Suddenly the girl's
face lightened, as if she had just found out that she was glad; her
eyes laughed, and her voice was as happy as a bird's at sunrise.
Gilbert had not seen her for a long time. To such a man, all women, and
even one chosen woman, might easily become an ideal, too far from the
material to have a real hold upon his manhood, and so high above earth
as to have no spiritual realization. Even in that age many a knight
made a divinity of his lady and a religion of his devotion to her, so
that the very meaning of love was forgotten in the ascetic impulse to
seek the soul's salvation in all things, even in the contempt of all
earthly longings; and those men demanded as much in return, expecting
it even after their own death. There were also women, like Anne of
Auch, who gave such devotion freely. Nevertheless, it was not
altogether in this way between Beatrix and Gilbert, and if it might
have been, so far as he was concerned, she would not have had it so,
and her words proved it.
"I am so proud of you!" she cried. "And I am so very glad to see you."
"Proud of me?" he asked, smiling sadly. "I am not proud of myself. For
all I have done, you might be dead at Nicaea."
"But I am alive," she answered happily, "and by your doing, though I
cannot yet walk quite well."
"I ought to have let the Queen pass on. I ought to have thought only of
you."
He found a satisfaction in saying aloud at last what had been so long
in his heart against himself, and in saying it to Beatrix herself.
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