"You love me very much?" she said again, and again her voice was blended with the two notes of interrogation and command. "Surely I love you very much," he answered again, still in the same smooth, measured manner. It was not very ardent, but it seemed to satisfy the duchess that she could make him say what she pleased. "When we meet again," she murmured, "you will be the hero of the tournament, yet I think you peril your fame and jeopardize your judgment to proclaim me most fair." Her words and her eyes stimulated him to the measure of her intention. "Are you not most fair?" he asked, wonderingly, and his look was compelled admiration and his voice paid the demanded homage. The duchess smiled provocatively. "Some have said so, and I smiled at their little wit, but when you assert it my fond heart leaps to believe what my honest mirror denies." She held out both her hands as she spoke, and Rainouart caught them in his own obediently. It seemed rather that she drew him nearer to her than that he drew her nearer to him. "The mirror were wicked crystal that showed you other than most fair," he declared, "but there is no such lying glass in the world." The duchess shook her head, and a cherub wind that was playing along the gallery caught a free lock of her dark hair and blew the tresses against his cheeks, and his cheeks burned. "I should be proud," she said, "to count myself fair for your sake, for you are the fairest of men and the bravest." Even while she spoke her spirit seemed to laugh within her, for she remembered to whom she had last said those words, and she wondered to whom she would say them next. But the prince's eyes glowed as if with the exaltation of strong wine. "Your words are sweet to hear," he vowed. "I will do my best endeavor to merit some little of their grace." She bent her head forward as if to kiss him on the lips. There was no one to see her--at least no one that counted; no page or servant loitering in the court-yard mattered, and even before a larger audience the duchess would scarcely have denied herself. But even as Rainouart waited for her kiss the quiet of the noontime was broken by the shrill call of a clarion, the call that warned all knights to hasten to the lists and make them ready for the tournament. Rainouart stooped and kissed the white hand of the duchess. "Farewell, fair lady," he said; "I must go to my tent." "I will watch your triumph from the gallery," Esclaramonde said, and he turned and left her with no other word, and went down the stairway into the court-yard.