Bertrand of Brittany by Warwick Deeping

JEALOUSY is as the dark under world to the warm day of a woman's love. It is peopled with phantoms and with shadows-a land of credulity, of whisperings, and of gloom.

Arletta, poor wench, was dwelling on this black sphere of her troubled life. A child of the soil, quick in her passions, hot of blood, she had had no schooling in the higher patience, or learned that world-wise nonchalance that shrugs its bland shoulders at despair. Impulse was law to her, the blind instincts of her body her counsellors, her hands her ministers of justice. She loved Bertrand-loved him with the zeal of a wild thing for its mate. She loved him because he was stronger than other men, because his strength had made him her master. Many a night she had lain awake, smiling over some bold trick of his, the plunder he had taken, the devil-may-care courage dear to the heart of such a woman as Arletta. She had never thought that she was holding him back from nobler things, and that her hands were strangling the ambitions of his manhood. Arletta would have been content to have him the most feared and fearless swashbuckler in all the Breton lands, and she would have taken pride in the rough triumphs of such a life.