smile as
though she were thinking of some peculiar and wonderful secret which
she intended, in due time, to share with you and with nobody else.
Branwen had many lovers, and preferred among them young Gwyllem ap
Llyr, a portly lad, who was handsome enough, though he had tiny and
piggish eyes, and who sang divinely.

One day this Gwyllem came to Richard with two quarter-staves. "Saxon,"
he said, "you appear a stout man. Take your pick of these, then, and
have at you."

"Such are not the weapons I would have named," Richard answered: "yet
in reason, Messire Gwyllem, I can deny you nothing that means nothing
to me."

With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. In these
unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had anticipated,
but he found himself the stronger man of the two, and he managed
somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. By what method he contrived
this he never ascertained.

"I have forgotten what we are fighting about," he observed, after ten
minutes of heroic thumps and hangings; "or, to be perfectly exact, I
never knew. But we will fight no more in this place. Come and go with
me to Welshpool, Messire Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a
conclusion over good sack and claret."

"Content!" cried Gwyllem; "but only if you yield me Branwen."

"Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling over a woman?"
Richard demanded; "like two children in a worldwide toyshop over any
one particular toy? Then devil take me if I am not heartily ashamed of
my folly! Though, look you, Gwyllem, I would speak naught save
commendation of these delicate and livelily-tinted creatures so long
as one is able to approach them in a becoming spirit of levity: it is
only their not infrequent misuse which I would condemn; and in my
opinion the person who elects to build a shrine for any one of them
has only himself to blame if his chosen goddess will accept no
burnt-offering except his honor and happiness. Yet since time's youth
have many fine men been addicted to this insane practice, as, for
example, were Hercules and Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and,
indeed, the more I reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of
other venerable and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I
ashamed of my sex."

Gwyllem said: "This lazy gabbling of yours is all very fine. Perhaps
it is also reasonable. Only when you love you do not reason."

"I was endeavoring to prove that," said Richard ge