“Yes, lord.” Duke Richard gazed at Garin of the Golden Island. “By the rood, he looks a man!” He turned to his anger again. “But now this woman—this Princess of Roche-de-Frêne—” His impatient foot wrinkled the silken carpet. “She may count it for happiness if I do not hold her here while I send messengers to Count Jaufre, ‘Lo, I have caged your bride for you!’” He nursed his anger. Beauvoisin saw with apprehension how he fanned it. “What woman comprehends man’s loyalty to man? I said to Montmaure I would aid him—” “My lord, the princess is here—within yonder room.” “Ha!” cried Richard; and that in his nature that gave back, touch for touch, Jaufre de Montmaure, came through the doors his anger had opened. “Let her then come to me here as would the smallest petitioner! God’s blood! Montmaure has her land. I hold her not as reigning princess and my peer!” Beauvoisin stepped to the door of the lesser room, opened it, and having spoken to one within, stood aside. Duke Richard turned in his seat, looked at the red sun out of window. He showed a tension: the movement of his foot upon the floor-cloth might have stood for the lion’s pacing to and fro, lashing himself to fury. At a sign from Beauvoisin the knights had drawn farther into the shadow at the end of the room. Garin watched from this dusk. The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne came with simplicity and quietness from the lesser room. She was not dressed now as a herd-girl, but as a princess. There followed her two grey nuns who, taking their stand by the door, remained there with lowered eyes and fingers upon their rosaries. The princess came to the edge of the gold-wrought square. “My lord duke,” she said; and when Garin heard her voice he knew that power was in her. When Richard turned from the window she kneeled and that without outward or inner cavilling. “Ha, madame!” said Richard. “Blood of God! did you think to gain aught by coming here?” She answered him; then, after a moment’s silence which he did not break, began again to speak. The tones of her voice, now sustained, now changing, came to those afar in the room, but not all the words she said. Without words, they gave to those by the wall a tingling of the nerves, a feeling of wave on wave of force—not hostile, uniting with something in themselves, giving to that something volume and momentum, wealth.... There were slight movements, then stillness answering the still, intense burning, the burning white, of her passion, will, and power. She rested from speech. Richard left his chair, came to her and giving her his hand, aided her to rise. He sent his voice down the room to Beauvoisin. “My lord count, bring yonder chair for the princess.” He had moved and spoken as one not in a dream, but among visions. When the chair was brought and placed upon the golden cloth and she had seated herself in it, he retook his own. “Jaufre de Montmaure,” he said, “was my friend, and he wanted you for bride—”