A while stood he, viewing her with eyes aglow with yearning tenderness, and she, knowing this, kept her face down-bent, therefore. Now beholding all the beauty of her, because of her gracious loveliness, his breath caught, then hurried thick and fast, insomuch that when he would have spoken he could not; thus he worshipped her in a look and she, content to be so worshipped, sat with head down-bent, as sweetly demure, as proud and stately as if--as if she ne'er in all her days had fled with hampering draperies caught up so high!
So Beltane stood worshipping her as she had been some young goddess in whose immortal beauty all beauty was embodied.
At last he spake, hoarse and low and passionate: "Helen!" said he, "O Helen!"
Slowly, slowly the Duchess lifted stately head and looked on him: but now, behold! her glance was high and proud, her scarlet mouth firm-set like the white and dimpled chin below and her eyes swept him with look calm and most dispassionate.
"Ah, my lord Beltane," she said, sweet-voiced, "what do you here within the privacy of Genevra's garden?"
Now because of the sweet serenity of her speech, because of the calm, unswerving directness of her gaze, my Beltane felt at sudden loss, his outstretched arms sank helplessly and he fell a-stammering.
"Helen, I--I--O Helen, I have dreamed of, yearned for this hour! To see thee again--to hear thy voice, and yet--and yet--"
"Well, my lord?"
Now stood Beltane very still, staring on her in dumb amaze, and the pain in his eyes smote her, insomuch that she bent to her embroidery and sewed three stitches woefully askew.
"O surely, surely I am mad," quoth he wondering, "or I do dream. For she I seek is a woman, gentle and prone to forgiveness, one beyond all women fair and brave and noble, in whose pure heart can nothing evil be, in whose gentle eyes her gentle soul lieth mirrored, whose tender lips be apt and swift to speak mercy and forgiveness. Even as her soft, kind hands did bind up my wounds, so methought she with gentle sayings might heal my grieving heart--and now--now--"
"O my lord," she sighed, bending over idle fingers, "methinks you came seeking an angel of heaven and find here--only a woman."
"Yet 'tis this woman I do love and ever must--'tis this woman I did know as Fidelis--"
"Alas!" she sighed again, "alas, poor Fidelis, thou didst drive him from thee into the solitary wild-wood. So is poor Fidelis lost to thee, methinks--"
"Nay, Helen--O Helen, be just to me--thou dost know I loved Fidelis--"
"Yet thou didst spurn and name him traitor and drave him from thee!"