Domnei | Page 6

cannily resolved
to utilise her beauty, as he did everything else, toward his own
preferment.
"Oh, sir," replied Perion, "you who are so fine a poet must surely know
that gay rhymes with to-day as patly as sorrow goes with to-morrow."
"Yet your gay laughter, Messire de Puysange, is after all but breath:

and breath also"--the bishop's sharp eyes fixed Perion's--"has a
hackneyed rhyme."
"Indeed, it is the grim rhyme that rounds off and silences all our
rhyming," Perion assented. "I must laugh, then, without rhyme or
reason."
Still the young prelate talked rather oddly. "But," said he, "you have an
excellent reason, now that you sup so near to heaven." And his glance
at Melicent did not lack pith.
"No, no, I have quite another reason," Perion answered; "it is that
to-morrow I breakfast in hell."
"Well, they tell me the landlord of that place is used to cater to each
according to his merits," the bishop, shrugging, returned.
And Perion thought how true this was when, at the evening's end, he
was alone in his own room. His life was tolerably secure. He trusted
Ahasuerus the Jew to see to it that, about dawn, one of the ship's boats
would touch at Fomor Beach near Manneville, according to their old
agreement. Aboard the Tranchemer the Free Companions awaited their
captain; and the savage land they were bound for was a thought
beyond the reach of a kingdom's lamentable curiosity concerning the
whereabouts of King Helmas' treasure. The worthless life of Perion
was safe.
For worthless, and far less than worthless, life seemed to Perion as he
thought of Melicent and waited for her messenger. He thought of her
beauty and purity and illimitable loving-kindness toward every person
in the world save only Perion of the Forest. He thought of how clean
she was in every thought and deed; of that, above all, he thought, and
he knew that he would never see her any more.
"Oh, but past any doubting," said Perion, "the devil caters to each
according to his merits."

3.
How Melicent Wooed
Then Perion knew that vain regret had turned his brain, very certainly,
for it seemed the door had opened and Dame Melicent herself had
come, warily, into the panelled gloomy room. It seemed that Melicent
paused in the convulsive brilliancy of the firelight, and stayed thus with
vaguely troubled eyes like those of a child newly wakened from sleep.
And it seemed a long while before she told Perion very quietly that she
had confessed all to Ayrart de Montors, and had, by reason of de
Montors' love for her, so goaded and allured the outcome of their
talk--"ignobly," as she said,--that a clean-handed gentleman would
come at three o'clock for Perion de la Forêt, and guide a thief toward
unmerited impunity. All this she spoke quite levelly, as one reads aloud
from a book; and then, with a signal change of voice, Melicent said:
"Yes, that is true enough. Yet why, in reality, do you think I have in my
own person come to tell you of it?"
"Madame, I may not guess. Hah, indeed, indeed," Perion cried,
because he knew the truth and was unspeakably afraid, "I dare not
guess!"
"You sail to-morrow for the fighting oversea----" she began, but her
sweet voice trailed and died into silence. He heard the crepitations of
the fire, and even the hurried beatings of his own heart, as against a
terrible and lovely hush of all created life. "Then take me with you."
Perion had never any recollection of what he answered. Indeed, he
uttered no communicative words, but only foolish babblements.
"Oh, I do not understand," said Melicent. "It is as though some spell
were laid upon me. Look you, I have been cleanly reared, I have never
wronged any person that I know of, and throughout my quiet, sheltered
life I have loved truth and honour most of all. My judgment grants you
to be what you are confessedly. And there is that in me more masterful
and surer than my judgment, that which seems omniscient and lightly

puts aside your confessings as unimportant."
"Lackey, impostor, and thief!" young Perion answered. "There you
have the catalogue of all my rightful titles fairly earned."
"And even if I believed you, I think I would not care! Is that not strange?
For then I should despise you. And even then, I think, I would fling my
honour at your feet, as I do now, and but in part with loathing, I would
still entreat you to make of me your wife, your servant, anything that
pleased you . . . . Oh, I had thought that when love came it would be
sweet!"
Strangely quiet, in every sense, he answered:
"It is very sweet. I have known