She looked up at him and murmured softly: “Farewell.”
“Yet we shall meet again.”
“When?” she asked, with lips just parted and eyes that strained to see his face.
“In a day’s time, outside the ramparts.”
“Outside the ramparts?”
“Yes.” He knelt before her and kissed her hand. “The citadel of the city is the heart of its mistress,” he said.
She rose suddenly to her feet and would have spoken, but he raised his hand to impose silence on her. With one long look he turned away and left her alone, standing under the emblazoned window, through which one ray of moonlight caught her fair hair and illumined it.
She stood with clasped hands, her eyes still set on the door by which he had gone out.
“My heart knows its lord,” she whispered. “I have been speaking with my King.”