affront, and on the watch for it.  He was neither a rogue nor a madman; and yet he was as cunning as the one and as heedless as the other, if that is a possible thing.  He was arrogant, but his smile veiled the fault; you saw it best in a sleepy look he had.  His blemishes were many, his weaknesses two.  He trusted to his own force too much, and despised everybody else in the world.  Not that he thought them knaves; he was certain they were fools.  And so most of them were, no doubt, but not all.  The first flush of him moved your admiration:  great height, great colour, the red and the yellow; his beard which ran jutting to a point and gave his jaw the clubbed look of a big cat’s; his shut mouth, and cold considering eyes; the eager set of his head, his soft, padding motions—­a leopard, a hunting leopard, quick to strike, but quick to change purpose.  This, then, was Richard Yea-and-Nay, whom all women loved, and very few men.  These require to be trusted before they love; and full trust Richard gave to no man, because he could not believe him worth it.  Women are more generous givers, expecting not again.

Here was Jehane Saint-Pol, a girl of two-and-twenty to his two-and-thirty, well born, well formed, greatly desired among her peers, who, having let her soul be stolen, was prepared to cut it out of herself for his sake who took it, and let it die.  She was the creature of his love, in and out by now the work of his hands.  God had given her a magnificent body, but Richard had made it glow.  God had made her soul a fair room; but his love had filled it with light, decked it with flowers and such artful furniture.  He, in fact, as she very well knew, had given her the grace to deal queenly with herself.  She knew that she would have strength to deny him, having learned the hardihood to give him her soul.  Fate had carried her too young into the arms of the most glorious prince in the world.  Her brother, Eudo the Count, built castles on that in his head.  Now she was to tumble them down.  Her younger brother, Eustace, loved this splendid Richard.  Now she was to hurt him.  What was to become of herself?  Mercy upon her, I believe she never thought of that.  His honour was her necessity:  the watch-fires in the north told her the hour was at hand.  The old King was come up with a host to drive his son to bed.  Richard must go, and she woo him out.  Son of a king, heir of a king, he must go to the king his father; and he knew he must go.  Two days’ maddening delight, two nights’ biting of nails, miserable entreaty from Jehane, grown newly pinched and grey in the face, and he owned it.

He said to her the last night, ’When I saw you first, my Queen of Snows, in the tribune at Vezelay, when the knights rode by for the melee, the green light from your eyes shot me, and wounded I cried out, “That maid or none!"’

She bowed her head; but he went on.  ’When they throned you queen of them all because you were so proud and still, and had such a high untroubled head; and when your sleeve was in my helm, and my heart in your lap, and men fallen to my spear were sent to kneel before you—­what caused your cheek to burn and your eyes to shine so bright?’