“But my good young woman,” said the chamberlain severely to Fidella, “your tapestry is unfinished still. Go to your home and weave it to an end ere you return again. You may not enter.”
“Oh, sir,” cried poor Fidella, “do not thrust me back! Let me enter, I pray; oh, let me go within!”
“What I have said, I have said,” replied the chamberlain, shouting at Fidella through the deafening clangor of the bells. “Young woman, I forbid—”
Suddenly the bells stopped in the middle of a peal, and everything grew very strangely still. People began to look questioningly at one another.
The Princess Melusine was not to be found! She had fled during the night with her cousin, the King of the Golden Hill. The coach, which Fidella had seen, had borne the runaway bride. As for the knight Alois, some said that he had already left the realm, whilst others murmured that he was hiding for shame in a tower. And many laughed.
Thrust from the portal by the guards, Fidella returned to her cottage in the fields.
And now it was night, the air was sweet with the fragrance of earth beneath the plough, and a sickle moon hung in the cloudy west with the old moon in her arms. Within her silent house Fidella kindled a yellow fire, threw the tapestry picture over the loom, and stood by the hearth gazing deep into the flame.
Suddenly a knocking sounded at the door, and Fidella, answering the summons, found herself standing face to face with the young knight, Alois. His pride touched to the quick, the forsaken youth had lingered in the castle till the dark, and then fled with his people from the town. And, because he had fled in haste and was athirst, the youth had paused at the first light shining in the fields.
Standing on the threshold in the moonlight, the youth asked a cup of water of the maid. With a beating heart, Fidella lifted to his hands the cup of memory.
And now there came an end to the enchanter’s wicked spell and the long years of danger and faithful questing. Letting fall the golden cup, the young knight uttered a great cry and stretched out his arms to the faithful maid for whose sake he had braved the anger of the King, the loyal maid who had loved him with a loving faith and braved many a peril for him through the kingdoms of the world.