Dropping his derision, he spoke bluntly: "What reason in the world could cause
you to behave thus if it is not that he is your lover?"
The color gathered and spread over her face in maiden shame, until her tunic
became the cruelest of mockeries.
"Short is the reason to tell, Lord King," she said, "it is because I love
him." As he sat regarding her, she put out her hand and played with a tendril
of wild grapevine that hung from the tree beside her, her eyes following her
fingers. "I do not know why I should be ashamed of the state of my feelings. I
should not be able to stand alive before you if he had not been a better lord
to me than you are to English captives; and he is more gentle and high-minded
than any man I ever heard sung of. Sometimes I think I should have more to be
ashamed of if I did not feel love toward him." A little defiantly, she raised
her eyes to his, only to drop them back to the spray. "But he does not love
me. He knows me only as the boy he was kind to. I have given him the high-seat
in my heart, but I sit only within the door of his."
The forest seemed very still when she had done,--the only sound the clanking
of the bits as the horses cropped the withered grass. Then suddenly the King
gathered up his lines with a jerk.
"I cannot believe it," he said harshly. "You are all alike, you women, with
your cat-like purrings and tricksy eyes that surpass most other things in
deceit.
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