d knights and ladies wrought on her gold
raiment), and I waited for an hour in the chapel till she came, listening
to the swallows outside, and gazing with parted lips at the pictures on
the golden walls; but when she came, I knelt down before the altar, and
she knelt down and kissed my lips; and then the priest came in, and the
singers and the censer-boys; and that chapel was soon confusedly full of
golden raiment, and incense, and ladies and singing; in the midst of
which I wedded Alys. And men came into Knights' Gard till we had two
thousand men in it, and great store of munitions of war and provisions.

But Alys and I lived happily together in the painted hall and in the fair
water-meadows, and as yet no one came against us.

And still her talk was, of deeds of arms, and she was never tired of
letting the serpent rings of my mail slip off her wrist and long hand,
and she would kiss my shield and helm and the gold wings on my surcoat,
my mother's work, and would talk of the ineffable joy that would be when
we had fought through all the evil that was coming on us.

Also she would take my sword and lay it on her knees and talk to it,
telling it how much she loved me.

Yea in all things, O Lord God, Thou knowest that my love was a very
child, like thy angels. Oh! my wise soft-handed love! endless passion!
endless longing always satisfied!

Think you that the shouting curses of the trumpet broke off our love, or
in any ways lessened it? no, most certainly, but from the time the siege
began, her cheeks grew thinner, and her passionate face seemed more and
more a part of me; now too, whenever I happened to see her between the
grim fighting she would do nothing but kiss me all the time, or wring my
hands, or take my head on her breast, being so eagerly passionate that
sometimes a pang shot through me that she might die.

Till one day they made a breach in the wall, and when I heard of it for
the first time, I sickened, and could not call on God; but Alys cut me a
tress of her yellow hair and tied it in my helm, and armed me, and saying
no word, led me down to the breach by the hand, and then went back most
ghastly pale.

So there on the one side of the breach were the spears of William de la
Fosse and Lionel of the gold wings, and on the other the spears of King
Gilbert and Sir Guy le bon amant, but the King himself was not there; Sir
Guy was.

Well,--what would you have? in this world never yet could two thousand