"And you?" he said very low. "What will you do, Joan?"
"For me, I will abide on Isle Rugen. Nunneries are not for me. There are doubtless one or two who will abide with me for the sake of old days—Werner von Orseln for one, Peter Balta for another. I shall not be lonely."
She smiled upon him with a peculiar trustful sweetness and continued—
"And once a year, in the autumn, you will come from your high office. You will lay aside the princely scarlet, and don the curt hose and blue jerkin, even as now you stand. You will gather blackberries and help me to preserve them. You will split wood and carry water. Then, when the day is well spent, you and I shall walk hither in the high afternoon and tell each other how we stand and all the things that have filled our hearts in the year's interspace. Thus will we keep tryst, you and I—not priest and wedded wife, but man and woman speaking the truth eye to eye without fear and without stain. Do you promise?"
And for all answer the Prince-Cardinal kneeled down, and taking the hem of her dress he kissed it humbly and reverently.
CHAPTER XLI
THERESA KEEPS TROTH
But they had reckoned without Theresa von Lynar.
Conrad and Joan came back from the ruined fortification, silent mostly, but thrilled with the thoughts of that which their eyes had seen, their ears heard. Each had listened to the beating of the other's heart. Both knew they were beloved. Nothing could alter that any more for ever. As they had gone out with Theresa watching them from the dusk of the garden arcades, their hands had drawn together. Eyes had sought answering eyes at each dip of the path. They had listened for the finest shades of meaning in one another's voices, and taken courage or lost hope from the droop of an eyelid or the quiver of a syllable.