paris and helen have been dead centuries, yet in that universal world of the mind they still live, young and glorious as when the grecian galleys ploughed foam through the blue ægean. the world loves a lover. troilus stages our own emotions for us in godlier wise than we poor realists can hope to do. we owe an eternal gratitude to those who have stood for love in history. all men might well desire to play the tristan to iseult of the irish eyes. we forget gemma donati, and follow with dante's wistful idealism the gleaming figure of beatrice in paradise.

now the lord flavian was one of those happy persons who seem to stumble into heaven either by prodigious instinct or remarkable good-fortune. god gives to many men gold; to others intellect; to some truth; to few, a human echo, a harmony in the spirit, the right woman in the world. many of us are such unstable folk that we vibrate vastly to a beautiful face and hail heaven in a pair of violet eyes. the chance is that such a business turns out miserably. it is a wise rule to search the world through to find your beatrice, or bide celibate to the end. happy is the man whose instinctive choice is ratified by all the wisest poetry of heaven. happy is he who finds a ruby as he rakes the ephemeral flower-gardens of life, a gem eternally bright and beautiful, durable, unchanging, flashing light ever into the soul. it is given to few to love wisely, to love utterly, to love till death.

that summer day flavian saw life at its zenith, as he rode through the woods on the way to gambrevault. the horse had dropped to a trot, and the man had taken off his helmet and hung it at his saddle-bow. he was still red from the mêlée; his eyes were bright and triumphant. the girl at his side looked at him half-timidly, a tremor upon her lip, her glances clouded. the terrific action of the last hour still seemed to weigh upon her senses, and she seemed fated to be the sport of contending sentiments. no sooner had she struggled to some level of saintliness than love rushed in with burning wings, and lo, all the tinsel of her religion fell away, and she was a mere eve, a child of nature.

flavian watched her with the tenderness of a strong man, who is ready to give his life for the woman he serves. love seemed to rise from her and play upon him like perfume from a bowl of violets; her eyes transfigured him, and he longed to touch her hair.

"at last."

"lord?"

"treat me as a man, i hate that epithet."

"you are a great signor."

"what are titles, testaments, etiquettes to us! i am only great so long as you trust and honour me."

"your power might appear precarious."

"as you will."

"yet war is loose!"

he looked round upon the sea of men that rolled on every hand.

"and war at its worst. i have seen enough in three days to make me loathe your partisans and their principles."

"perhaps."

"it is a wicked and inhuman business."

"what are you going to do with me?" she said.

"remove you from the hands of butchers and offal-mongers; put you like a pearl in a casket in my own castle of gambrevault."

"you incur the greater peril."

"have i not told you that no woman loves a coward?"

she was silent awhile, with her eyes wistful and melancholy, as though some spiritual conflict were passing in her mind. bitterness escaped in the man's words for all his tenderness and chivalry. he needed an answer. anon she capitulated and appeared to surrender herself absolutely to circumstance. she began to tell flavian of her adoption by fulviac, of her vision in the ruined chapel, of the part assigned to her as a woman ordained by heaven. he heard her in silence, finding quaint pleasure in listening to her voice, having never heard her talk at such length before. her voice's modulations, its pathos, its many tones, were more subtle to him than any music, and seemed to steep in oblivion the grim realities of the last few days. he watched the play of thought upon her face, sun and shadow, calm and unrest. he began to comprehend the discords he had flung into her life; she was no longer a riddle to him; her confessions portrayed her soul in warm and delicate colouring--colouring pathetic and heroically pure. he had a glorious sense of joy in an instinctive conviction that this girl was worthy of all the highest chivalry a man's heart can conceive of.

though he had a strong suspicion that he could humanise her madonna for her, he refrained from argument, refrained from dilating on the iniquities her so-called crusades had already perpetrated. moreover, the girl had opened her heart to him with a delicious and innocent ingenuousness. he felt that the hour had blessed him sufficiently; that personalities would be gross and impertinent in the light of that sympathy that seemed suddenly to have enveloped them like a golden cloud. the girl appeared to have surrendered herself spiritually into his keeping, not sorry in measure that a strong destiny had decided her doubts for her. they were to let political considerations and the ephemeral turmoils of the times sink under their feet. it was sufficient for them to be but a man and a woman, to forget the forbidden fruit, and the serpent and his lore. god walked the world; they were not ashamed to hear his voice.

so they came with their glittering horde of horsemen to gambrevault, and rode over the green downs with towers beckoning from the blue. the gilderoy forces were still miles away, and could not have threatened the retreat on gambrevault had they been wise as to the event. yeoland rode close at flavian's side. he touched her hand, looked in her eyes, saw the colour stream to her cheeks, knew that she no longer was his enemy.

