"Think that I tell you God's truth!" he cried. "Understand that--" He checked himself, seeing how pale she was and how flutteringly came her breath; then, trained as she herself to instantly draw an airy veil between true feeling and the exigency of the moment, he became once more the simple courtier. "You read the songs that I make, sweet lady," he said, "and now will you listen while I tell you a story, a novelle? So I may make you to understand."
As he spoke he motioned to the mossy bank which she had quitted. She raised her troubled eyes to his; then, with her scarlet lip between her teeth, she took her seat again. For a minute there was silence in the little grove, broken only by the distant voices of the players whose company she had forsworn; then Ferne began his story:
"In a fair grassy plain, not many leagues removed from the hill Parnassus, a shepherd named Cleon sat upon a stone, piping to himself while he watched his sheep, and now and then singing aloud, so that the other shepherds and dwellers of the plain, and travellers through it, paused to hear his song. He sang not often, and often he laid his pipe aside, for he had much to think of, having been upon the other side of the mountain, and having seen cities and camps and courts,--for indeed he was not always shepherd. And now, because his thoughts left the plain to hover over the place where danger is, to visit strange coasts and Ultima Thule, to strain ever towards those islands of the blest where goes the man who has endured to the end, his notes when he sang or when he played became warlike, resolved, speaking of death and fame and stern things, or of things of public weal.... But all the time the shepherd was a lonely man, because his spirit was too busy to find ease for itself, and because, though he had helped other shepherds in the building of their cottages, his own heart had no hearthstone where he might warm himself and be content. Sometimes as he lay alone upon the bare earth, counting the stars, he caught the gleam from such a home clear shining over the plain, and he told himself that when he had numbered all the stars like sheep in a fold, then would he turn and give his heart rest beside some lower light.... So he kept on with his Phrygian melodies, and they brought him friends and enemies; but no lover hastening over the plain stayed to listen, and the shepherd was sorry for that, because he thought that the others, though they heard, did not fully understand."
The narrator paused. The maid of honor's hands were idle in her lap; with level gaze she sat in a dream. "Yet some there be who might have understood," she said, and scarce knew that she had spoken.
"Now Cleon had a friend whom he loved, the shepherd Astrophel, who sang more sweetly than any in all that plain, and Astrophel would oft urge Cleon to his dwelling, which was a fair one, with shady groves, sunny lawns, and springing fountains."
"Ah, sweet Sidney, dear Penshurst!" breathed the lady, softly.
"Now upon a day--indeed, 'tis little more than a year ago--Cleon, returning to the plain from a far journey, found Astrophel, who, taking no denial, would have him to those sunny lawns and springing fountains. There was dust upon the spirit of the shepherd Cleon: that had happened which had left in his mouth the taste of Dead Sea fruit; almost was he ready to break his pipe across, and to sit still forever, covering his face. But Astrophel, knowing in himself how he would have felt in his dearest part that wound which his friend had received, was skilled to heal, and with wise counsel and honeyed words at last won Cleon to visit him."
"A year and more ago," said Damaris, dreamily.
"On such a day as this, Cleon and Astrophel came to the latter's home, where, since Astrophel was as a magnet-stone to draw unto him the noblest of his kind, they found a goodly gathering of the chiefest of the dwellers in the plain. Nor were lacking young shepherdesses, nymphs, and ladies as virtuous as they were fair, for Astrophel's sister was such an one as Astrophel's sister should be."
"Most dear, most sweet Countess," murmured Damaris.