ting her dumb lips.
If at such a time as this some other addressed her the word (as, to free
her from her anguish, one would sometimes do), she would perhaps answer
him, Yes or No, but nothing more. Usually she would shake her head
impatiently, as if all the world and its affairs (like a cloud of flies)
were buzzing about her, shutting out sound or sight of her Richard. Love
like this, so deep, outwardly still, inwardly ravening (because
insatiable), is a dreadful thing. No one who saw Jehane with Richard in
those days could hope for the poor girl's happiness. As for him, he was
more expansive, not at all tortured by love, master of that as of
everything else. He teased her after the first day, pinched her ear,
held her by the chin. He used his strange powers against her; stole up
on his noiseless feet, caught her hands behind her, held her fast, and
pulled her back to be kissed. Once he lifted her up, a sure prisoner, to
the top shelf of a cupboard, whence there was no escape but by the way
she had gone. She stayed there quite silent, and when he opened the
cupboard doors was found in the same tremulous, expectant state, her
eyes still fixed upon him. Neither he nor she, publicly at least,
discussed the past, the present or future; but it was known that he
meant to make her his Countess as soon as he could reach Poictiers. To
the onlookers, at any rate to one of them, it seemed that this could
never be, and that she knew very well that the hours of this sharp,
sweet, piercing intercourse were numbered. How could it last? How could
she find either reason or courage to hope it? It seemed to Beziers, on
the watch, that she was awaiting the end already. One is fretted to a
rag by waiting. So Jehane dared not lose a moment of Richard, yet could
enjoy not one, knowing that she must soon lose all.

Those six clear days of theirs had been wiselier spent upon the west
road; but Richard's desire outmastered every thought. Having snatched
Jehane from the very horns of the altar, he must hold her, make her his
irrevocably at the first breathing place. Dealing with any but Normans,
he had never had his six days. But the Norman people, as Abbot Milo
says, 'slime-blooded, slow-bellies, are withal great eaters of beef,
which breeds in them, as well as a heaviness of motion, a certain
slumbrous rage very dangerous to mankind. They crop grief after grief,
chewing the cud of grievance; for when they are full of it they disgorge
and regor