"Seest thou thy prisoner?" she asked. "Forever thy prisoner!" From its
fellow of watchet blue she detached her floating silver sleeve. "It is
my favor," she whispered. "Wear it when thou wilt."

He folded the gauze and thrust it within his doublet. "When I may, my
lady," he said, with his eyes upon the sunset that held the colors of
the dawning. "When I may."

A sickle moon swung in the gold harvest-fields of the west, then a
great star came out to watch that reaping. The thrush was silent now,
but from a covert rushed suddenly the full tide of a nightingale's song.
With a cry the maid of honor put hands to her ears. "Ay me, my heart it
will break! Tell me that thou goest but to come again!"

He took her hands, pressing them to his heart, to his lips. "No, no, my
dearest dear, since God no longer worketh miracles! I go more surely
than ever went John Oxenham; I would not have thee cheat thyself, spend
thy days in watching, listening. I kiss thee a lifetime good-by.... Oh
child, seest thou how broken I am? I that myself loosed all the winds--I
that kneel, a penitent, before the just and the unjust, before my lover
and my foe! But when all's said, all's done, all's quiet:--the arrow
sped, the stone fallen, the curfew rung, the dust returned to dust! then
shall stand my soul.... A ruined man, a man in just disgrace, who hath
played the coward, who hath sinned against thee and against others, that
am I--yet our souls endure, and thou art my mate; queenly as thou
standest here, thou art my mate! I love thee, and in life, in death, I
claim thee still: Forget me not when I am gone!"

"When thou art gone!" she cried. "When thou art gone with all my mind
I'll hold myself thy bride! In those strange countries beneath the sun