Prosper broke the silence there was between them.
"Whither should we go?" he said.
Isoult took the lead. "Follow me, I will lead you. I know the ways."
A great constraint kept him tongue-tied. The prize was his; the
silence, the emptiness, the night, gave him what his sword had earned.
He trembled but dared not put out his hand. What was he--good Lord!--
to touch so rare a thing? He hardly might look at her. The moon showed
him a light muffled figure swaying to the rhythm of the march, the
round of her hooded head, the swing of her body, the play of her white
hand on the rein. Whenever he dared to look her face was turned to
his; he saw the moon-glint in her eyes. He absolutely had nothing to
say, and for the first time in his life felt a clumsy fool.
By all which it would seem that love is a virtue going out of a man as
much as any that enters in.
Isoult was in very different plight, enjoying her brief moment of
triumph, making as it were the most of it. When a woman loves she
humbles herself, and every prostration is matter for an ecstasy. Her
love returned, she ventured to be proud; but this is against the
grain. It is more blessed to give. The freed soul welcomes the prison-
gates and hugs the yoke and the chain.
Just now she was on the verge of her freedom. In thus looking at him
who had been her lord yesterday and would be her lord to-morrow, she
was taking his measure. In her exalted mood she found that she could
read him like a book. There was no doubt about his present docility,
but could she dare to mould it? She must woo, she saw; dare she trail
this steel-armed lord of battles, this grim executant, this trumpet of
God, as a led child by her girdle-ribbons? If hero he had proved in
his own walk, to be sure he shambled pitifully on the edge of hers.
Her superiority sparkled so hard and frosty-bright that she began to
pity him; and so the maid was thawed to be the mother of her man.
Isoult knew she must beguile him now for his soul's ease and her own.
When the ride grew broad and ran like a spit into a lake of soft dark
she stopped. There was moss here, there were lichened heather-roots,
rowan bushes, and a ring of slim birches, silver-shafted, feather-
crowned and light; more than all there was a little pool of water
which two rills fed.
"We will stay here," said Isoult.
Prosper dismounted and helped her down. She felt him trembling as he
held her, whereat her courage rose clear and high.