Esclaramonde shifted her body a little away from him, though still she clasped him fast and he could not in courtesy release her clinging fingers. "Dear my lord," she protested, pathetically, "my overvaunted beauty may be of little account; still it is not many seconds since you chose to call me passing fair." The prince, looking at Esclaramonde, knew that she was very fair indeed. There was for the merely desirous no more desirable woman of all the French dames dwelling in Greece. "You are very fair," he said, truly, "but you are not she whom I saw." And once again his anxious eyes looked longingly over the silver grass towards the implacable silence of the wood. "She was some dream," Esclaramonde answered him, earnestly, her warm lips close to his flushed cheek, her soft breath fanning his troubled face. "She was a vision born of the quick fever of your wounds. You swooned again after our change of vows and change of rings, and in this swoon you must have dreamed this dream of another who was not I. Indeed, you murmured snatches of strange speech in your sleep which astounded me, but such delirium is common with men in your case. Will you stain your knightly faith and deny your honor for the sake of a sick dream?" Great waves of doubt flooded the prince's struggling consciousness, overwhelming it, drowning it. Was she, in very fact, no more than a vision, that white child of the woods with her yellow hair and her haunting eyes and her perfect body? Did the help he had dreamed of really come to him from this splendid, voluptuous creature who had striven to allure him in France? Was it those insistent hands that had brought healing to his hurt? Was it those passionate lips that had soothed him to sleep? Was it those enticing eyes that had summoned love to take possession of his stainless soul? His thoughts were all a tangle, his fever burned bright as his eyes travelled vaguely from the unfamiliar ring upon his finger to his mother's ring upon the finger of Esclaramonde. One thing alone seemed plain to him where all was imbroglio. If in whatever bewildering way he had pledged his word to this lady, his word must be kept. "If I gave you my knightly faith, lady," he said, faintly, "I may not take it again." The eyes of the duchess were triumphant torches, success was throned in her smiling face. But the pallor of Rainouart's face grew greater, for the spiritual strife within him had weakened him more than his loss of blood, and Esclaramonde, watching him, believed he was about to swoon again. She turned and made a sign in the direction where her following stood, huddled together, a group of lances and flaring torches on the lip of the wood. The golden page quitted the little throng and ran to his mistress. "Bring me some wine, Bohemond," she ordered.