"
"And nothing else matters," said Beatrix. "Not even that it is two
months since I have seen you, and that I have been ill, or, at least,
half crippled, by that fall. It is all forgotten."
He looked at her, not quite understanding, for as she spoke her
eyebrows were raised a little, with her own expression, half sad, half
laughing at herself.
"I wish I could see you more often," answered Gilbert.
Her little birdlike laugh disconcerted him.
"Indeed, I am in earnest," he said.
"And yet when you are in earnest, you do much harder things," answered
Beatrix, and at once the sadness had the better of the laughter in her
face. "Oh, Gilbert, I wish we were back in England in the old days."
"So do I!"
"Oh, no! You do not. You say so to please me, but you cannot make it
sound true. You are a great man now. You are Sir Gilbert Warde, the
Guide of Aquitaine. It is you, and you only, who are leading the army,
and you will have all the honour of it. Would you go back to the old
times when we were boy and girl? Would you, if you could?"
"I would if I could."
He spoke so gravely that she understood where his thoughts were, and
that they were not all for her. For a few moments she looked down in
silence, pulling at the fingers of her glove, and once she sighed;
then, without looking up, she spoke, in her sweet, low voice.
"Gilbert, what are we to each other? Brother and sister?"
He started, again not understanding, and fancying that she was setting
up the Church's canon between them, which he now knew to be no
unremovable impediment.
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