ou art not
Duke yet, nor can'st thou ever be but of my favour!"

"And the time flieth apace," sighed Beltane, "and I have mighty things
to do. O, methinks I have tarried here overlong!"

"Ah--and would'st be going, messire?"

"'Tis so methinks my duty."

"Go you alone, messire--or goeth she with thee?"

"Ah, God! How dare ye so think?" cried Beltane, in anger so fierce and
sudden that though she fronted him yet smiling, she drew back a pace.
Whereat his anger fell from him and he reached out his hands.

"Helen!" said he, "O my Helen, what madness is this? Thou art she I
love--doth not thine heart tell thee so?" and fain would he have caught
her to him.

"Ah--touch me not!" she cried, and steel flickered in her hand.

"This--to me?" quoth he, and laughed short and bitter, and catching her
wrist, shook the dagger from her grasp and set his foot upon it.

"And hath it come to this--'twixt thee and me?" he sighed.

"O," she panted, "I have loved thee nor shamed to show thee my love.
Yet because my love is so great, so, methinks, an need be I might hate
thee more than any man!" Then, quick-breathing, flushed and trembling,
she turned and sped away, leaving Beltane heavy-hearted, and with the
dagger gleaming beneath his foot.

CHAPTER XXIII

OF THE HUMILITY OF HELEN THE PROUD

Beltane, leaning forth of his lattice, stared upon the moon with
doleful eyes, heavy with sense of wrong and big with self-pity.

"I have dreamed a wondrous fair dream," said he within himself, "but
all dreams must end, so is my dream vanished quite and I awake, and
being awake, now will I arise and go upon my duty!" Then turned he to
his bed that stood beside the window and forthwith began to arm
himself; but with every lace he drew, with every strap he buckled, he
sighed amain and his self-pity waxed the mightier. He bethought him of
his father's sayings anent the love of women, and in his mind condemned
them all as fickle and light-minded. And in a while, being armed from
head to foot, in glistening coif and hauberk and with sword girt about
his middle, he came back to the lattice and leaned him there to stare
again upon the moon, to wait until the manor should be wrapped in sleep
and to grieve for himself with every breath he drew.

Being thus so profoundly occupied and, moreover, his head being thrust
without the window, he heard nought of the tap upon his chamber door
nor of the whispered sound of his name. Thus he started