"yonder stands gambrevault," were his words; "its walls shall bulwark you against the world. trust me and my eternal faith to you. i shall see god more clearly for looking in your eyes."

he lodged her in a chamber in the keep, a room that had been his mother's and still held the furniture, books, and music she had used. its window looked out on the castle garden, and over the double line of walls to the meadows and woods beyond. maud, the castellan's wife, was bidden to wait upon her. flavian gave her the keys of his mother's chests, where silks, samites, sarcenets galore, lace and all manner of golden fripperies, were stored. the ewers of the room were of silver, its hangings of violet cloth, its bed inlaid with ivory and hung with purple velvet. it had a shelf full of beautifully illumined books, a prayer-desk and a small altar, a harp, a lute, an embroidery frame, and numberless curios. thus by the might of the sword yeoland was installed in the great castle of gambrevault.

so duessa and balthasar were dead. the girl had told flavian what had passed in sforza's palace; the news shocked him more than he would have dreamed. the dead wound us with their unapproachableness and the mute pathos of their pale, imagined faces. they are like our own sins that stare at us from the night sky, irrevocable and beyond us for ever. flavian ordered tapers to be burnt and masses said in the castle chapel for the souls of these two unfortunates. he himself spent more than an hour in silent prayer before he confessed, received penance and absolution.

that evening, at flavian's prayer, yeoland came down to meet him in the castle garden, with the castellan's two girls to serve her as maids of honour. she had put aside her armour, and was clad in a jacket of violet cloth, fitting close to the figure, and a skirt of light blue silk. in the old yew walk, stately and solemn, amid the bright parterres and stone urns gushing colour, the two children slipped away and left yeoland and the man alone.

she seemed to have lost much of her restraint, much of her independence, of her reserve, in a few short hours. her mood inclined towards silence and a certain delightful solemnity such as a lover loves. her eyes met the man's with a rare trust; her hands went into his with all the ideal faith he had forecast in his dreams.

they stood together under the yews, full of youth and innocent joy of soul, timid, happily sad, content to be mere children. flavian touched her hands as he would have touched a lily. she seemed too wonderful, too pure, too transcendent to be fingered. a supreme, a godly timidity possessed him; he had such love in his heart as only the strong and the pure can know, such love as makes a man a saint unto himself, a being wrapped round with the rarest chivalry of heaven.

their words were very simple and infrequent.

"i have been thinking," said the girl.

"yes?"

"how war seems ever in the world."

"how else should i have won you?"

she sighed and looked up over his shoulder at the sunlight glimmering gold through the yews.

"i have been thinking how i bring you infinite peril. they will not lose me easily. what if i bring you to ruin?"

"i take everything to myself."

"they believe me a saint."

"and i!"

"my conscience will reproach me, but now----"

"well?"

"i am too happy to remember."

their eyes met and flashed all the unutterable truths of the soul. flavian kissed her hand.

"forget it all," he said, "save the words i spoke to you over that forest grave. whatever doom may come upon me, though death frown, i care not; all the sky is at sunset, all the world is full of song. i could meet god to-morrow with a smile, since you have shown me all your heart."

from a little stone pavilion hidden by laurels the voices of flutes and viols swirled out upon the air. the west grew faint, and twilight increased; night kissed and closed the azure eyes of the day. under the yew boughs, flavian and yeoland walked hand in hand; the music spoke for them; the night made their faces pale and spiritual under the trees. they said little; a tremor of the fingers, a glance, a sigh were enough. when the west had faded, and the last primrose streak was gone, flavian kissed the girl's lips and sent her back to the two children, who were curled on a bench by the laurels, listening sleepily to the music of flute and viol.

the man's soul was too scintillant and joyous to shun the stars. he passed up on to the battlements, and listened to the long surge of the summer sea.

and as he paced the battlements that night, he saw red, impish specks of flame start out against the black background of the night. they were the rebel watchfires burning on the hills, sinister eyes, red with the distant prophecy of war.