than the blend of Norman dog and Angevin cat which had made him so.
Furtive he was not, yet seeming to crouch for a spring; not savage, yet
primed for savagery; not cruel, yet quick on the affront, and on the
watch for it. He was neither a rogue nor a madman; and yet he was as
cunning as the one and as heedless as the other, if that is a possible
thing. He was arrogant, but his smile veiled the fault; you saw it best
in a sleepy look he had. His blemishes were many, his weaknesses two. He
trusted to his own force too much, and despised everybody else in the
world. Not that he thought them knaves; he was certain they were fools.
And so most of them were, no doubt, but not all. The first flush of him
moved your admiration: great height, great colour, the red and the
yellow; his beard which ran jutting to a point and gave his jaw the
clubbed look of a big cat's; his shut mouth, and cold considering eyes;
the eager set of his head, his soft, padding motions--a leopard, a
hunting leopard, quick to strike, but quick to change purpose. This,
then, was Richard Yea-and-Nay, whom all women loved, and very few men.
These require to be trusted before they love; and full trust Richard
gave to no man, because he could not believe him worth it. Women are
more generous givers, expecting not again.

Here was Jehane Saint-Pol, a girl of two-and-twenty to his
two-and-thirty, well born, well formed, greatly desired among her peers,
who, having let her soul be stolen, was prepared to cut it out of
herself for his sake who took it, and let it die. She was the creature
of his love, in and out by now the work of his hands. God had given her
a magnificent body, but Richard had made it glow. God had made her soul
a fair room; but his love had filled it with light, decked it with
flowers and such artful furniture. He, in fact, as she very well knew,
had given her the grace to deal queenly with herself. She knew that she
would have strength to deny him, having learned the hardihood to give