"Sir," said Dunstan, "will you let me touch the Lady Beatrix?"
The knight's brow darkened, for that a churl's hands should touch a high-born lady's face seemed to him something monstrous and against nature; but in the moment he had forgotten something.
"She is quite dead," he tried to say.
Then Dunstan spoke sadly, kneeling down beside her.
"This lady is half my sister," he said. "I have some skill with half-drowned persons. Let me save her, sir, unless we are to let her die before our eyes. A gipsy taught me what to do."
The cloud passed from Gilbert's face, but still he did not believe.
"In heaven's name, do what you can, try what you know, and quickly!" he said.
"Help me, then," said Dunstan.
So he did as all skilled persons know how to do with half-drowned people, though only the gipsies knew it then. They turned her body gently so that the clear water ran from her parted lips, and laying her down again, they took her arms and drew them over her head, stretched them out, and brought them down to her sides, again and again, so as to make her breathe, and the breath was drawn in and breathed out again with a delicate foam that clung to her lips.
Still Sir Gilbert did not believe, and though he helped his man, in the despair of the instant, and in the horror of losing the least chance of life, it all seemed to him a desecration of the most dear dead, and more than once he would have let the poor little arm rest, rather than make it limply follow the motion Dunstan gave to the other.