At the entry he kneeled on one knee, and looked about him from under his brows.  Three or four masses were proceeding; out of the semi-darkness shone the little twinkling lights, and illuminated faintly the kneeling people, a priest’s vestment, a silver chalice.  But here was neither marriage nor Jehane.  He got up presently, and padded down the nave, kneeling to every altar as he went.  Many an eye followed him as he pushed on and past the curtain of the ambulatory.  They guessed him for the wedding, and so (God knows) he was.  In the shadow of a great pillar he stopped short, and again went down on his knee; from here he could see the business in train.

He saw Jehane at prayer, in green and white, kneeling at her faldstool like a painted lady on an altar tomb; he just saw the pure curve of her cheek, the coiled masses of her hair, which seemed to burn it.  All the world with the lords thereof was at his feet, but this treasure which he had held and put away was denied him.  By his own act she was denied.  He had said Yea, when Nay had been the voice of heart and head, of honour and love and reason at once; and now (close up against her) he knew that he was to forbid his own grant.  He knew it, I say; but until he saw her there he had not clearly known it.  Go on, I will show you the deeps of the man for good or bad.  Not lust of flesh, but of dominion, ravened in him.  This woman, this Jehane Saint-Pol, this hot-haired slip of a girl was his.  The leopard had laid his paw upon her shoulder, the mark was still there; he could not suffer any other beast of the forest to touch that which he had printed with his own mark, for himself.

Twi-form is the leopard; twi-natured was Richard of Anjou, dog and cat.  Now here was all cat.  Not the wolf’s lust, but the lion’s jealous rage spurred him to the act.  He could see this beautiful thing of flesh without any longing to lick or tear; he could have seen the frail soul of it, but half-born, sink back into the earth out of sight; he could have killed Jehane or made her as his mother to him.  But he could not see one other get that which was his.  His by all heaven she was.  When Gurdun squared himself and puffed his cheeks, and stood up; when Jehane, touched by Saint-Pol on the shoulder, shivered and left staring, and stood up in turn, swaying a little, and held out her thin hand; when the priest had the ring on his book, and the two hands, the red and the white, trembled to the touch—­Richard rose from his knee and stole forward with his long, soft, crouching stride.

So softly he trod that the priest, old and blear-eyed as he was, saw him first:  the others had heard nothing.  With Jehane’s hand in his own, the priest stopped and blinked.  Who was this prowler, afoot when all else were on their knees?  His jaw dropped; you saw that he was toothless.  Inarticulate sounds, crackling and dry, came from his throat.  Richard had stopped too, tense, quivering for a spring.  The priest gave a prodigious sniff, turned to his book, looked up again:  the crouching man was still there—­but imminent.  ‘Wine of Jesus!’ said the priest, and dropped Jehane’s hand.  Then she turned.  She gave a short cry; the whole assembly started and huddled together as the mailed man made his spring.