“It would be simpler to bring you her head,” he said, wondering whether Etoile knew more than she had betrayed. “Cut off the woman’s hair, indeed! The folk yonder would crucify me, if they caught me harming their saint.” Etoile looked him in the eyes. “You are for ever shouting at me to prove you my Gaillard. Here is your chance. There is often some wisdom in a whim. You are to bring me her wooden cross, too, remember, as well as a piece of her hair.” Gaillard, uneasy under Etoile’s eyes, hid his more intimate thoughts behind an incredulous obstinacy. He could have scoffed at the absurdity of the thing. And yet, when he looked at it squarely, the adventure was not so physically absurd. What did it mean but the robbing of one woman to win another, the plundering of one treasure house to use the spoil to bribe the keeper of other treasures! The fine rascality of the thing delighted him. He threw back his head and laughed, though Etoile mistook the meaning of his laughter. “You have not the courage, Gaillard, eh? The man who sings under my window must be something better than a troubadour fool.” Gaillard bit his nails as though in the grip of a dilemma. The devil in him applauded. He could have clapped himself on the back over the broad humour of his cleverness. “What a road to set a man on, my desire,” he said, looking rather sullen over it. “There is a sin that they call sacrilege——” Etoile clapped her hands. “Cousin Gaillard with a conscience! Oh, you fool, am I worth a piece of hair, and the wood of a cross?” Gaillard spread his arms. “Fool! Do you think that I want a man with weak knees to serve me, a boy who empties half the cup and then turns sick?” Gaillard made a show of faltering, rocking to and fro on his heels, and looking at her under half closed lids. “Assuredly,” said he, “you are a devil. And to win a devil I will rob a saint.” Denise’s inward vision helped her so little those days that she had no foreshadowings of Gaillard’s treachery. He had shown none of his rougher nature to her when he had ridden through the beech wood to her cell. And Denise had let him talk to her once or twice, intent on discovering all that had befallen Aymery since he had fallen into the hands of Peter of Savoy. Only when Gaillard had tried to come too near had she closed the door on him, frightened by the look in the man’s eyes, and yet feeling herself very helpless in that solitary wood. For some days she had seen nothing of the Goldspur folk, nor did she know whether Grimbald was dead or alive. Gaillard had gone off sulking from the frost that she had thrown out on him. Denise believed herself rid of the man. And yet in her unrest, and loneliness, she thought of what Dom Silvius had said to her, and was half persuaded to put herself within sanctuary at Battle.