His voice shook a little as he answered her words, holding her very close to him, like one who knew not what the days might bring.
“Rosamunde,” he said, “I go to hold the mountain passes till Blanche and her men can send me succour.”
“But you have so few with you——”
“We are enough,” he said; “and if not enough, where lies the shame?”
She turned her head upon his shoulder with a gesture of impatience, a pouting of the mouth that did not escape him.
“Tristan, you are mad,” she pleaded, “to risk so much for those who have injured us.”
“God knows, I fought not against the poor,” he said, “but against the evil in high places. Now comes the hour when I may save the weak.”
Rosamunde broke away from him suddenly and stood apart, like one whose pride takes umbrage at a threat. Her eyes grew bright with the impatience of the moment, for, believing all storm clouds to have passed from the sky, she had drifted dreamily towards a haven of rest. The sudden revulsion made her rebel against an enterprise that to her seemed mad.
“Tristan,” she said, “you shall not go. Are my wishes nothing in this?”
The man’s face appeared wreathed in shadows. He looked at her sadly out of his dark eyes, as though baffled by a mood that he had not foreseen.