In an instant Argathona sprang to her feet and caught at her lover's extended hands and looked into her lover's adoring eyes. "My dear," she cried, "you are welcome to the greenwood," and then she fell to laughing and to crying at the same time like a silly girl that is glad and sad in a companionable moment, and to stay her tears Rainouart was quick to kiss her on the lips, though the sound of her laughter was sweeter in his ears than the chime of blessed bells. For a while of delicious silence they clung together in the sunlight, murmuring each other's names in little broken spells of speech, and fondling each other after the manner of happily met lovers since the dawn of time. But at last, when the sweetness of their first delicate embraces was sufficiently tasted, and the restraint of two pure hearts glided ghostlike between desire and desire, Argathona drew a little way from her lover, and, holding him at arm's-length with her hands upon his shoulders, asked him what sadness he carried. For her clear eyes saw that there was sorrow behind the joy he had in finding her and fondling her, and she would not be denied to know the care that ate upon his heart. So Rainouart and she sat side by side upon the grass, each with arms about the other, while Rainouart in a hushed voice told her what had come to pass. How the Duchess of Thebes, strengthened by the secession of the Catalan Grand Company, had defied the pride and power of Athens, and how the pride and power of Athens had ridden forth to beat Thebes to reason, and how the pride and power of Athens were swallowed up in the bloody slough. And he told her how he himself was escaped from that slaughter, dwelling little upon his own stubbornness to turn from the shambles planned by the Catalan Grand Company--for it becomes no man to elaborate his devotion to duty--but lauding to the full the courage of Simon that by his courage and purpose had plucked him from destruction and carried him from present death to the depths of the greenwood, which same Simon he told her was now taking his ease somewhere in the skirts of the forest, having quitted his companion as soon as the pair came upon the sleeping girl. While he told his tale the immortal maiden clung to him close, and trembled at her lover's peril, and revelled in his strength of spirit that would rather have died than come to her dishonored, but she had little grief in her heart for the tragedy of the Athenian gallants. Beautiful evil creatures they had seemed to her in her short sojourn among them, fair as a snake may be named fair, and dangerous as a snake is dangerous.