“Such are not the weapons I would have named,” Richard answered:  “yet in reason, Messire Gwyllem, I can deny you nothing that means nothing to me.”

With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise.  In these unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had anticipated, but he found himself the stronger man of the two, and he managed somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow.  By what method he contrived this he never ascertained.

“I have forgotten what we are fighting about,” he observed, after ten minutes of heroic thumps and hangings; “or, to be perfectly exact, I never knew.  But we will fight no more in this place.  Come and go with me to Welshpool, Messire Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a conclusion over good sack and claret.”

“Content!” cried Gwyllem; “but only if you yield me Branwen.”

“Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling over a woman?” Richard demanded; “like two children in a worldwide toyshop over any one particular toy?  Then devil take me if I am not heartily ashamed of my folly!  Though, look you, Gwyllem, I would speak naught save commendation of these delicate and livelily-tinted creatures so long as one is able to approach them in a becoming spirit of levity:  it is only their not infrequent misuse which I would condemn; and in my opinion the person who elects to build a shrine for any one of them has only himself to blame if his chosen goddess will accept no burnt-offering except his honor and happiness.  Yet since time’s youth have many fine men been addicted to this insane practice, as, for example, were Hercules and Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and, indeed, the more I reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of other venerable and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I ashamed of my sex.”

Gwyllem said:  “This lazy gabbling of yours is all very fine.  Perhaps it is also reasonable.  Only when you love you do not reason.”

“I was endeavoring to prove that,” said Richard gently.  Then they went to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem’s horse.  Tongue loosened by the claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to each rapture Richard affably assented.  In his heart he likened the boy to Dionysos at Naxos, and could find no blame for Ariadne.  Moreover, the room was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about the windows, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content.

“She does not love me?” Gwyllem cried.  “It is well enough.  I do not come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered.  Listen, Saxon!” He caught up Richard’s lute.  The strings shrieked beneath Gwyllem’s fingers as he fashioned his rude song.

Sang Gwyllem: 

  “Love me or love me not, it is enough
  That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is
  Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love,—­
  My life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred
  With tavern-catches, which that pity of his
  Erased, and wrote instead one lonely word,
  O Branwen!