He looked up and she met the gaze of his great eyes; deep pools of night they seemed, where strange matters might move unseen, disturbing to look on, yet filled with a soft slumbrous charm that lulled and soothed.
“Thou’st fallen a-dreaming, my lord,” said Mevrian. “And for me ’tis a hard thing to walk with thee in thy dreams, who am awake in the broad daylight and would be a-doing.”
“Certes it is an ill thing,” said Lord Gro, “that thou, who hast not been nourished in mendicity or poverty but in superfluity of honour and largesse, shouldst be made fugitive in thine own dominions, to lodge with foxes and beasts of the wild mountain.”
Said she, “It is yet a sweeter lodging than is to-day in Krothering. It is therefore I chafe to do somewhat. To win through to Galing, that were something.”
“What profit is in Galing,” said Gro, “without Lord Juss?”
She answered, “Thou wilt tell me it is even as Krothering without my brother.”
Looking sidelong up at her, where she sat armed beside him, he beheld a tear a-tremble on her eyelid. He said gently, “Who shall foreknow the ways of Fate? Your highness is better here belike.”
Lady Mevrian stood up. She pointed to a print in the living rock before her feet. “The hippogriff’s hoofmark!” she cried, “stricken in the rock ages ago by that high bird which presideth from of old over the predestined glory of our line, to point us on to a fame advanced above the region of the glittering stars. True is the word that that land which is in the governance of a woman only is not surely kept. I will abide idly here no more.”
Gro, beholding her so stand all armed on that high brink of crag, setting with so much perfection in womanly beauty manlike valour, bethought him that here was that true embodiment of morn and eve, that charm which called him from Krothering, and for which the prophetic spirits of mountain and wood and field had pointed his path with a heavenly benison, meaning to bid him go northward to his heart’s true home. He kneeled down and caught her hand in his, embracing and kissing it as of her in whom all his hopes were placed, and saying passionately, “Mevrian, Mevrian, let me but be armed in thy good grace and I defy whatever there is or can be against me. Even as the sun lighteth broad heaven at noon-day, and that giveth light unto this dreary earth, so art thou the true light of Demonland which because of thee maketh the whole world glorious. Welcome unto me be all miseries, so only unto thee I may be welcome.”
She sprang back, snatching away her hand. Her sword leapt singing from the scabbard. But Gro, that was so ravished and abused that he remembered of nothing worldly but only that he beheld his lady’s face, abode motionless. She cried, “Back to back! Swift, or ’tis too late!”