He pounded the door with his sword-hilt.
"Open, Edith! 'Tis Hugh!"
There was a noise of shifting bars, and the door was thrown back. Edith stood in the low portal, starry-eyed, cheeks aflame, her hair in tumbled masses.
"Is it you, in sooth, Hugh?" she whispered.
"Ay, sweet friend," he answered, and knelt before her.
But she placed her hands under his arms and raised him to his feet.
"Kneel not to me," she said. "I am not worthy. No woman may be so proud as I am of you, for none was ever served so nobly. Art my own knight and lord, faithful and always true."
For the second time she raised her lips to his, and Hugh's heart hammered so that it seemed it must burst through gambeson and hauberk. The domes and towers of Constantinople danced before his eyes. But he cast down his sword and caught her to him, straining her in his mailed arms until she sobbed:
"Oh, Hugh, have done! Prithee! I may not breathe."
As he let her go, a cold voice sneered close by: