So that Master Gerard rose and glided over to me, patting me kindly enough on the shoulders and bidding me take courage, saying that he loved to see modesty in this untoward generation, in which there was little virtue and no gratitude at all.
So I grasped him by the hand and kissed his thin, bony fingers.
"Bide ye, bide ye," he said; "one day I may kiss yours an you be active. The wide spaces of Destiny lie before you, though I shall not live to see it. But you must bestir you, for I am an old man, and have not far to travel now to the place from which one leaps off into the dark."
He conducted me to the door of his chamber and gave me his hand again with the same inscrutable smile on his thin face, and his skull-cap pushed farther back than ever over the flat, ophidian brow.
"When you have all things ready," he said, "come to me for the letter of introduction, and also for that which may obtain you a worthy outfit for your journeying to Plassenburg. Or, if you are already Sir Proud-Heart, you can repay me one day, with usury if you will. I care not to stand on observances with you, nor desire that you should feel any obligation to a feeble old man."
"I am not proud," I said, "and my sense of obligation is already greater than ever I can hope to discharge."
"I thank you, my lad," he said. "Often have I wished for a son of the flesh like you as you passed the window with your companions—but go, go!"
And with his hand he pushed me out upon the stair-head and shut the door.
For a space I knew not where I stood. For what with the turmoil of my thoughts and the myriad of impressions, hopes, fears, visions, regrets to leave the Red Tower, the city of Thorn, the hope of seeing again that high-poised head of burned gold of the Lady Ysolinde, I paused stock-still, moidered and dazed, till a light hand touched me on the shoulder and the soft, even voice spoke in my ear.
"Master Hugo," said the Lady Ysolinde, bending kindly to me, "I am glad, very glad—aye, though you have made my head ache" (here she nodded blamefully and laid her hand upon her heart as if that ached too)—"it is the best of fortunes, and sure to come true. Because have I seen it at six o'clock of a Thursday in the time of full moon."