A sunny morning, with white clouds banding the blue of the autumn sky, Broceliande, a sea of gold, glimmering over the silent hills. A sparkle of frost in the air, rime on the grass, brown leaves falling everywhere, the aspen leaves murmuring feebly about the black waters of the moat.

Grimness and horror still lingered about the place, despite the blue sky and the golden woods. Even the water in the moat seemed to hide within its depths dim visions of death that would make the eyes that gazed thereon dilate and harden. Memories haunted the Aspen Tower—memories of men hunting one another through dark passage-ways and chambers. Every black squint and window seemed to gape and whisper as though trying to tell of what had passed within.

Fires were burning in the aspen wood, horses cropping the grass, men building rude huts with boughs cut from the forest. Southward of the moat, in a hollow, where thorn-trees grew, three fellows, stripped half naked, were shovelling earth back into a long and shallow trench. Ever and again there was a splashing of something into the moat and a rush of water from the stone shoots draining the hall and tower. The guard-room door was barred, and two men with grounded spears were standing on duty under the arch of the gate. In the court lay piles of broken or blood-stained furniture, scraps of armor, trampled rushes. Men were going to and fro, carrying buckets which they filled at the moat.

Water in a miniature cascade was running down the stairway leading to the lord’s solar, to be sluiced about the hall with mops and brooms and swept out again into the court. In the solar itself, Bertrand, barelegged, his tunic turned up over his belt, was throwing water against the walls and swilling the floor. The whole place had a damp and sodden smell, like a house that has lain empty long after the masons and plasterers have done their work. From the gallery and the lesser solar above the gate came the sound of voices, the plash of water, the swishing of brooms.

Perched on the bed, that had been dragged into the middle of the room and stripped of coverlet and sheets, sat Arletta watching Bertrand with her restless eyes. She had her cloak over her shoulders, because of the cold, and her fingers were picking at the gaudy embroidery on her gown, as though she were brooding over some hidden grievance. There was something forlorn and pathetic in the bright colors of her clothes, the reds and greens, their superficial brilliancy. She was very miserable, was Arletta. Her heart ached as dully as her head, and her hands were blue and numb with cold. Bertrand paid no heed to her presence as he used his broom, strange weapon for his hands, and took the buckets Guicheaux and Hopart brought him.

He sluiced the last ripple of water down the stairs, stood up and stretched himself, as though cramped in the back. A strip of blood-stained linen was wrapped round his left forearm. Beside Arletta, on the bed, lay piled his armor, his shield, sword, and surcoat hanging from a peg near to the window.

Arletta opened her mouth and yawned.

“Lording,” she said.

She spoke almost in a whisper, her face pinched, her teeth ready to chatter.

“Lording!”

The appeal was a little louder, bringing Bertrand round upon his heel, to stare at her vacantly, as though his thoughts were far away.

“Yes, child, yes.”

“May I make a fire?”

Bertrand glanced at the wet hearth and the gloom of the great chimney.

“It would be as well,” he said; “the place is damp as a cellar. It is not fit—” and he halted, stroking his chin.

Arletta gave a little shiver, and a twinge of pain swept across her face. She shook her black hair, climbed down from the bed, and went and stood close by Bertrand.

“Lording, you are tired.”

She touched his arm and tried to slip her hand in his. Almost imperceptibly Bertrand shrank from her, yet with an instinctiveness she could not miss. He was listening, and glancing restlessly towards the chapel door.

“You will find wood in the shed by the kitchen.”

“Yes, lording.”

“Hopart will light a fire in the room over the gate. Gwen and Barbe can share it with you when they return. This is madame’s chamber—”

“Yes, lording,” she said, sullenly, ready to weep.

“And, Letta”—he looked guiltily shy of her, despite his courage—“madame is much troubled; she would see no one—as yet. The men will camp in the aspen wood, because of the Black Death. If you are afraid—”

“Afraid, lording?”

“Yes, of the plague.”

She flashed an indescribable look at him, her mouth quivering.

“No, lording, I am not afraid.”

Bertrand frowned, but said no more to her. The girl’s strained face troubled him. Everything was coming to Arletta, slowly, and by degrees. Bertrand was beginning to be ashamed of her; he would have her away while TiphaÏne was near.

She went out from the solar and stood shivering on the stairs, leaning her weight against the wall. Her knees felt weak under her, dread heavy on her shoulders, dread of this great lady and of the slipping away of her one poor pride. She beat her hand across her mouth, and went slowly and unsteadily down the stairway into the hall. Pools of water still covered the floor, and the damp emptiness of the place seemed to echo the beatings of her heart. Crossing the court in the quivering sunlight, and threading her way between dead men’s armor and broken wood, she came to the kitchen, where Hopart had already built a fire. He looked at Arletta and grinned, gave her the stuff she asked for, but held his banter, for the girl’s face sobered him. Returning, she climbed slowly to the solar and found it empty, Bertrand gone.

Throwing the wood down petulantly upon the hearth, she looked round the room, pressing her face between her hands. Bertrand’s surcoat had been taken from the peg beside his shield and sword. She guessed what drew him, and why he had wished to be rid of her for a while. Sullenly and with effort she knelt down and began to build a fire. There would be no warmth for her in its red, prophetic blaze. Her heart was cold—cold as the stone hearth she knelt upon.

When Arletta had left him, Bertrand had taken down his blue surcoat from the peg where his sword and shield were hanging, the blue surcoat that had once been blazoned over with eagles of gold, but was now wofully dim and threadbare. He had slipped into it, pulled on his hose and shoes, and felt the stubble on his chin, that had not been barbered for two days. Opening the chapel door, he found the place empty and the sun making a glorious mosaic of light of the eastern window above the altar. The Virgin’s robes gleamed like amber wine; the greens and purples were richer than the colors of the sea. Bertrand closed the chapel door, and, leaning against it, stood looking towards the altar and at the steps where Hanotin had fallen the night before.

