"Yes; you are handsome,--beautiful: I adore you."
"And yet you will not do what I wish?"
"What you wish? What would I not do for you? what have I not done for
you?"
"Then receive Judith. And now, go hunting, and bring me in game. I want
deer, roe, fowls; anything and everything from the greatest to the
smallest. Go and hunt."
And Hereward trembled, and went.
There are flowers whose scent is so luscious that silly children will
plunge their heads among them, drinking in their odor, to the exclusion of
all fresh air. On a sudden sometimes comes a revulsion of the nerves. The
sweet odor changes in a moment to a horrible one; and the child cannot
bear for years after the scent which has once disgusted it by
over-sweetness.
And so had it happened to Hereward. He did not love Alftruda now: he
loathed, hated, dreaded her. And yet he could not take his eyes for a
moment off her beauty. He watched every movement of her hand, to press it,
obey it. He would have preferred instead of hunting, simply to sit and
watch her go about the house at her work. He was spell-bound to a thing
which he regarded with horror.
But he was told to go and hunt; and he went, with all his men, and sent
home large supplies for the larder. And as he hunted, the free, fresh air
of the forest comforted him, the free forest life came back to him, and he
longed to be an outlaw once more, and hunt on forever.
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