She spread a cloak and made a rest of one of the saddles, talking the while as though no love-crisis threatened them.
“I know what it is to be weary, to feel that death might take you, and you would not care. Then one falls down under a haystack and sleeps, and in the morning the sun is shining, and the world seems young again. Wine and water, cooked meat, bread and honey and a spiced cake! Let us be thankful.”
He lay down some two paces from her, propping himself on one elbow and not using the saddle that she had fetched to serve as a rest. His eyes avoided hers. Mellis had spread the slices of meat on a great green dock leaf, and she held out the dish with both hands.
“Eat, and then you shall talk to me.”
It was a silent meal, but Mellis had her way. She did not trouble him with words, or by watching him with questioning eyes. He was like a restive horse, or a thing in pain, to be soothed and calmed and rescued from its own restlessness. Her mood seemed as calm and as tranquil as the brown dusk that was beginning to fill the woods while the western sky still blazed.
When they had ended their meal she knelt up and drew the linen out of her saddle-bag.
“The light is going. Come here to me, Martin.”
He looked at her almost with fear.
“What would you?”
“That wounded shoulder must be cared for. You will carry the mark of it, always, for my sake.”