He
wondered also why Sir Arnold had not appeared, and whether, having
sailed from Ephesus, he had been shipwrecked. But his thoughts soon
turned back to his work, and he sat on the low rail by the main-
rigging, looking down at the blue water as the ship ran smoothly along.
What was there in Beatrix to hold him, after all? It was nothing but a
boyish memory, revived by a mistaken idea of faith.
But suddenly he felt within him the aching hollow and the grinding
hunger of heart that the loved woman leaves behind her, and he knew
well that his anger was playing a comedy with him, as Beatrix had
accused him and the Queen of playing a play in the past night.
It was hard that she should not have believed him; and yet when one has
seen and heard, it is harder still to believe against sight and
hearing. If she had loved him, he said to himself, she could not have
doubted him. He would never have doubted her, no matter what he might
have seen her do. But at this he began to realize and understand; for
in order to persuade himself, he pictured her sitting as the Queen had
sat, and a man bending over her and kissing her and calling her the
love of his life and heart, and he felt another sort of anger rising
fiercely in him, because the imagined sight was vivid and bad to see.
Thereupon he grew calmer, seeing that she was not wholly wrong, and he
began to curse his evil fate and to wish that he had not followed the
Queen, but had stayed behind at Antioch.
But it was too late now, for Antioch was gone in the purple distance,
and it was towards evening.
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