"You mean well," she said, giving her hand back to me again, "but it is not pity Ysolinde needs nor yet desires. But that is no matter. Come in hither and see what may abide for you in the depths of the black pool."
At the curtained doorway she turned and looked me in the eyes.
"If you were as other young men it would be easy for you to misjudge me. This is mine own work-chamber, and I bid you come into it, having seen you but an hour ago. Yet never a man save my father only hath set his foot in it before. Inquire carefully of your companions in the city of Thorn, and if any make pretension to acquaintance with the Lady Ysolinde of the White Gate strike him in the face and call him liar, for the sake of the favor I have shown you and the vision I saw concerning you in the crystal."
I stooped and kissed her hand, which was burning hot—a thin little hand, with long, supple fingers which bent in one's grasp.
"The man who would pretend to such a thing is dead even as he speaks," said I; and I meant it fully.
"I thank you—it is well," she answered, leading me in. "I only desired that you should not misjudge me."
"That could I never do if I would," I made her answer. "Here my every thought is reverence as in the oratory of a saint."
She smiled a strange smile.
"Mayhap that is rather more than I desire," she said. "Say rather in the maiden bower of a woman who knows well whom she may trust."
Again I kissed her hand for the correction. And, as I remembered afterwards, it was at that hour that the little Princess Playmate was used to look within my chamber to see that all was ready for me.