Then Perion turned from the Needle of Assignano, and went westward into the Forest of Columbiers. He had no plan. He wandered in the high woods that had never yet been felled or ordered, as a beast does in watchful care of hunters.
He came presently to a glade which the sunlight flooded without obstruction. There was in this place a fountain, which oozed from under an iron-coloured boulder incrusted with grey lichens and green moss. Upon the rock a woman sat, her chin propped by one hand, and she appeared to consider remote and pleasant happenings. She was clothed throughout in white, with metal bands about her neck and arms; and her loosened hair, which was coloured like straw, and was as pale as the hair of children, glittered about her, and shone frostily where it lay outspread upon the rock behind her.
She turned toward Perion without any haste or surprise, and Perion saw that this woman was Dame Mélusine, whom he had loved to his own hurt (as you have heard) when Perion served King Helmas. She did not speak for a long while, but she lazily considered Perion's honest face in a sort of whimsical regret for the adoration she no longer found there.
"Then it was really you," he said, in wonder, "whom I saw talking with Demetrios when I awakened to-day."
"You may be sure," she answered, "that my talking was in no way injurious to you. Ah, no, had I been elsewhere, Perion, I think you would by this have been in Paradise." Then Mélusine fell again to meditation. "And so you do not any longer either love or hate me, Perion?" Here was an odd echo of the complaint Demetrios had made.
"That I once loved you is a truth which neither of us, I think, may ever quite forget," said Perion, very quiet. "I alone know how utterly I loved you--no, it was not I who loved you, but a boy that is dead now. King's daughter, all of stone, O cruel woman and hateful, O sleek, smiling traitress! to-day no man remembers how utterly I loved you, for the years are as a mist between the heart of the dead boy and me, so that I may no longer see the boy's heart clearly. Yes, I have forgotten much. ...Yet even to-day there is that in me which is faithful to you, and I cannot give you the hatred which your treachery has earned."
Mélusine spoke shrewdly. She had a sweet, shrill voice.