Yet he murmured somewhat. "Pity, always pity!" he said, wearily. "I shall never win aught else of you, Mélite. For before this you have kissed me, pitying me because you could not love me. And you have kissed me now, pitying me because I may not live."
But Mélite, clasping her arms about his neck, whispered into his ear the meaning of this last kiss, and at the honeyed sound of her whispering his strength came back for a moment, and he strove to rise. The level sunlight through the open window smote full upon his face, which was very glad. Mélite was conscious of her nobility in causing him such delight at the last.
"God, God!" cried Adhelmar, and he spread out his arms toward the dear, familiar world that was slowly taking form beneath them,--a world now infinitely dear to him; "all, my God, have pity and let me live a little longer!"
As Mélite, half frightened, drew back from him, he crept out of his chair and fell prone at her feet. Afterward his hands stretched forward toward her, clutching, and then trembled and were still.
Mélite stood looking downward, wondering vaguely when she would next know either joy or sorrow again. She was now conscious of no emotion whatever. It seemed to her she ought to be more greatly moved. So the new day found them.
* * * * *
MARCH 2, 1414 "Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's leg?"
In the chapel at Puysange you may still see the tomb of Adhelmar; but Mélite's bones lie otherwhere. "Her heart was changeable," as old Nicolas says, justly enough; and so in due time it was comforted.
For Hugues d'Arques--or Hugh Darke, as his name was Anglicized--presently stood high in the favor of King Edward. A fief was granted to Messire Darke, in Norfolk, where Hugues shortly built for himself a residence at Yaxham, and began to look about for a wife: it was not long before he found one.
This befell at Brétigny when, in 1360, the Great Peace was signed between France and England, and Hugues, as one of the English embassy, came face to face with Reinault and Mélite. History does not detail the meeting; but, inasmuch as the Sieur d'Arques and Mélite de Puysange were married at Rouen the following October, doubtless it passed off pleasantly enough.
The couple had sufficient in common to have qualified them for several decades of mutual toleration. But by ill luck, Mélite died in child-birth three years after her marriage. She had borne, in 1361, twin daughters, of whom Adelais died a spinster; the other daughter, Sylvia, circa 1378, figured in an unfortunate love-affair with one of Sir Thomas Mowbray's attendants, but subsequently married Robert Vernon of Winstead. Mélite left also a son, Hugh, born in 1363, who succeeded to his father's estate of Yaxham in 1387, in which year Hugues fell at the battle of Radcot Bridge, fighting in behalf of the ill-fated Richard of Bordeaux.