Denise found herself at last in an open space where many people were gathered, and torches threw up tawny light under the white face of the moon. Here was much shouting, much running to and fro, much uproar and exultation. Now and again a sword or axe flashed above the black mass of humanity. As Denise came out of the darkness a party of men went charging through, carrying ladders, hatchets, and iron bars. “Room, room,” they shouted, for they were bent on stopping the spread of the fire by pulling down some of the flimsy houses. In the middle of the square sat a knight on horseback, a knot of torches about him, and a pennon fluttering faintly above the smoke. The motion of the crowd seemed towards the knight, as though he were Lord and King of the Play. Denise was caught in the crowd and carried slowly towards the knight on the horse. He sat there bareheaded, calm and a little grim, the torchlight flickering on his face, and on the harness that glittered under his tawny surcoat. Men went to and fro carrying his commands, figures in red, blue, and green, going and coming through the crowd. He spoke so quietly that at a little distance no one heard his voice, but saw only the lips move in his stern and watchful face. It was Aymery, lord of Goldspur, Knight of the Hawk’s Claw, who had the command of the Londoners who had rushed on Reigate. The crowd carried Denise close to him, within an arm’s length of the circle of torches. And with her nearness she seemed suddenly to awake with a great cry of the heart that did not reach her lips. “Aymery, Aymery!” Her utter loneliness in the midst of that crowd seemed to her symbolical of the past and of the future. She was just a child that moment, with the passionate and pathetic longing of a child, touched with the deeper instinct of the woman. And by chance Aymery looked straight at Denise, so that it seemed to her that he was looking at her, and at her alone. She did not realise that Aymery could see nothing but a moving mist of faces because of the torch flare and the smoke. His face was so grim and intense, and his eyes so hard, that Denise shrank back, believing that he had recognised her, and that he looked at her as a thing of shame. She hid her face from him with bitterness and humiliation, and crept away into the thick of the crowd.