—in a half-whisper, yet joyously, with laughing lips, as Cleudi might have done it, passing one hand around her shoulders, with the other holding tight to her hand.
“A northern lord to complain of the cold? And to instruct the Prophet of Love in love?” she said, in Countess Aiella’s thrilling voice. (If it were only this one.) “I will not grant your right to sue until you have proved love your prophet.”
“Ah, that would be epicene,” said Rodvard (the fired-wine working in him; but it was too dim to wring truth from her eyes). “You must convert yourself to a woman before you can convert me to your sacred love.”
“Oh, love does not remain true love when its longings are satisfied; therefore the sacred, which can never be satisfied, is above the profane,” she said, stepping to one of the chairs at the table with a graceful play of ankle. Her hands went up to slip off the head-mask, and she sat back, hair falling round her shoulders. “I am a little weary, my lord of Kjermanash; give me something to drink that will warm your wintry wit.”
Her fingers toyed with a goblet, but he took one of the festival-cups from his belt, poured it full, then as she drank, disengaged it from her fingers and finished it himself, lips carefully at the place where hers had touched the edge.
“Not worthy of you, my lord. Is this the promised originality? Go catch servant-girls with such tricks.”
“Alas,” he said, using the same half-whisper (the voice was the danger-point). “True love and longing has no tricks, only the expression by every means of its desire. Let us contest your heresy that satisfied longing is the end of love; for in love, the momentary assuagement only leads to further longings.”
He poured her more from the bottle, and this time took the other cup himself. (The glint of her eye, momentarily caught, held some slight anticipation of pleasure, but there was more in it of weariness with the world.)
“Ah, if it only would,” she said, and turned her lovely head aside. “I am hungry, my lord.”
He leaped up at once and began to serve her from the sideboard, while the joyous tumult from below and along the corridor became louder, and someone in the next box was making high festival, with squeals of women laughing and the rumble of men. They ate, talking a little more of the nature of love and whether it lives by satisfaction or by the lack of it. She drank more than he. There were springcakes; he set one before her, but she only tasted it and pushed it away, whereupon he left his own untouched and ran around the table to gather her in his arms. “You are the only sweet I need,” he whispered, feeling at once strong and weak, but she avoided her head from his kiss, and when he essayed to hold her, shook herself free, with: “No. Ah, let us not spoil it.”