"Yes. But you might have done one thing more. That would have made all the difference." "What?" He bent anxiously towards her for the answer. "You might have tried to see me." "But I was never in the camp. I was always a day's march in the lead of the army." "But not always fighting. There were days, or nights, when you could have ridden back. I would have met you anywhere--I would have ridden hours to see you. But you never tried. And at last it is I who send for you and beg you to come and talk with me here. And you do not even seem glad to be with me." "I did not think that I had a right to leave my post and come back, even for you." "You could not have helped it--if you had cared." She spoke very low. Gilbert looked at her long, and the lines deepened in his face, for he was hurt. "Do you really believe that I do not love you?" he asked, but his voice was cold because he tried to control it, and succeeded too well. "You have never told me so," Beatrix answered. "You have done little to make me think so, since we were children together. You have never tried to see me when it would have cost you anything. You are not glad to see me now." Her voice could be cold, too; but there was a tremor in some of the syllables. He was utterly surprised and taken unawares, and he slowly repeated the substance of what she said. "I never told you so? Never made you think so? Oh, Beatrix!" He remembered the sleepless nights he had passed, accusing himself of letting even one thought of the Queen come between him and the girl who was denying his love--the restless, melancholy hours of self-accusation, the cruel self-torment--how could she know? She was in earnest, now, though she had begun half playfully; for if the man's heart had not changed, he had gone away from her in his active life, and in the habit of hiding all real feeling which comes from living long alone or with strangers. It was true that outwardly he had hardly seemed glad to see her, and all the ring of happiness had died away out of her voice before they had exchanged many words. He felt her mood, and it grew clear to him that he had made some great mistake which it would be very hard to set right. And she was thinking how boldly she had striven with the Queen for his love, and that now it seemed to be no love at all. But he, whose impulse was ever to act when there was danger, however much he might weary his soul with inward examination at other times, grew desperate, and gave up thinking of a way out of the difficulty. What he loved was slipping from him, and though he loved it in his own way, it was indeed all he loved, and he would not let it go.