“That fool! He must have his tongue and his nose in everything! I can play with such bumblebees.” She stood up and called the swashbuckler. “Guy, hallo there—friend Guy!” The Stallion came out from behind a holly bush, carrying his sword on his shoulder, the red twists of his beard ferocious as ever. “Bring me Blanche’s lute. I saw her over yonder as I came through the wood; and for my touching of her strings she can boast of Isoult as her comrade.” Guy saluted Isoult with his sword, and disappeared into the beech wood, where Blanche was sitting in a shelter of boughs under a tree, mending a hole in her hose, one bare foot thrust out, her hair bundled up anyhow in a torn net. Her lute lay in a red bag beside her, but as to lending it to Isoult that was another matter. Guy had but to grab at the thing for her to scratch at his face and start screaming like a jay. Isoult laughed. “Between them they will break the strings, yet I shall get the lute.” The squabble was soon over, Big Blanche’s voice oozing away into a futile whimpering that was smothered by the big oaths and blasphemies of her man. She had wriggled away and was cowering against the tree trunk in order to escape from a foot that was none too delicate in the use of its big toe. “You sing, you big slug! You have a voice like the bung-hole of a barrel!” He marched off, and coming to Isoult, presented the lute to her with a fine obeisance, his sword cocked over his shoulder. One red eye looked slantwise at Fulk of the Forest. “Madame Isoult, sing, and we shall forget to be hungry.” “Or to quarrel—or boast!” She took the lute to her bosom, and struck the strings, waiting for Guy the Stallion to take himself off. “What shall I sing, good comrade?” “Just what comes to the bird’s throat.” And so she sang to him of Ipomedon, and Gingamor, and the Romaunt of the Rose, and of strange forests and haunted meres, and of the banners of kings red as the sunset. Fulk’s heart went out to her because of her singing, and all his mistrust of her melted like wax. When she had ended he looked long at her as though trying to fathom her soul. “Isoult, who and what are you? For some day I needs must know.” “Good comrade, I am but a bird from over the sea, and yet I have no ring on my foot.” “I marvel——” “That I should sing?” “No. That you should fly with these jays and stormcocks.” She glanced at him slantwise under black lashes. “Why should I tell you what no man in the land knows?” “Why, indeed?” he echoed her. “We are two riddles, you and I,” she said, “to be guessed, some time or never. But whether we shall guess each other, God and our need may show.” Meanwhile, Guy the Stallion lay flat on his belly behind a bush, gnawing grass, and watching them with hungry eyes. The beast in him desired Isoult and hated the man beside her. And from a little distance Big Blanche watched her man, her round, white face sullen, and glum, and jealous.