After standing awhile to look over the sea, Blanche passed down the long gallery that led towards the Abbess’s room. She walked noiselessly. The door of the Abbess’s room stood ajar, and from within came the sound of voices.
Blanche halted on the threshold, and gazed in with a smile hovering in her eyes. Tristan was lying on the bed half propped on pillows, with Rosamunde seated at his side. The woman’s arm was about Tristan’s shoulders, his head half resting on her breast, her hair falling down on either side, bathing his face as with golden light. Their eyes were turned away from Blanche towards the window in the wall.
They were talking together, these two who had come through storms to each other’s arms. Calm joy seemed theirs and deep content, a golden mood in which their thoughts were oblivious of all things save their love. Blanche leant her shoulder against the wall and watched them in silence, with her face in shadow.
“Tristan,” said the woman, “how dim seem the days when I played the great lady in Joyous Vale.”
He half turned his head upon her breast, so that he could look into her eyes.
“I was but a great boy then,” he said.
“And I a wise fool,” she answered him. “Ah, Tristan, when shall we women learn that cleverness suffices not the heart? The great love in a strong man’s eyes, the trustful clinging of children’s hands, these are the things that make for heaven.”
“True,” he said to her, taking her hair and winding a bright tress round his wrist; “we are wise in small things, unwise in the great. God, love, and health—Heaven give me these, and I will not envy any man.”
But Blanche drew back from before the door with a shadow as of pain upon her face. Such then was life for those who loved, the godly light in a husband’s eyes, the trusting smile of an honoured wife. For her there could be no magic words, no clinging lips, no straining hands. In her deep loneliness she turned away, and passed back to gaze on the restless sea.