Domnei | Page 7

no happier moment in my life. For you
stand within arm's reach, mine to touch, mine to possess and do with as
I elect. And I dare not lift a finger. I am as a man that has lain for a
long while in a dungeon vainly hungering for the glad light of day--who,
being freed at last, must hide his eyes from the dear sunlight he dare
not look upon as yet. Ho, I am past speech unworthy of your notice!
and I pray you now speak harshly with me, madame, for when your
pure eyes regard me kindly, and your bright and delicate lips have
come thus near to mine, I am so greatly tempted and so happy that I
fear lest heaven grow jealous!"
"Be not too much afraid--" she murmured.
"Nay, should I then be bold? and within the moment wake Count
Emmerick to say to him, very boldly, 'Beau sire, the thief half
Christendom is hunting has the honour to request your sister's hand in
marriage'?"
"You sail to-morrow for the fighting oversea. Take me with you."
"Indeed the feat would be worthy of me. For you are a lady tenderly
nurtured and used to every luxury the age affords. There comes to woo
you presently an excellent and potent monarch, not all unworthy of
your love, who will presently share with you many happy and

honourable years. Yonder is a lawless naked wilderness where I and
my fellow desperadoes hope to cheat offended justice and to preserve
thrice-forfeited lives in savagery. You bid me aid you to go into this
country, never to return! Madame, if I obeyed you, Satan would protest
against pollution of his ageless fires by any soul so filthy."
"You talk of little things, whereas I think of great things. Love is not
sustained by palatable food alone, and is not served only by those
persons who go about the world in satin."
"Then take the shameful truth. It is undeniable I swore I loved you, and
with appropriate gestures, too. But, dompnedex, madame! I am past
master in these specious ecstasies, for somehow I have rarely seen the
woman who had not some charm or other to catch my heart with. I
confess now that you alone have never quickened it. My only purpose
was through hyperbole to wheedle you out of a horse, and meanwhile
to have my recreation, you handsome jade!--and that is all you ever
meant to me. I swear to you that is all, all, all!" sobbed Perion, for it
appeared that he must die. "I have amused myself with you, I have
abominably tricked you--"
Melicent only waited with untroubled eyes which seemed to plumb his
heart and to appraise all which Perion had ever thought or longed for
since the day that Perion was born; and she was as beautiful, it seemed
to him, as the untroubled, gracious angels are, and more
compassionate.
"Yes," Perion said, "I am trying to lie to you. And even at lying I fail."
She said, with a wonderful smile:
"Assuredly there were never any other persons so mad as we. For I
must do the wooing, as though you were the maid, and all the while you
rebuff me and suffer so that I fear to look on you. Men say you are no
better than a highwayman; you confess yourself to be a thief: and I
believe none of your accusers. Perion de la Forêt," said Melicent, and
ballad-makers have never shaped a phrase wherewith to tell you of her
voice, "I know that you have dabbled in dishonour no more often than

an archangel has pilfered drying linen from a hedgerow. I do not guess,
for my hour is upon me, and inevitably I know! and there is nothing
dares to come between us now."
"Nay,--ho, and even were matters as you suppose them, without any
warrant,--there is at least one silly stumbling knave that dares as much.
Saith he: 'What is the most precious thing in the world?--Why,
assuredly, Dame Melicent's welfare. Let me get the keeping of it, then.
For I have been entrusted with a host of common priceless things--with
youth and vigour and honour, with a clean conscience and a child's
faith, and so on--and no person alive has squandered them more
gallantly. So heartward ho! and trust me now, my timorous yoke-fellow,
to win and squander also the chiefest jewel of the world.' Eh, thus he
chuckles and nudges me, with wicked whisperings. Indeed, madame,
this rascal that shares equally in my least faculty is a most pitiful,
ignoble rogue! and he has aforetime eked out our common livelihood
by such practices as your unsullied imagination could scarcely
depicture. Until I knew you I had endured him. But you have made of