“Is it so great a thing to ask, Denise?”
He was looking at her steadily now, the self-consciousness had slipped from him.
“Lord, if my blessing were but worthy.”
“Need you ask that!”
“It is I who ask it of my own heart,” she answered.
He flung out his arms suddenly, and his face blazed up at her.
“For England, for the land, not for me alone, Denise. Mother of God—I will have no other. Am I not wise as to my own desire?”
His ardour caught her spirit and sent it soaring above the earth as a wind blows a half-dead beacon into flame. The miserable self-fear, the consciousness of coming shame fell away from her like a ragged garment. She was the Denise of the woods again, with miraculous eyes and hands.
“Give them to me.”
She stretched out her arms, took his shield, held it to her bosom, and spoke words over it that Aymery could not hear. Yet how much love and how much supplication there were in those words of hers, the heart of a woman alone could tell. She took his sword also, kissed the cross thereof, and held it on high.