She looked at the drooping grace of the branches, with their buds of amber, long and in silence; then with a passion of weeping she turned her face from them as from the presence of some intolerable memory.
All down the shore of the river, amongst the silver of the reeds, the willows had been in blossom when she had first looked upon the face of Arslàn.
"Stay with us," the women murmured, drawn to her by the humanity of those the first tears that she had ever shed in her imprisonment. "Stay with us; and it shall go hard if we cannot find a means to bring you to eternal peace."
She shook her head wearily.
"It is not peace that I seek," she murmured.
Peace?
He would care nothing for peace on earth or in heaven, she knew. What she had sought to gain for him—what she would seek still when once she should get free—was the eternal conflict of a great fame in the world of men; since this was the only fate which in his sight had any grace or any glory in it.
They kept their faith with her. They opened the doors of her prison-house and bade her depart in peace, pagan and criminal though they deemed her.
She reeled a little dizzily as the first blaze of the full daylight fell on her. She walked out with unsteady steps into the open air where they took her, and felt it cool and fresh upon her cheek, and saw the blue sky above her.
The gates which they unbarred were those at the back of the hospital, where the country stretched around. They did not care that she should be seen by the people of the streets.