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The Dominican spread out his hands, and afterward reached for the bottle. “Milanese armor!” said Dom Michel Frégose. [Footnote: The same ecclesiastic who more lately dubbed himself, with Maréchal de Richelieu’s encouragement, l’Abbé de Trans, and was discreditably involved in the forgeries of Madame de St. Vincent.]

“Yet I am master of Poictesme,” Cazaio thundered, “I have ten men to de Soyecourt’s one. Am I, then, lightly to be thwarted?”

“Undoubtedly you could take Bellegarde–and the woman along with the castle,–if you decided they were worth the price of a little killing. I think they are not worth it, I strongly advise you to have up a wench from the village, to put out the light, and exercise your imagination.”

Cazaio shook his head. “No, Dom Michel, you churchmen live too lewdly to understand the tyranny of love.”

“–Besides, there is that trifling matter of your understanding with de Puysange,–and, besides, de Puysange will be here in two days.”

Cazaio snapped his fingers. “He will arrive after the fair.” Cazaio uncorked the ink-bottle with an august gesture.

“Write!” said Achille Cazaio.

VIII

As John Bulmer leisurely ascended from the village the birds were waking. Whether day were at hand or no was a matter of twittering debate overhead, but in the west the stars were paling one by one, like candles puffed out by the pretentious little wind that was bustling about the turquoise cupola of heaven; and eastward Bellegarde showed stark, as though scissored from a painting, against a sky of gray-and-rose. Here was a world of faint ambiguity. Here was the exquisite tension of dawn, curiously a-chime with John Bulmer’s mood, for just now he found the universe too beautiful to put any actual faith in its existence. He had strayed into Faëry somehow–into Atlantis, or Avalon, or “a wood near Athens,”–into a land of opalescence and vapor and delicate color, that would vanish, bubble-like, at the discreet tap of Pawsey fetching in his shaving-water; meantime John Bulmer’s memory snatched at each loveliness, jealously, as a pug snatches bits of sugar.

Beneath her window he paused and shifted his lute before him. Then he began to sing, exultant in the unreality of everything and of himself in particular.

Sang John Bulmer,

“Speed forth, my song, the sun’s ambassador,
Lest in the east night prove the conqueror,
The day be slain, and darkness triumph,–for
The sun is single, but her eyes are twain.

“And now the sunlight and the night contest
A doubtful battle, and day bides at best
Doubtful, until she waken. ‘Tis attest
The sun is single.

“But her eyes are twain,–
And should the light of all the world delay,
And darkness prove victorious? Is it day
Now that the sun alone is risen?

“Nay,
The sun is single, but her eyes are twain,–
Twain firmaments that mock with heavenlier hue
The heavens’ less lordly and less gracious blue,
And lit with sunlier sunlight through and through,

“The sun is single, but her eyes are twain,
And of fair things this side of Paradise
Fairest, of goodly things most goodly,”

He paused here and smote a resonant and louder chord. His voice ascended in dulcet supplication.

“Rise,
And succor the benighted world that cries,
The sun is single, but her eyes are twain!”

“Eh–? So it is you, is it?” Claire was peeping disdainfully from the window. Her throat was bare, and her dusky hair was a shade dishevelled, and in her meditative eyes he caught the flicker of her tardiest dream just as it vanished.

“It is I,” John Bulmer confessed–“come to awaken you according to the ancient custom of Poictesme.”

“I would much rather have had my sleep out,” said she, resentfully. “In perfect frankness, I find you and your ancient customs a nuisance.”

“You lack romance, my wife.”

“Oh–?” She was a person of many cryptic exclamations, this bride of his. Presently she said: “Indeed, Monsieur Bulmer, I entreat you to leave Poictesme. I have informed Louis of everything, and he is rather furious.”