But if we win," she said at
the last, drawing herself to her height, "the honour of our deeds shall
be ours alone, not yours."
She had raised the curtain, and it fell behind her as she spoke the
last word, leaving the abbot no possibility of a retort. But she had
missed her intention, for he was not a man to be threatened from the
right he had planned. When she was gone, his face grew sad, and calm,
and weary again, and presently, musing, he took up the pen that lay
beside the half-written page.
But she went on through the outer hall to the vestibule, drawing her
thin dark mantle about her, her lips set and her eyes cruel, for she
had been disappointed. Beneath the idle wish to hear Bernard speak,
behind the strong conviction that he must follow the army to the East
if it was to be victorious, there had been the unconscious longing for
a return of that brave emotion under which, in the afternoon, she had
taken the Cross with her ladies. And a woman disappointed of strong
feeling, hoped for and desired, is less kind than a strong man defeated
of expectation.
She was alone. Of all women, she hated most to be followed by
attendants and watched by inferiors when she chose solitude. Reliant on
herself and unaffectedly courageous, she often wondered whether it were
not a more pleasant thing to be a man than to be even the fairest of
womankind, as she was. She stood still a moment in the vestibule,
drawing the hood of her cloak over her head and half across her face.
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