“Not men whom I love,” she flashed terribly; “for I love men of honor. You have fled from her to me; broken her heart, mayhap, for she was a woman, though no doubt a woman of sin and guile. And I dare say she also loved you. Then straight from her arms you come to seek mine. You might have spared me that.” “And yet,” I demanded, at white heat now, “you say you loved me. You have not explained.” I saw her putting back her long yellow hair that had been falling from under the black hood all over her glowing face. “You came to me more than a year ago like the knight who comes to the enchanted princess back in the golden world. You came with your Italian accent, your Italian manners, your lore and wit and charm of the Southland. I could never think enough of you. I lay awake musing on your elegance and nobility. You were my Tristan, my Siegfried, whereof the minnesingers told. I would have gone to the ends of the world with you, though I dared not confess this even to my own soul. When you went away to Mainz, I said to my heart, even as I strove with my father in his dreadful hours, ‘He will come back, He will come back, and then--’” “But I have come back.” “Yes. And how come? Come with my palace of dreams vanished to dust and ashes! Come to buy me from my brother, with a few pretty words and promises of advantage, because, forsooth, you have dismissed your Italian leman, and the Regenstein is lonely and requires a proper mistress. But I, Ilsa von Blankenburg, say I will not go with you. I will not be bought and sold on these terms. I thank you fairly for your honor and courtesy, but I go with my aunt to Quedlinburg, there to take the veil, and by a life of prayer and holy service to seek of God pardon for my father’s soul and for yours.” I fell on my knees at her feet in a last burst of mortified and angered entreaty. “Hear me,” I demanded; “learn first the manner of my quitting Palaestro, _then_ you will see all otherwise.” “I will hear nothing. A man capable of living as you have lived is capable of any manner of lie. You run from the arms of that cardinal’s daughter to mine. Go back to her. Our Blankenburg pride has fallen low--but not so low that I must sell myself to such as you. At Quedlinburg there is rest, peace, quietude. I can pray for your salvation all day, and hear the church bells ring. Perhaps if God will hear my prayers, and you for the rest of your life do truly repent, we shall meet--hereafter, when the cleansing fire of purgatory has bathed and burned us both clean. But now, farewell.” I seized the fold of her long robe.