"And you are come to do as you are bidden, getting admittance to me stealthily, with men of my own who have betrayed me?" Gilbert turned white, and then he smiled as he answered her. "No. I am come to warn your Grace and to defend you against all violence, with my life." Eleanor's face changed and softened, and again she looked out at the balcony. "Why should you defend me?" she asked sadly, after a pause. "What am I to you, that you should fight for me? I sent you out to die--why should you wish me to be safe?" "You have been the best friend to me, and the kindest, that ever woman was to man." "A friend? No. I was never your friend. I sent you out to death, because I loved you, and trusted that I might see you never again, and that you might die honourably for the Cross and your vows. Instead, you won glory, and saved us all--all but me! You owe me no thanks for such friendship." She looked at him long, and he was silent. "Oh, what a man you are!" she cried suddenly. "What a man!" He blushed like a girl at the praise, for her soul was in the words, and her great love for him, the only thing in all her life that had ever been above herself. "What a man you are!" she said again, more softly. "Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Queen, the fairest woman in the world, would give you her soul and her body and the hope of her life to come--and you are faithful to a poor girl whom you loved when you were a boy! A hundred thousand brave men stand by to see me die, and you alone take death by the throat and strangle him off, as you would strangle a bloodhound, with those hands of yours! I send you out--oh, how selfishly!--that you may at least die bravely for your vow and leave me at sad peace with your memory, and you fight through a hell of foes and save the King and me and all, and come back to me in glory--my Guide of Aquitaine!" She had risen and stood before him, her face dead white with passion, and her eyes deep-fired by a love that was beyond any telling. And though she would not move, her arms went out toward him. "How can any woman help loving you!" she cried passionately. She sank into her chair again, and covered her face with her hands. He stood still a moment, and then came and knelt on one knee beside her, resting his hand upon the carved arm of her chair. "I cannot love you, but in so far as I may be faithful to another I give you my whole life," he said very gently. As he spoke the last words, the curtain of the inner apartments was softly raised, and Beatrix stood there; for she had thought that the Queen was alone. But she heard not the beginning of the speech, and she grew quite cold, and could not speak nor go away. Eleanor's hands left her face and fell together upon Gilbert's right.