The old rascal blinked his eyes, jerking his head many times at the
shameful girl. Then he said, "Love is there fast and sure. She is all
for loving. They call her Isoult la Desirous, you must know."
"Yes," said Prosper, "I do know it, for she has told me so already.' "And to-morrow she will desire no more, since she will be hanged,"
said Matt-o'-the-Moor.
Prosper started and flushed, and-"That is a true gospel, brother," put in the friar. "The Abbot means
to air his gallows at her expense; but there is worse than a gallows
to it. What did I tell you of the Black Monks when you called 'em
White? There is a coal-black among them who'll have her if the gallows
have her not. It is Galors or gallows, fast and sure."
Prosper rubbed his chin, looked at the friar, looked at Matt, looked
at Isoult. She neither lifted her head nor eyes, though the others had
met him sturdily enough. She stood like a saint on a church porch; he
thought her a desperate Magdalen.
"Isoult, come here," said he. She came as obediently as you please,
and stood before him; but she would not look up until he said again,
"Isoult, look me in the face." Then she did as she was told, and her
eyes were unwinking and very wide open, full of dark. She parted her
lips and sighed a little, shivering somewhat. It seemed to him as if
she had been with the dead already and seen their kingdom. Prosper
said, "Isoult is this true that thou wilt be hanged to-morrow?"
"Yes, lord," said Isoult in a whisper.
"Or worse?"
"Yes, lord," she said again, quivering.
"Save only thy lot be a marriage this night?"
"Yes, lord," she said a third time. So he asked, "Art thou verily what this old man thy father hath testified against
thee--a witch, a worker of iniquity and black things, and of
abominations with the devil?"
Isoult said in a very still voice--"Men say that I am all this, my
lord."
But Prosper with a cry called out, "Isoult, Isoult, now tell me the
truth. Dost thou deserve this death?"
She sighed, and smiled rather pitifully as she said-"I cannot tell, lord; but I desire it."
"Dost thou desire death, child?" cried he, "and is this why thou art
called La Desirous?"
"I desire to be what I am not, my lord, and to have that which I have
never had," she answered, and her lip trembled.
"And what is that which you are not, Isoult?"
She answered him "Clean."
"And what is that which you have never had, my child?"
"Peace," said Isoult, and wept bitterly.
Then Prosper crossed himself very devoutly, and covered his face while
he prayed to his saint. When he had done he said, "Cease crying,
Isoult, and tell me the truth, by God and His Christ, and Saint Mary,
and by the face of the sky. Art thou such a one as I would wed if love
were to grow between me and thee, or art thou other?"