He remembered how Peter the Hermit had
led the vast advance-guard of the First Crusade to sudden and miserable
destruction before the main force could be organized; he had seen
enough on that afternoon to prove to him that the air was laden with
such disaster, of which the responsibility would surely be heaped upon
himself. He regretted not the thoughts he had preached, but the fact of
having yielded to preach at all to such men and at such a time. He had
begun to set forth all this and much more in a letter to Pope Eugenius,
but before he had written a dozen lines the pen had fallen from his
hand, and he had begun to reflect upon the impossibility of stemming
the tide since it had turned to flood.
A soft step sounded in the outer hall beyond the curtained doorway, but
Bernard, absorbed in his meditations, heard nothing. A jewelled hand
pushed aside the thick folds of the hanging, and the most beautiful
eyes in the world gazed curiously upon the unheeding abbot.
"Are you alone?" asked the Queen's voice.
Without waiting for an answer she came forward into the room and paused
beside the low platform, laying one hand upon the table in a gesture
half friendly, half deprecating, as if she still feared that she had
disturbed the holy man. His transparent fingers fell from his eyes, and
he looked up to her, hardly realizing who she was, and quite unable to
guess why she had come. A dark brown mantle completely covered her
gown, and only a little of her scarlet sleeve showed as her hand lay on
the table.
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