THE NINTH MAN
should turn so ghastly a face upon me, I had often talked in the garden with Simonetta, my lady's tiring-girl, concerning my lord and my lady. We knew that my lady gave to my lord a cold, unvarying, grave courtesy. We called her among ourselves the most arrogant lady in the land, for we had both seen that she had the highest of arrogance, that which gives to all and asks from none. Pity she gave, and love and tenderness and kindness, to all who needed it. She asked nothing in return, and held herself as one who needs nothing; yet we, who lived so close to her, suspected her of a soft, tender heart, needing all those things and receiving none of them. We remembered, too, a time when she gave more to my lord than courtesy, and when he gave less than the jealous love which he now gave her, for he could not let her be, coming near her as though to bruise himself against her calm, as though he would hold her soul as close in his hand as he did her body, and with a fury that this forever escaped him. We knew that her gaiety dropped like a flag of mourning when he came near her; and it was this flame of life that burned so
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