“Tristan,” she said, “you seem grim to-day. Should we be sad at leaving the south?”
He winced a little and looked into her eyes, solemnly and sadly, like a man who suffered. His earnest face awoke vague fears in her, sudden dread of some fresh misfortune. She held out her hands to him with a questioning smile.
“Tristan,” she said, “why are you silent?”
“I am thinking,” he answered her, “of how our lives change even in one setting of the sun.”
“Speak,” she said, “for I am no child to be kept carefully in the dark.”
“Rosamunde,” he answered, squaring his shoulders and stiffening his great neck, “I thought the sea had grown calm at last, and that no more storms would come between us. Yet how frail are the hopes of men. Once more the sword must leave the sheath.”
She reached out her arms to him with a sudden cry and the mute look of a frightened child. Tristan’s hands were upon her shoulders. There was a divine tenderness upon his face as he looked in her eyes and told her the truth.
“Take courage,” he said to her, “for if ever a man needed love, I, Tristan, am that man to-day. Serjabil and his Saracens are marching for the mountains, thinking to have an easy victory over Christians weakened by their feuds. It is God’s will that we should take the sword and save the innocent from further shame.”
She hung in his arms, looking up like one dazed into his face.
“Ah, Tristan, what must follow?”