“Not so,” she said, with a flood of bitterness; “the sword is more to you than a woman’s heart. It is your glory that you love, your strength and your great fame. I, a mere woman, must give way to honour. For you are afraid, Tristan, lest men should jeer.”
Tristan clung by patience even though her taunts were the more bitter by reason of their ingratitude. Though he had imagined that Rosamunde would have sped him with brave words, even to death if God so willed it, he took her anger more as the anger of a child than the strong purpose of a grown woman. Therefore he stood out before her, convinced of honour, and sure in his own heart that she would turn to him when the impetuous mood had passed.
“Not for glory,” he said, “shall I leave you here. It is not easy to run from love.”
“Why go, then?” she cried, turning away her head, her hands playing with the rich girdle about her body. “Is duty the sorry nag that bears you hence? Before Heaven, Tristan, if you refuse me this, I will return to Holy Guard and live among ruins.”
His dark eyes followed her as she drifted to and fro in her blue gown over the brilliant grass. She was very lovely even in her anger, with her warm cheeks and her eager eyes. Yet Tristan, having a will more strong than her wrath, determined to take her at her word.
“So be it,” he said, solemnly enough; “I will send Telamon with you and twenty men. The Gloire will bear you straight to the sea; Lilias’s barge is moored in the shallows. Man can promise no safer place than Holy Guard; if the worst comes to the worst, you can sail for the north.”
Rosamunde looked at him, sudden wistfulness shining through the mask of wrath, as though she half doubted the truth of his words. There was no wavering of Tristan’s eyes, no loosening of the determined mouth. Her pride waxed in her as she gazed on his face, perhaps because she felt that she had earned his pity, in that she had failed him when he needed her love.
“So be it, then,” she said, turning away under the trees. “I shall be ready for Telamon before the sun is at noon.”
Like a proud star, Rosamunde of Joyous Vale had set in the far west, over the wilds and the deep woods that stretched towards the sea. Lilias’s forsaken barge had borne her away down the silver curves of the mighty Gloire, with Telamon at the helm and ten men toiling at the oars. From a tower on the walls of Agravale Tristan had watched the gilded poop disappear into the gloom of the woods. In anger Rosamunde had parted from him, because he had set his duty before her love and had dared to deny her the tyranny of tears. Tristan wondered, as he watched from the tower, whether he would behold her face again.