cold. Above,
in the firelight, winks the coronet of tarnished gold. The knight shivers
in his coat of fur, and holds out his hands to the withering flame.
She is always the same, a sweet coquette. He will wait for her.

How the log hisses and drips! How warm and satisfying will be her lips!

It is wide and cold, the state bed; but when her head lies under the coronet,
and her eyes are full and wet with love, and when she holds out her arms,
and the velvet counterpane half slips from her, and alarms
her trembling modesty, how eagerly he will leap to cover her, and blot himself
beneath the quilt, making her laugh and tremble.

Is it guilt to free a lady from her palsied lord, absent and fighting,
terribly abhorred?

He stirs a booted heel and kicks a rolling coal. His spur clinks
on the hearth. Overhead, the rain hammers and chinks. She is so pure
and whole. Only because he has her soul will she resign herself to him,
for where the soul has gone, the body must be given as a sign. He takes her
by the divine right of the only lover. He has sworn to fight her lord,
and wed her after. Should he be overborne, she will die adoring him, forlorn,
shriven by her great love.

Above, the coronet winks in the darkness. Drip--hiss--fall the raindrops.
The arras blows out from the wall, and a door bangs in a far-off hall.

The candles swale. In the gale the moat below plunges and spatters.
Will the lady lose courage and not come?

The rain claps on a loosened rafter.

Is that laughter?

The room is filled with lisps and whispers. Something mutters.
One candle drowns and the other gutters. Is that the rain
which pads and patters, is it the wind through the winding entries
which chatters?

The state bed is very cold and he is alone. How far from the wall
the arras is blown!

Christ's Death! It is no storm which makes these little chuckling sounds.
By the Great Wounds of Holy Jesus, it is his dear lady, kissing and
clasping someone! Through the sobbing storm he hears her love take form
and flutter out in words. They prick into his ears and stun his desire,
which lies within him, hard and dead, like frozen fire. And the little noise
never stops.

Drip--hiss--the rain drops.

He tears down the arras from before an inner chamber's bolted door.

II

The state bed shiver