But she stopped me, drew herself away from me, yet gently, without wrath. "No," she said, "not yet, not yet." Then she added, lower still, "You must deserve me."
Deserve her? I did not comprehend. I knew well that I did not deserve my joy, poor fool that I was, mere man of the people, with the trestles of the village fair for all my royal throne. But, since she loved me, a crowd of ideas confused and giddy thronged on my brain and whirled madly together. Up above in the belfries and the towers in my infancy, with the clear blue air about me and the peopled world at my feet, I had dreamed so many foolish gracious things—things heroical, fantastical, woven from the legends of saints and the poems of wandering minstrels. When she spoke to me thus these old beautiful fancies came back to my memory. If she wished me to become a soldier for her sake, I thought—
She looked at me, burning my soul with her eyes, that grew sombre yet brilliant, like the Tiber water lighted by a golden moon. "You must deserve me," she repeated: "you must deliver me. You are strong."
"I am ready," I answered. I was still kneeling before her. I had at my throat a rude cross that my mother had hung there in my childish years. I touched the cross with my right hand in sign of oath and steadfastness. "I am ready," I said to her. "What do you wish?"
She answered, "You must free me. You are strong."
Even then I did not understand. "Free?" I repeated. "You would fly with me?"
She gave a gesture, superb, impatient, contemptuous. She drew herself backward and more erect. Her eyes had a terrible brilliancy in them. She was so beautiful, but as fierce in that hour as the wild beast that I saw once at a fair break from its cage and descend amidst the people, and which I strangled in my arms unaided.
She murmured through her closed teeth, "You must kill him. You are strong."
With a bound I rose to my feet. In the burning night an icy cold chilled my blood, my limbs, my heart.
Kill him? Whom? The old man? I, young and strong as I was, and his wife's lover?