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Page 448
full light of the tapers on either side fell onto the bed. Alinor uttered a squeak of dismay and dropped the goblet she was holding. Simon was bolt upright instantly, his right hand scrabbling by the side of the bed for the sword that was not there. One does not come girded with a sword to one's marriage bed.
"What is it?" he asked, his eyes leaping from one wide open window to another.
"Oh, Simon, I fear you were far too gentle with me," Alinor said.
Abandoning his search for his weapons, Simon said bemusedly, "Too gentle?"
"Look at the sheets!"
Simon got hastily out of the bed and looked carefully. In this accursed Holy Land a man could find some wierd beasts abed with him, and all of them bit most painfully. There was, however, nothing in this bed. Simon looked at Alinor with a frown.
"This is no time for silly jests," he said reprovingly. "I am tired. What ails you? The sheets are clean."
"Yes, indeed, so they are. That is what ails me."
Simon passed a hand over his face. He was very tired. His emotional turmoil had robbed him of restful sleep for many nights and he had expended a good deal of physical effort in the last hour. He stared at the clean if somewhat rumpled sheet for another moment before the various things Alinor had said added up in his mind. Then he looked up to see a terrified consternation in his wife's face.
"I swear to you" she cried, then stopped. Simon was laughing.
"Save your breath," he said comfortingly. "That is one advantage in marrying an old man. I have not come to this time in my life without knowing when it is a maid's first time. For all there is no drop of blood, you were a clean maid, and I know it. I know also the trick whereby a maid, who is no maid, can bleed afresh for each new lover."
"Thank God for that," Alinor sighed, but then she

 
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