"I hear them too."
"Go, go, for my sake and for God's."
He kissed her sleeve, pulled his cowl down, and fled away into the woods.
XVII
The Lady Duessa stood in the chapel of water-girded Avalon, with Fra Balthasar the Dominican beside her. She had slipped in without his noticing her, and had watched him awhile in silence at his work. The jingling of her chatelaine had brought him at last to a consciousness of her presence. Now they stood together before the high altar and looked at the Madonna seated on her throne of gold, amid choirs of angel women.
The Lady Duessa's intelligence had waxed critical on the subject.
"You have altered the Virgin's face," she said.
Balthasar stared at his handiwork and nodded.
"The former has been erased, the latter throned in her stead."
The words had more significance for the lady than the friar had perhaps intended. A better woman would have snubbed him for his pains. As it was, he saw her go red, saw the tense stare of her dark eyes, the tightening of the muscles of her jaw. She had a wondrous strong jaw, had the Lady Duessa. She was no mere puppet, no bright-eyed, fineried piece of plasticity. Fra Balthasar guessed the hot, passionate power of her soul; she was the very woman for the rough handling of a cause, such as the Lord Flavian her husband had roused against her.