He wished that in the mad rush of the Arab the life might have been pounded out of him, and that he might never have waked to know what he had done; for although in his sober senses he did not love the Queen, it seemed to him that he had loved her in the moment when he sprang to save her life, and that he could never again forget the look of fear for him in her eyes and her cry of terror for his sake. All that Beatrix had said to him in the garden at Constantinople came back to him now; until now, he had disbelieved it all, as a wild and foolish impossibility, for he was over-modest and diffident of himself in such matters. Beatrix would certainly have been killed but for the chance which had thrown the mare across the narrow way, and he had risked his life to save another woman. It mattered not that the other was the Queen; that was not the reason why he had leapt upon the bridle. He had done it for a glance of her eyes, for the tone of her voice, as it were in an instant of temptation, when he had stepped out of the rank to face destruction for a dearer sake. It seemed like a crime, and it proved against his own belief that he loved what he loved not. Had he let the Queen pass, and had he stopped Beatrix's horse instead, she might have been unhurt, and one other brave man might have saved Eleanor at the brink. Indeed, he thought of the sad face with its pathetic little smile, drawn with pain and hot upon the pillow, by his fault; and he thought with greater fear of the danger that some deep hurt might leave the slender frame bent and crippled for life. But meanwhile the news had spread quickly that it was the silent Englishman, neither knight nor squire, who had saved the Queen, and outside the tent men stopped and talked of the deed, and asked questions of Alric, who had picked up enough Norman-French to give tolerably intelligible answers. At first came soldiers, passing as they went to fetch water from the lake, and again as they came back with copper vessels filled to the brim and dripping upon their shoulders, they set down their burdens and talked together. Presently came a great knight, the Count of Montferrat, brother to the Count of Savoy, who had been at Vezelay, where Gilbert had talked with him. He walked with slow strides, his bright eyes seeming to cut a way for him, his long mantle trailing, his soft red leather boots pushed down in close creases about his ankles, his gloved hand pressing down the cross-hilt of his sword, so that the sheath lifted his mantle behind him. On each side of him walked his favourite knights, and their squires with them, all on their way to the King's quarters, where a council of war was to be held, since it was known how the great German host had been routed, and that the Emperor himself might follow Duke Frederick of Suabia. This Duke had already reached the camp, after beating off the Seljuk skirmishers who had harassed his retreat and driven in the first fright-struck Germans.