Thoughtless at last, and sudden, he took her into his arms, and his face was close to hers, and his eyes were in hers, and their lips breathed the same breath. She was not frightened, but her lids drooped, and she turned quite white. Then he kissed her, not once, but many times, and as if he would never let her go, on her pale mouth, on her dark eyelids, on her waving hair. "If I kill you, you shall know that I love you," he said, and he kissed her again, so that it hurt her, but it was good to be hurt. After that she lay in his arms, very still, and she looked up slowly, and their eyes met; and it was as if the veil had fallen from between them. When he kissed her again, his kisses were gentle and altogether tender. "I had almost lost you," he said, breathing the words to her ear. The Norman tirewoman sat motionless by the river's edge, waiting till she should be called. After a time they began to talk again, and their voices were in tune, like their hearts. Then Gilbert spoke of what had happened in the night, but Beatrix already knew that her father had come. "He has come to take me away," she said, "and we have talked together. Gilbert--a dreadful thing has happened; did he tell you?" "He told me nothing--excepting that I was a coward!" He laughed scornfully. "I think he is half mad with sorrow." She paused and laid her hand on Gilbert's. "His wife is dead,--your mother is dead,--with the child she bore him." Gilbert's eyes alone changed, but under her palm Beatrix felt the sinews of his hand leap and the veins swell. "Tell me quickly," he said. "She was burned," continued Beatrix, in a tone of awe. "She made my father grind his people till they turned, and she made him hang the leader who spoke for them. Then all the yeomen and the bondmen rose, and they burned the castle, and your mother died with the child. But my father escaped alive. Now I am again his only child, and he wants me again." Gilbert's head fell forward, as if he had received a blow, but he said nothing for a time, for he saw his mother's face; and he saw her not as when they had parted, but as he remembered her before that, when he had loved her above all things, not knowing what she was. In spite of all that had gone between, she came back to him as she had been, and the pain and the pity were real and great. But then he felt Beatrix's hand pressing his in sympathy, and it brought him again to the evil truth. He raised his head. "She is better dead," he said bitterly. "Let us not speak of her any more. She was my mother." He stared long at the river, and the sadness of his homeless and lonely state in the world began to come upon him, as it came often. Then a soft voice broke the spell, and the words answered his thoughts. "We are not alone, you and I," it said, and the two small hands crept up shyly and clasped his neck, and the loving, pathetic face looked up to his. "Do not let him take me away!" she begged.