de you
happy, Manuel. I would have made you happy always."

"I wonder if you would have? Ah, well, at all events, the obligation was
upon me. At no time in a man's life, I find, is there lacking some
obligation or another: and we must meet each as we best can, not hoping
to succeed, just aiming not to fall short too far. No, it is not a merry
pursuit. And it is a ruining pursuit!"

She said, "I had not thought ever to be sorry for you--Why should I
grieve for you, gray traitor?"

Harshly he answered: "Oho, I am not proud of what I have made of my
life, and of your life, and of the life of that woman yonder, but do you
think I will be whining about it! No, Freydis: the boy that loved and
deserted you is here,"--he beat upon his breast,--"locked in, imprisoned
while time lasts, dying very lonelily. Well, I am a shrewd gaoler: he
shall not get out. No, even at the last, dear Freydis, there is the bond
of silence."

She said, impotently, "I am sorry--Even at the last you contrive for me
a new sorrow--"

For a moment they stood looking at each other, and she remembered
thereafter his sad and quizzical smiling. These two had nothing more to
share in speech or deed.

Then Freydis went away, and the accursed beasts and her castle too went
with her, as smoke passes. Manuel was thus left standing out of doors in
a reaped field, alone with his wife and child while Miramon's ship came
about. Niafer slept. But now the child awoke to regard the world into
which she had been summoned willy-nilly, and the child began to whimper.

Dom Manuel patted this intimidating small creature gingerly, with a
strong comely hand from which his wedding ring was missing. That would
require explanations.

It therefore seems not improbable that he gave over this brief period of
waiting, in a reaped field, to wondering just how much about the past he
might judiciously tell his wife when she awoke to question him, because
in the old days that was a problem which no considerate husband failed
to weigh with care.

XXXI

Statecraft

Now from the ship's gangway came seven trumpeters dressed in glistening
plaids: each led with a silver chain a grayhound, and each of the seven
hounds carried in his mouth an apple of gold. After these followed three
harp-players and three clergymen and three jesters, all bearing crested
staves and wearing chaplets of roses. Then Miramon Lluagor, lord of the
nine sleeps and prince of the seven madnesses, co