Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/286



Could she but have seen him as he really was in the golden days long ago, when her court formed the centre of all that was bravest and fairest in the world of Christendom, when her life seemed one long holiday of dance and revel in the lighted halls of Camelot, of tilt and tournament and pageantry of mimic war, held in honour of her own peerless beauty, in the Lists of Caerleon, of horn and hound and rushing chase and willing palfrey speeding over the scented moors of Cornwall, or through the sunny glades of Lyonesse, of sweet May mornings when she went forth fresh and lovely, fairer than the very smile of spring, amongst her courtiers, all

to walk apart, nevertheless, with flushing