Constance ponders this question with perhaps more gravity than it requires- or perhaps not. The heart, after all, is the heaviest of burdens, and is her role not that of its caretaker? She has been long out of practice, her own so long chilled. What is the role of the priestess? To deal with that which cannot be seen except in its motion, and to speak to the decisions that cannot be made alone.

"The squire if you would stay and learn to love the land as much as you would learn to love him," Constance says, carefully, her gaze not entirely on Tristan. "The knight if you would see wonders that have not yet been seen in this land- but never a hearth of your own." Tristan, after all, is a lover, which is to say, he is someone whose heart's desire is to fulfill those of others. So it would be best for him to know what he is getting himself into; two different roads with two different destinations. But she cannot make that choice for him, just as she could not make Robena's choice for her.

When Robena returns, should Robena return, she will find Constance there waiting for her, with her hair knotted about a comb of polished bronze, with her feet bare upon the earth, with a belt of pearls and bronze links set about a dress as green as the grass that grows on the Berkshire Downs, and a careful hope in her smile.