So on the day of Pentecost, Guillem, trembling, answered: “For you.”
Then was Flamenca sore troubled.
“What!” she exclaimed. “Can it be for me he cherishes an amorous desire? Then he must needs seek another mistress, for my love is no love at all, but sorrow and anguish. Sobs and sighs, troubles and tears, bitterness and sadness of heart—these are my near neighbors, my privy companions. What shall I do, what shall I say?”
“My lady,” exclaimed Margarida, “whatever you do or say, you will surely not let that gallant young man love you and entreat you in vain! Who knows but God Himself has sent him to deliver you from prison?”
“Even were I to return his love, I do not see how that would advantage him in aught,” said Flamenca.
“Ask him, my lady. He has done so well already, he will surely know.”
So, the following Sunday Flamenca said: “What can I do?” and the eighth day after Pentecost, on the feast of Saint Barnaby—a little feast for which Flamenca would no more have set foot out of doors than for that of a simple martyr not in the calendar—Guillem answered “Cure.”
“How can I cure his ills, who am without remedy for my own?” pondered Flamenca, and her damsels counselled her to ask: “How?”
“Trust him. He will easily find a way to compass your happiness at the same time as his own.”
“May God in His mercy will it so,” sighed Flamenca, “for at present I do not see how we shall ever be able to do more for each other than we do now.”