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Presently this Gwyllem came to Richard with two quarter-staves. “Saxon,” he said, “you appear a stout man. Take your pick of these, then, and have at you.”

“Such are not the weapons I would have named,” Richard answered, “yet in reason, messire, I may not deny you.”

With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. In these unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had anticipated, but throughout he found himself the stronger man, and he managed somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. By what method he never ascertained.

“I have forgotten what we are fighting about,” he observed, after a half-hour of this; “or, to be perfectly exact, I never knew. But we will fight no more in this place. Come and go with me to Welshpool, Messire Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a conclusion over good sack and claret.”

“Content!” cried Gwyllem; “but only if you yield me Branwen.”

“Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling over a woman?” Richard demanded; “like two children in a worldwide toyshop over any one particular toy? Then devil take me if I am not heartily ashamed of my folly! Though, look you, Gwyllem, I would speak naught save commendation of these delicate and livelily-tinted creatures so long as one is able to approach them in a proper spirit of levity: it is only their not infrequent misuse which I would condemn; and in my opinion the person who elects to build a shrine for any one of them has only himself to blame if his divinity will ascend no pedestal save the carcass of his happiness. Yet have many men since time was young been addicted to the practice, as were Hercules and Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and, indeed, the more I reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of other venerable and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I ashamed of my sex.”

Gwyllem said: “That is all very fine. Perhaps it is also reasonable. Only when you love you do not reason.”

“I was endeavoring to prove that,” said Richard gently. Then they went to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem’s horse. Tongue loosened by the claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to each rapture Richard affably assented. In his heart he likened the boy to Dionysos at Naxos, and could find no blame for Ariadne. Moreover, the room was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about either window, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content.

“She does not love me?” Gwyllem cried. “It is well enough. I do not come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered. Listen, Saxon!” He caught up Richard’s lute. The strings shrieked beneath Gwyllem’s fingers as he fashioned his rude song.

Sang Gwyllem:

“Love me or love me not, it is enough
That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is
Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love–
My life that was a scroll all marred and blurred
With tavern-catches, which that pity of his
Erased, and writ instead one perfect word,
O Branwen!

“I have accorded you incessant praise
And song and service long, O Love, for this,
And always I have dreamed incessantly
Who always dreamed, ‘When in oncoming days
This man or that shall love you, and at last
This man or that shall win you, it must be
That loving him you will have pity on me
When happiness engenders memory
And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past,
O Branwen!’

“I know not!–ah, I know not, who am sure
That I shall always love you while I live!
And being dead, and with no more to give
Of song or service?–Love shall yet endure,
And yet retain his last prerogative,
When I lie still, through many centuries,
And dream of you and the exceeding love
I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof,
And give God thanks therefor, and so find peace,
O Branwen!”