And he
slipt from her grasp and fled into the night.
She took the mail to her room and opened it. It contained the magic armor.
All her anger was melted away. She cried; she blamed herself. He would be
killed; his blood would be on her head. She would have carried it back to
him with her own hands; she would have entreated him on her knees to take
it back. But how face the courtiers? and how find him? Very probably, too,
he was by that time hopelessly drunk. And at that thought she drew herself
into herself, and trying to harden her heart again, went to bed, but not
to sleep; and bitterly she cried as she thought over the old hag's
croon:--
"Quick joy, long pain,
You will take your gift again."
It might have been five o'clock the next morning when the clarion rang
down the street. She sprang up and drest herself quickly; but never more
carefully or gayly. She heard the tramp of horse-hoofs. He was moving
a-field early, indeed. Should she go to the window to bid him farewell?
Should she hide herself in just anger?
She looked out stealthily through the blind of the little window in the
gable. There rode down the street Robert le Frison in full armor, and
behind him, knight after knight, a wall of shining steel. But by his side
rode one bare-headed, his long yellow curls floating over his shoulders.
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