"Now I remember," he said, fiercely; and looking about him, though it
hurt him much to move his head, he saw how his sword lay on the grass
a-nigh him, and he made a grab for the weapon. But Argathona put her
beautiful, strong arms about him, and held him thus while she whispered
motherly to him, as children have whispered to their dolls since the
first child played with the first mandrake:
"You must keep still; you are sorely hurt, but I have stanched the
blood."
Rainouart's wits were none too muddled to forget reverence. He stooped
his head and kissed the girl's hands where they met about his breast.
The touch of his lips upon her seemed to sting her virgin flesh through
to the pure heart, and she unclasped her hands with a little moan.
Rainouart looked up at her.
"Why do you cry out? Why do you withdraw your hands? My gratitude would
never offend you."
"You do not offend me," Argathona whispered, very softly, so softly
that he could scarcely hear her. But he did hear her, and so hearing he
now wondered, as Simon before him had wondered, how it happened that
his own dear French speech should sound at all strange to him. As the
girl's hands no longer restrained him, he struggled a little and sat
erect, and stared into her eyes as she kneeled beside him. His troubled
thoughts seemed to lapse again into a trance; surely he had strayed in
the guarded garden, surely he lay in the mystical pleasance, surely he
had touched with his lips the petals of the noble rose.
"What is your name?" he whispered, and she told him, and he repeated it
softly, "Argathona," and found it very sweet to say and hear.
"When I kissed your hands, Argathona," he murmured, "all the pain of
my wounds seemed to leave me, and I drew new life, new vigor, from the
kiss. But when you withdraw your touch from me the smart returns and
my head aches wearily. If you will let me kiss your hands once more I
think that would surely banish pain."
He pleaded not because he dreaded to bear pain, but because he longed
with all his heart to kiss her hands again, and he hoped to win her to
yield through pity. He asked no more in his speech than to kiss her
hands, and he asked no more in his heart. For this, though he knew it
not, was his first acquaintance with the meaning of love, and his white
chivalry would have died blithely for less grace than this from the
loved one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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