“Nothingness; there you belie your soul.”
His eyes gleamed suddenly, as though he heard some mocking trumpet cry and the trampling squadrons of his foes.
“Before God,” he said to her, lifting the weight of his body from off his sword, “he who has lost friends to death, finds no soft resting-place to ease his soul. A little while—some months ago, not more—I leapt like a boy into the storm and strife of life. My youth is past, my manhood forged beneath the mighty hammer of God’s fate. When dreams elapse, the strong man grips the sword.”
“Strange words,” she said, “for one who is not old.”
He leant his hands again upon the pommel, sighed, and retorted to her with the solemnity of one whose hopes were fierce, whose thoughts ran deep.
“There seems a season in man’s life,” he said, “when all is wrath, passion, and great pain. Youth passes in a year. The world grows full of storm winds, anguish, and huge travail. Battle breathes in the blood. A man must fight and labour, or grow mad.”
“And yet——”
“And yet,” he said, catching her very words, “my heart gives out at seasons, and I yearn, even I, to be once more a little child weeping my woes out on my mother’s knees.”
The Duchess turned to him from the mild stars, held out her hands, a woman whose heart was open as the sky.
“Ah, Tristan, is it a mother’s heart you need?”