great warrior, I too shall live in fame, for I am certainly the making of
your desire to fight.' He let drop his hands from her shoulders, where
he had laid them, and said, with a faint flush over his face, 'You wrong
me, Ella, for, though I have never wished to fight for the mere love of
fighting, and though,' (and here again he flushed a little) 'and though I
am not, I well know, so free of the fear of death as a good man would be,
yet for this duty's sake, which is really a higher love, Ella, love of
God, I trust I would risk life, nay honour, even if not willingly, yet
cheerfully at least.' 'Still duty, duty,' she said; 'you lay, Lawrence,
as many people do, most stress on the point where you are weakest;
moreover, those knights who in time past have done wild, mad things
merely at their ladies' word, scarcely did so for duty; for they owed
their lives to their country surely, to the cause of good, and should not
have risked them for a whim, and yet you praised them the other day.'
'Did I?' said Lawrence; 'well, in a way they were much to be praised, for
even blind love and obedience is well; but reasonable love, reasonable
obedience is so far better as to be almost a different thing; yet, I
think, if the knights did well partly, the ladies did altogether ill: for
if they had faith in their lovers, and did this merely from a mad longing
to see them do 'noble' deeds, then they had but little faith in God, Who
can, and at His good pleasure does give time and opportunity to every
man, if he will but watch for it, to serve Him with reasonable service,
and gain love and all noble things in greater measure thereby: but if
these ladies did as they did, that they might prove their knights, then
surely did they lack faith both in God and man. I do not think that two
friends even could live together on such terms, but for lovers,--ah!
Ella, Ella, why do you look so at me? on this day, almost the last, we
shall be together for long; Ella, your face is changed, your eyes--O
Christ! help her and me, help her, good Lord.' 'Lawrence,' she said,
speaking quickly and in jerks, 'dare you, for my sake, sleep this night