Now, though were I to be taken in
battle by them, I should be speedily brought to the halter, or may be
to the bale-fire (for we be wizards all in the Red Hold); yet with
this word in my mouth, if they trow in it, I shall be made their
captain, and presently their master. Trow in my tale they will, if
thou bear me out therein, and they will honour thee, and suffer thee
to give thyself to me in marriage; and then I know thee, and myself
also, and that ere long we shall be both mighty and wealthy and
beloved, and fair will be the days before us.
His voice had grown softer as he spake, and toward the end of his
words he faltered, and at last brake out a-weeping, and cast himself
wordless on the grass before her.
She was pale, and her brow was knitted, and her face quivered; but
she spake coldly to him and said: This way I cannot take; and I
wonder at thee that thou hast shown it unto me, for thyself thou
knowest that I cannot go with thee. I will go nowhere hence save to
the Castle of the Quest. If thou wilt not lead me thereto, or put me
on the road, I ask thee straight, Wilt thou stay me if I go seek the
way thither myself?
He rose up from the ground with a pale face full of anger as well as
grief, and caught her by the wrists and said, scowling the while:
Tell me now which of them it is; is it the stupid oaf Baudoin, or the
light fool Hugh, or the dull pedant Arthur? But it matters not; for
I know, and all the country-side knows, that they be vowed, each man
of them, to his own woman; and if they find not the women themselves,
such dolts they are, that they will ever be worshipping the mere
shadows of them, and turn away from flesh and blood, were it the
fairest in the world, as thou art, as thou art.
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