_How Melicent Wedded_

"That may not be, my cousin."

It was the real Bishop of Montors who was speaking. His company, some
fifteen men in all, had ridden up while Melicent and Perion looked
seaward. The bishop was clothed, in his habitual fashion, as a
cavalier, showing in nothing as a churchman. He sat a-horseback for a
considerable while, looking down at them, smiling and stroking the
pommel of his saddle with a gold-fringed glove. It was now dawn.

"I have been eavesdropping," the bishop said. His voice was tender, for
the young man loved his kinswoman with an affection second only to that
which he reserved for Ayrart de Montors. "Yes, I have been
eavesdropping for an instant, and through that instant I seemed to see
the heart of every woman that ever lived; and they differed only as
stars differ on a fair night in August. No woman ever loved a man
except, at bottom, as a mother loves her child: let him elect to build
a nation or to write imperishable verses or to take purses upon the
highway, and she will only smile to note how breathlessly the boy goes
about his playing; and when he comes back to her with grimier hands she
is a little sorry, and, if she think it salutary, will pretend to be
angry. Meanwhile she sets about the quickest way to cleanse him and to
heal his bruises. They are more wise than we, and at the bottom of
their hearts they pity us more stalwart folk whose grosser wits
require, to be quite sure of anything, a mere crass proof of it; and
always they make us better by indomitably believing we are better than
in reality a man can ever be."

Now Ayrart de Montors dismounted.