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“Adieu de fois plus de cent mile!
Aillors vois oir l’Evangile,
Car chi fors mentir on ne sait….”

All this while Henry remained immovable, his eyes fixed upon Katharine. Thus (she meditated) he stood among Frenchmen; he was the boulder, and they the waters that babbled and fretted about him. But she turned and met his gaze squarely.

“And that,” she said, “is the king whom you have conquered! Is it not a notable conquest to overcome so sapient a king? to pilfer renown from an idiot? There are pickpockets in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who would scorn the action. Now shall I fetch my mother, sire? the commander of that great army which you overcame? As the hour is late she is by this tipsy, but she will come. Or perhaps she is with some paid lover, but if this conqueror, this second Alexander, wills it she will come. O God!” the girl wailed, on a sudden; “O just and all-seeing God! are not we of Valois so contemptible that in conquering us it is the victor who is shamed?”

“Flower o’ the marsh!” he said, and his big voice pulsed with many tender cadences–“flower o’ the marsh! it is not the King of England who now comes to you, but Alain the harper. Henry Plantagenet God has led hither by the hand to punish the sins of this realm and to reign in it like a true king. Henry Plantagenet will cast out the Valois from the throne they have defiled, as Darius Belshazzar, for such is the desire and the intent of God. But to you comes Alain the harper, not as a conqueror but as a suppliant–Alain who has loved you whole-heartedly these two years past and who now kneels before you entreating grace.”

Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he had fitted action. Suddenly and for the first time she understood that he believed France his by a divine favor and Heaven’s peculiar intervention. He thought himself God’s factor, not His rebel. He was rather stupid, this huge handsome boy; and realizing it, her hand went to his shoulder, half maternally.

“It is nobly done, sire. I know that you must wed me to uphold your claim to France, for otherwise in the world’s eyes you are shamed. You sell, and I with my body purchase, peace for France. There is no need of a lover’s posture when hucksters meet.”

“So changed!” he said, and he was silent for an interval, still kneeling. Then he began: “You force me to point out that I no longer need a pretext to hold France. France lies before me prostrate. By God’s singular grace I reign in this fair kingdom, mine by right of conquest, and an alliance with the house of Valois will neither make nor mar me.” She was unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact. “But I love you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you. Do you not understand that there can be between us no question of expediency? Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know of; now in Troyes they meet again–not as princess and king, but as man and maid, the wooer and the wooed. Once I touched your heart, I think. And now in all the world there is one thing I covet–to gain for the poor king some portion of that love you would have squandered on the harper.” His hand closed upon hers.

At his touch the girl’s composure vanished. “My lord, you woo too timidly for one who comes with many loud-voiced advocates. I am daughter to the King of France, and next to my soul’s salvation I esteem France’s welfare. Can I, then, fail to love the King of England, who chooses the blood of my countrymen as a judicious garb to come a-wooing in? How else, since you have ravaged my native land, since you have besmirched the name I bear, since yonder afield every wound in my dead and yet unburied Frenchmen is to me a mouth which shrieks your infamy?”