It was here that TiphaÏne prayed, and yonder stood her prie-dieu, with a missal on the book-ledge. How quiet the chapel seemed, how full of sunlight and of peace after the brutal violence of yesterday! Bertrand went and stood by the prayer-desk, and, looking like a boy half fearful of being caught in mischief, opened the missal and turned over the pages. The book was beautifully illuminated, the vermilions, golds, and greens glowing with the freshness of young flowers, the quaint pictures and grotesque letters making the book a thing of beauty and of strangeness. Bertrand knew naught of Latin, save the few prayers he had been taught by Father Isidore at Motte Broon. In truth, he hardly knew his letters, and it was curious to see him running his finger under a word and trying to come to grips with the profundities of a pronoun.

But if Bertrand could not read its Latin, the missal itself spoke to him in a language of the heart that he could understand. How often had TiphaÏne’s hands turned these pages! How pure she was, how utterly unlike the poor drabs upon whom he had wasted his manhood! Bertrand stood fingering his unshaven chin and staring at the missal, with his brows wrinkled up in thought. He had come face to face with one of those barriers in life that mark off beauty from ugliness and deformity. Was character worth the building, worth every careful chisel-mark on the stone? Bertrand looked round the chapel; it was oracular to him that morning, eloquent of those higher truths he had lost in the rough petulance of his distemper. He felt himself a prodigal, an interloper, a foolish boy who had thrown away his birthright in a moment of peevish irritation.

There was much boyish simplicity in Bertrand still. He touched TiphaÏne’s missal with his great hands, and then knelt at the prie-dieu as though trying to experience some new sensation. He crossed himself, fixed his eyes on the book, and, great, broad-backed sworder that he was, tried to imagine how TiphaÏne felt when she knelt to pray before the Virgin. It seemed quite natural to Bertrand that TiphaÏne should pray. He would like to watch her fair, strong face turned up in adoration to the cross. It would do him good to look at her, drive the evil out of his heart, and perhaps teach him to pray in turn. What, Bertrand du Guesclin praying! He stumbled up with a rough and ingenuous burst of self-contempt. He was a fool to be kneeling at TiphaÏne’s prie-dieu. He had forgotten how to pray, and his one religious inspiration was the dread of ever playing the hypocrite.

“Bertrand!”

He started as though one of his own rough fellows had caught him on his knees. The door of TiphaÏne’s bedchamber had opened while Bertrand was kneeling before the missal. She was standing on the threshold, wearing her wine-red gown.

Bertrand faced her sheepishly.

“I was only looking at the missal,” he explained, bent on thoroughness and sincerity.

They stood considering each other, with something of the cautious coyness of a couple of strange children brought suddenly face to face. Both were embarrassed, both conscious of a sense of antagonism and discomfort, as though troubled by the thoughts imagined in the heart of the other.

“Bertrand, I have not thanked you—yet.”

He glanced at her keenly a moment, and rested one hand on the prie-dieu.

“It is nothing. We crossed Hanotin’s tracks, that was all. Besides, we owed them a grudge.”

TiphaÏne was struck by his dogged air of self-restraint, and yet there was something in his voice that touched her. The long, wakeful hours of the night had changed her mood towards him. She seemed to have been given sudden insight into the heart of this strong and rebellious man, whose arm had saved her from a thing that she dared not picture.

“We each have something to forgive,” she said.

“I disobeyed you in that one thing.”

“Yes.”

“I did it that I might still have the memory of Rennes.”

She was gazing at the altar steps, as though recalling how Hanotin had held her across his knee. She shuddered a little. It was something, after all, for a man to be grim and mighty in battle.

Bertrand stood by the prie-dieu, watching her.

“Do you remember, TiphaÏne, that night when you came to us at Motte Broon?”

She looked up at him and smiled.

“I was just such a rough dog then; it was sympathy I wanted, and the sympathy you gave me won me the prize at Rennes.”

If he had read her thoughts his words could not have touched the woman in her more.

“You are right in reproaching me,” she said.

“I? What reproach have I to make? You showed me my true self two days ago. I have learned to take hard blows—when they are given honestly.”

Their eyes met.

“Yet—there is the other self.”

He steadied himself against the prie-dieu.

“Let me tell you the whole truth, as I blurted it out to you at Motte Broon. I’ll not spare myself; it would do me good.”

She met him bravely with her eyes.

“Tell me everything,” she said.

And she knelt at the prayer-desk, her chin upon her hands, while Bertrand, leaning against the wall, told her the whole tale—all that had befallen him since the siege of Vannes.

There was silence between them when he had finished. TiphaÏne’s eyes were turned towards the altar, with no self-righteous pride upon her face.

“I can understand, Bertrand,” she said.

“Be rough with me.”

“Rough!”

He flushed and spread his arms.

“I am what I am; but, before God, I believe that there is something in me—yet. Do not flatter me; flattery did no man any good.”

She set herself to match his sincerity with equal truth.

“What right have I to preach to you? And yet—”

“Say what you will.”

“There is a courage above the mere courage of a man swinging a sword—the courage to suffer, to be patient, and to bide by one’s true self.”

He looked at her steadfastly, and bent his head.

“That is where I failed,” he said, slowly; “I see it now as plainly as I see your face.”

At the chapel door Arletta stood listening, her mouth twisted with jealousy and hate. She had heard all that had passed between the two. The great lady was taking away her one poor pride, her love. And Arletta shivered, gripping her bosom till her nails bruised the skin.