‘Thanks, my good lord, and faith, and long service.’

‘Get up, Gilles,’ said Richard.

Gilles kissed his knee, and rose.  Richard put Jehane’s hand into his and held the two together.

‘God serve me as I shall serve you, Gilles, if any harm come of this,’ he said shrewdly, with words that whistled in the air; and as Gilles looked him squarely in the face, Richard ran an eye over him.  Gilles was found honest.  Richard kissed Jehane on the forehead, and went out without a look back.  At the edge of the wood he found Gaston of Bearn sucking his fingers.

‘There went by here,’ said the gay youth, ’a black knight with a face of a raw meat colour, and the most villainous scowl ever you saw.  I consider him to be dead already.’

’I have given him something which should cure him of the scowl and justify his colour,’ answered him the Count.  ’Moreover, I have given him the chance of eternal life.’  Then with a cry—­’Oh, Gaston, let us get to the South, see the sun fleck the roads, smell the oranges!  Let us get to the South, man!  It seems I have entertained an angel.  And now that I have given her wings, and now that she is gone, I know how much I love her.  Speed, Gaston!  We will go to the South, see Bertran, and make some songs of good women and men in want!’

‘Pardieu,’ said Gaston.  ’I am with you, Richard, for I am in want.  I have eaten nothing for two days.’

So they rode out of the woods of Saint-Pol-la-Marche, and Richard began to sing songs of Jehane the Fair-Girdled; never truly her lover until he might love her no more.

CHAPTER V

HOW BERTRAN DE BORN AND COUNT RICHARD STROVE IN A TENZON

Day-long and night-long he sang of her, being now in the poetic mood, highly exalted, out of himself.  The country took tints of Jehane, her shape, her fine nobility.  The thrust hills of the Vexin were her breasts; the woods, being hot gold, her russet hair; in still green water he read the secrets of her eyes; in the milk of October dawns her calm brows had been dipped.  The level light of the Beauce, so beneficent yet so austere, figured her soul.  Fair-girdled was Touraine by Vienne and Loire; fair-girdled Jehane, who wore virgin candour about her loins and over her heart a shield of blue ice.  As far southwards as Tours the dithyrambic prevailed; Richard was untiring in the hunt for analogues.  Thence on to Poictiers, where the country (being his own) was perhaps more familiar; indeed, while he was climbing the grey peaks of Montagrier with his goal almost in sight, he turned scholiast and glossed his former raptures.

‘You are not to tell me, Gaston,’ he declared, ’that my Jehane has been untrue.  She was never more wholly mine than when she gave herself to that other, never loved me more dearly.  Such power is given to women to lead this world.  It is the power of the Word, who cut Himself off and made us His butchers in pure love.  I shall do my part.  I shall wed the French girl, who in my transports will never guess that in reality Jehane will be in my arms.’  Tears filled his eyes.  ’For we shall be wedded in the sight of heaven,’ he said sighing.