‘Is it cheering, think you,’ said Brion, levelling his voice, ‘to have cherished a friend, and to have been forsaken by him without a word?’
The other did not answer for a moment.
‘Nay,’ he said softly, ‘I left a message for thee to be of good heart, and to keep a corner in it for me. An William gave it thee not, I will break his head for him.’
‘Spare thy bluster. Hurt to another would not mend mine. Besides he gave me thy message.’
‘What then, sweetling? I had to go.’
‘And I to be deserted.’
‘The occasion was peremptory. No choice was left to me.’
‘Save to wake me and say good-bye.’
‘O!’ cried Clerivault, apostrophising Fate in a voice of grief and despair: ‘what coil is this! I wake thee to that message! If I have sinned, I have sinned in good faith, and my reward is my love is rejected.’
‘I said not that,’ said Brion, relenting. ‘But, indeed, Clerivault, it wounded me to the heart to find you gone.’