“Your tongue plays with me.”
“Not so, brother; have I not said enough?”
The two men looked into each other’s eyes. On Samson’s face there was that goodly light that streams up from a generous heart, brave and bounteous, man’s love for man. In the Heretic there were no ignoble moods, and, like Paul of old, he esteemed himself little.
“Brother,” he said, “the fight for the truth gives its own guerdon. That you are with us, I know full well; moreover, I mind me that a man’s heart reaches through human love into heaven. A fair face, two trustful eyes, the waving of a woman’s hair. How many a pure spell is wrought with these!”
Tristan stood leaning on his sword, looking not at Samson, but towards the south.
“Are you so old?” he asked him suddenly.
“I—brother?”
“You followed also through the woods. And had the eyes no spell for you?”
Samson leant his arm over Tristan’s shoulders, even like an elder brother, who banishes self.
“For me,” he said, “are no such songs as men make at sunset when the heavens are red.”