty, claims an answering. And how much that love might move us, so much, and more that faultiness of her mind removed us; her beauty being balanced by her shamelessness. But that which did, as it were, tie us in a captivity, was, that to grant had been wickedly injurious to him that had saved our lives; and to accuse a lady that loved us, of her love unto us, we esteemed almost as dishonourable: and but by one of those ways we saw no likelihood of going out of that place, where the