"Look well upon me, Perion," said Melicent. "Look well, ruined gentleman! look well, poor hunted vagabond! and note how proud I am. Oh, in all things I am very proud! A little I exult in my high station and in my wealth, and, yes, even in my beauty, for I know that I am beautiful, but it is the chief of all my honours that you love me—and so foolishly!"
"You do not understand—!" cried Perion.
"Rather I understand at last that you are in sober verity a lackey, an impostor, and a thief, even as you said. Ay, a lackey to your honour! an imposter that would endeavour—and, oh, so very vainly!—to impersonate another's baseness! and a thief that has stolen another person's punishment! I ask no questions; loving means trusting; but I would like to kill that other person very, very slowly. I ask no questions, but I dare to trust the man I know of, even in defiance of that man's own voice. I dare protest the man no thief, but in all things a madly honourable gentleman. My poor bruised, puzzled boy," said Melicent, with an odd mirthful tenderness, "how came you to be blundering about this miry world of ours! Only be very good for my sake and forget the bitterness; what does it matter when there is happiness, too?"
He answered nothing, but it was not because of misery.
"Come, come, will you not even help me into the boat?" said Melicent.
She, too, was glad.
5.
How Melicent Wedded
"That may not be, my cousin."
It was the real Bishop of Montors who was speaking. His company, some fifteen men in all, had ridden up while Melicent and Perion looked seaward. The bishop was clothed, in his habitual fashion, as a cavalier, showing in nothing as a churchman. He sat a-horseback for a considerable while, looking down at them, smiling and stroking the pommel of his saddle with a gold-fringed glove. It was now dawn.
"I have been eavesdropping," the bishop said. His voice was tender, for the young man loved his kinswoman with an affection second only to that which he reserved for Ayrart de Montors. "Yes, I have been eavesdropping for an instant, and through that instant I seemed to see the heart of every woman that ever lived; and they differed only as stars differ on a fair night in August. No woman ever loved a man except, at bottom, as a mother loves her child: let him elect to build a nation or to write imperishable verses or to take purses upon the highway, and she will only smile to note how breathlessly the boy goes about his playing; and when he comes back to her with grimier hands she is a little sorry, and, if she think it salutary, will pretend to be angry. Meanwhile she sets about the quickest way to cleanse him and to heal his bruises. They are more wise than we, and at the bottom of their hearts they pity us more stalwart folk whose grosser wits require, to be quite sure of anything, a mere crass proof of it; and always they make us better by indomitably believing we are better than in reality a man can ever be."