She said, “How fares the Queen thy step-mother? Seven summers ago this summer I was in Norvasp at Lord Corund’s wedding feast, and stood by her at the bridal. Is she yet so fair?”
He answered, “Madam, as June bringeth the golden rose unto perfection, so waxeth her beauty with the years.”
“She and I,” said Mevrian, “were playmates, she the elder by two summers. Is she yet so masterful?”
“Madam, she is a Queen,” said Heming, nailing his very eyes on Mevrian. Her face half turned towards him, sweet mouth half closed, clear eyes uplifted toward the east, showed dim in the glamour of the moon, and the lilt of her body was as a lily fallen a-dreaming beside some enchanted lake at midnight. With a dry throat he said, “Lady, until to-night I had not supposed there lived on earth a woman more beautiful than she.”
Therewith the love that was in him went like a wind and like an up-swooping darkness athwart his brain. As one who has too long, unbold, unresolved, delayed to lift that door’s latch which must open on his heart’s true home, he caught his arms about her. Her cheek was soft to his kiss, but deadly cold: her eyes like a wild bird’s caught in a purse-net. His brother’s armour that cased her body was not so dead nor so hard under his hand, as to his love that yielding cheek, that alien look. He said, as one a-stagger for his wits in the presence of some unlooked-for chance, “Thou dost not love me?”
Mevrian shook her head, putting him gently away.
Like the passing of a fire on a dry heath in summer the flame of his passion was passed by, leaving but a smouldering desolation of scornful sullen wrath: wrath at himself and fate.
He said, in a low shamed voice, “I pray you forgive me, madam.”
Mevrian said, “Prince, the Gods give thee good-night. Be kind to Krothering. I have left there an evil steward.”
So saying, she reined up her horse’s head and turned down westward towards the firth. Heming watched her an instant, his brain a-reel. Then, striking spurs to his horse’s flanks so that the horse reared and plunged, he rode away at a great pace east again through the woods to Krothering.