Then Perion turned from the Needle of Assignano, and went westward into the Forest of Columbiers. He had no plan. He wandered in the high woods that had never yet been felled or ordered, as a beast does in watchful care of hunters.
He came presently to a glade which the sunlight flooded without obstruction. There was in this place a fountain, which oozed from under an iron-coloured boulder incrusted with grey lichens and green moss. Upon the rock a woman sat, her chin propped by one hand, and she appeared to consider remote and pleasant happenings. She was clothed throughout in white, with metal bands about her neck and arms; and her loosened hair, which was coloured like straw, and was as pale as the hair of children, glittered about her, and shone frostily where it lay outspread upon the rock behind her.
She turned toward Perion without any haste or surprise, and Perion saw that this woman was Dame Melusine, whom he had loved to his own hurt (as you have heard) when Perion served King Helmas. She did not speak for a long while, but she lazily considered Perion's honest face in a sort of whimsical regret for the adoration she no longer found there.
"Then it was really you," he said, in wonder, "whom I saw talking with Demetrios when I awakened to-day."
"You may be sure," she answered, "that my talking was in no way injurious to you. Ah, no, had I been elsewhere, Perion, I think you would by this have been in Paradise." Then Melusine fell again to meditation. "And so you do not any longer either love or hate me, Perion?" Here was an odd echo of the complaint Demetrios had made.
"That I once loved you is a truth which neither of us, I think, may ever quite forget," said Perion, very quiet. "I alone know how utterly I loved you--no, it was not I who loved you, but a boy that is dead now. King's daughter, all of stone, O cruel woman and hateful, O sleek, smiling traitress! to-day no man remembers how utterly I loved you, for the years are as a mist between the heart of the dead boy and me, so that I may no longer see the boy's heart clearly. Yes, I have forgotten much. ...Yet even to-day there is that in me which is faithful to you, and I cannot give you the hatred which your treachery has earned."
Melusine spoke shrewdly. She had a sweet, shrill voice.
"But I loved you, Perion--oh, yes, in part I loved you, just as one cannot help but love a large and faithful mastiff. But you were tedious, you annoyed me by your egotism. Yes, my friend, you think too much of what you owe to Perion's honour; you are perpetually squaring accounts with heaven, and you are too intent on keeping the balance in your favour to make a satisfactory lover." You saw that Melusine was smiling in the shadow of her pale hair. "And yet you are very droll when you are unhappy," she said, as of two minds.
He replied:
"I am, as heaven made me, a being of mingled nature. So I remember without distaste old happenings which now seem scarcely credible. I cannot quite believe that it was you and I who were so happy when youth was common to us... O Melusine, I have almost forgotten that if the world were searched between the sunrise and the sunsetting the Melusine I loved would not be found. I only know that a woman has usurped the voice of Melusine, and that this woman's eyes also are blue, and that this woman smiles as Melusine was used to smile when I was young. I walk with ghosts, king's daughter, and I am none the happier."
"Ay, Periori," she wisely answered, "for the spring is at hand, intent upon an ageless magic. I am no less comely than I was, and my heart, I think, is tenderer. You are yet young, and you are very beautiful, my brave mastiff... And neither of us is moved at all! For us the spring is only a dotard sorcerer who has forgotten the spells of yesterday. I think that it is pitiable, although I would not have it otherwise." She waited, fairy-like and wanton, seeming to premeditate a delicate mischief.
He declared, sighing, "No, I would not have it otherwise."
Then presently Melusine arose. She said:
"You are a hunted man, unarmed--oh, yes, I know. Demetrios talked freely, because the son of Miramon Lluagor has good and ancient reasons to trust me. Besides, it was not for nothing that Pressina was my mother, and I know many things, pilfering light from the past to shed it upon the future. Come now with me to Brunbelois. I am too deeply in your debt, my Perion. For the sake of that boy who is dead--as you tell me--you may honourably accept of me a horse, arms, and a purse, because I loved that boy after my fashion."
"I take your bounty gladly," he replied; and he added conscientiously: "I consider that I am not at liberty to refuse of anybody any honest means of serving my lady Melicent."
Melusine parted her lips as if about to speak, and then seemed to think better of it. It is probable she was already informed concerning Melicent; she certainly asked no questions. Melusine only shrugged, and laughed afterward, and the man and the woman turned toward Brunbelois. At times a shaft of sunlight would fall on her pale hair and convert it into silver, as these two went through the high woods that had never yet been felled or ordered.
PART FOUR
AHASUERUS
_Of how a knave hath late compassion
On Melicent's forlorn condition;
For which he saith as ye shall after hear:
"Dame, since that game we play costeth too dear,
My truth I plight, I shall you no more grieve
By my behest, and here I take my leave
As of the fairest, truest and best wife
That ever yet I knew in all my life."_
