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Katharine said: “I lament his destruction. Farewell, Messire Alain! And since chance brought you hither–“

“Destiny brought me hither,” Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his eyes. “Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she continue so.” But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be, Alain shook his tawny head. “Presently you shall know, Highness, but not now. I return to Chateauneuf on certain necessary businesses; to-morrow I set out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti’s livery. Farewell!” He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat. Thus Tristran de Leonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him. She went to her apartments, singing,

“El tems amoreus plein de joie,
El tems ou tote riens s’esgaie,–“

and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were hosts of women-children born every day, she reflected, who were not princesses and therefore compelled to marry ogres; and some of them were beautiful. And minstrels made such an ado over beauty.

Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant trees. In the slaty twilight the garden’s verdure was lustreless, grass and foliage uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere a vista unblurred; but in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith, two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers swaddled by their ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest as much; and presently came a singing, less meritorious than that of many a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart in mouth. A lute accompanied the song demurely.

Sang Alain:

“O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,
Be not too obdurate the while we pray
That this the fleet, sweet time of youth be spent
In laughter as befits a holiday,
From which the evening summons us away,
From which to-morrow wakens us to strife
And toil and grief and wisdom–and to-day
Grudge us not life!

“O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,
Why need our elders trouble us at play?
We know that very soon we shall repent
The idle follies of our holiday,
And being old, shall be as wise as they,
But now we are not wise, and lute and fife
Seem sweeter far than wisdom–so to-day
Grudge us not life!

“O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,
You have given us youth–and must we cast away
The cup undrained and our one coin unspent
Because our elders’ beards and hearts are gray?
They have forgotten that if we delay
Death claps us on the shoulder, and with knife
Or cord or fever mocks the prayer we pray–
‘Grudge us not life!’

“Madam, recall that in the sun we play
But for an hour, then have the worm for wife,
The tomb for habitation–and to-day
Grudge us not life!”

Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the crotch of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but the Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort.

“You came!” this harper said, transfigured; and then again, “You came!”

She breathed, “Yes.”

So for a long time they stood looking at each other. She found adoration in his eyes and quailed before it; and in the man’s mind not a grimy and mean incident of the past but marshalled to leer at his unworthiness: yet in that primitive garden the first man and woman, meeting, knew no sweeter terror.