"Indeed, I am in earnest," he said.
"And yet when you are in earnest, you do much harder things," answered Beatrix, and at once the sadness had the better of the laughter in her face. "Oh, Gilbert, I wish we were back in England in the old days."
"So do I!"
"Oh, no! You do not. You say so to please me, but you cannot make it sound true. You are a great man now. You are Sir Gilbert Warde, the Guide of Aquitaine. It is you, and you only, who are leading the army, and you will have all the honour of it. Would you go back to the old times when we were boy and girl? Would you, if you could?"
"I would if I could."
He spoke so gravely that she understood where his thoughts were, and that they were not all for her. For a few moments she looked down in silence, pulling at the fingers of her glove, and once she sighed; then, without looking up, she spoke, in her sweet, low voice.
"Gilbert, what are we to each other? Brother and sister?"
He started, again not understanding, and fancying that she was setting up the Church's canon between them, which he now knew to be no unremovable impediment.
"You are no more my sister than your tirewoman there can be," he answered, more warmly than he had spoken yet.
"I did not mean that," she said sadly.