"And that troubled you?" said Kit adroitly.
"Oh, till I woke! Then it seemed to matter little. My heart sits on the top of a high tree, Master Christopher, as I told you long ago."
All that he had fancied in the gaining seemed lost, all that the suffering and long anxiety of war had taught him. She was dainty, elusive, provocative, just as she had been in Yoredale, before her baptism of fire.
"Then why were you sick with terror for me?" he asked, as if downrightness served as well with women as with men.
"Why? Because, perhaps, it is rather cold in the tree-tops, and a heart comes down now and then for a little warmth. I shall bid you good-night, sir. You're in need of rest, I think."
"Joan," he said, "I love you very well."
She halted a moment. The light from her candle showed Kit a face made up of spring-time in a northern lane. Long battle, long abstention from a glimpse of her, brought the old love racing back at flood. And yet it was a new love, deepened and widened by the knowledge gained between the riding out from Yoredale and the stark misery of Marston Moor.
"You will let me go," she said at last. "Is it a time for ease of heart, when our men are dead, or dying, or in flight? They have told me how it sped at Marston—and, Kit, what of the King, when the news goes spurring south to him?"
What of the King? Their own needs—for one caress, one taste of happiness amid the rout—went by. Their loyalty was not a thing of yesterday; its roots lay thick and thrifty in soil centuries old.
"God forgive me," said Christopher. "I had forgotten the King."