he has sent for me. As for my
camp-life, ask Rothgar himself, or Elfgiva, or the King--or any soldier
of the host! Of them all, you alone have thought such thoughts of me."
She flung up her hands against him in a kind of heart-broken rage. "You!
To whose high-mindedness I trusted everything I have!" Hiding her face,
she ran from them, sobbing, into the house.

Chapter XXXI. The Twilight of The Gods

Circumspect and reserved
Every man should be,
And wary in trusting friends;
Of the words
That a man says to another
He often pays the penalty.
Ha'vama'l.

Waking to tapestried walls and jewelled lanterns and a strange splendor
of furnishings, Randalin experienced a moment of wild bewilderment.
What had happened to the low-ceiled dormitory with its bare wall-spaces
splotched with dampness? What had become of the row of white beds, with
Dearwyn's rosy face on the next pillow? And she herself--why was she
lying on the outside of the covers, with all her clothes on, a cramped
aching heap? Rising on her elbow, she gazed wonderingly at the frowzy
woman stretched near her on a pallet. It was not until the woman turned
over, puffing out her fat cheeks in a long breath, that the girl on the
bed recognized her and knew what room this was and remembered what had
happened to separate to-day from all the yesterdays of her life. Falling
down upon the pillows, she lay with her face hidden among them, living
over with the swift sharpness of a renewed brain the scenes of the
previous night.

As she had seen it from the gallery where the King's soldiers had hidden
her, she saw again the great stone hail, enshrining a feasting-table
around which a throng of nobles in their gorgeous dresses and their
jewels and their diadems made a glittering halo. At the farther end,
the King sat in his shining gilded chair. Just below her, was Edric
of Mercia with Norman Leofwinesson beside him. She could not see their
faces for their backs were toward her, but now and again the Gainer's
velvet voice rose blandly, and each time she was seized with shuddering.
How was it possible that he did not feel disaster in the air? To her it
seemed that the very torch-flames hissed warnings above the merriment,
while the occasional pauses were so heavy with doom that their weight
was well-nigh unendurable; at each, she was forced to fight down a mad
impulse to scream and scatter the hush.

Then the light from the taper which a p