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King Edward sat in meditation for a long while. “I consider my wife’s clerk,” he drily said, “to discourse of love in somewhat too much the tone of a lover.” And a flush was his reward.

But when this Copeland spoke he was as one transfigured. His voice was grave and very tender.

“As the fish have their life in the waters, so I have and always shall have mine in love. Love made me choose and dare to emulate a lady, long ago, through whom I live contented, without expecting any other good. Her purity is so inestimable that I cannot say whether I derive more pride or sorrow from its pre-eminence. She does not love me, and she never will. She would condemn me to be hewed in fragments sooner than permit her husband’s little finger to be injured. Yet she surpasses all others so utterly that I would rather hunger in her presence than enjoy from another all which a lover can devise.”

Sire Edward stroked the table through this while, with an inverted pen. He cleared his throat. He said, half-fretfully:

“Now, by the Face! it is not given every man to love precisely in this troubadourish fashion. Even the most generous person cannot render to love any more than that person happens to possess. I had a vision once: The devil sat upon a cathedral spire and white doves flew about him. Monks came and told him to begone. ‘Do not the spires show you, O son of darkness,’ they clamored, ‘that the place is holy?’ And Satan (in my vision) said these spires were capable of various interpretations. I speak of symbols, John. Yet I also have loved, in my own fashion–and, it would seem, I win the same reward as you.”

He said more lately: “And so she is at Stirling now? with Robert Stewart?” He laughed, not overpleasantly. “Eh, yes, it needed a bold person to bring all your tidings! But you Brabanters are a very thorough-going people.”

The King rose and flung back his big head as a lion might. “John, the loyal service you have done us and our esteem for your valor are so great that they may well serve you as an excuse. May shame fall on those who bear you any ill-will! You will now return home, and take your prisoner, the King of Scotland, and deliver him to my wife, to do with as she may elect. You will convey to her my entreaty–not my orders, John–that she come to me here at Calais. As remuneration for this evening’s insolence, I assign lands as near your house as you can choose them to the value of L500 a year for you and for your heirs.”

You must know that John Copeland fell upon his knees before King Edward. “Sire–” he stammered.

But the King raised him. “Nay,” he said, “you are the better man. Were there any equity in Fate, John Copeland, your lady had loved you, not me. As it is, I shall strive to prove not altogether unworthy of my fortune. Go, then, John Copeland–go, my squire, and bring me back my Queen.”

Presently he heard John Copeland singing without. And through that instant was youth returned to Edward Plantagenet, and all the scents and shadows and faint sounds of Valenciennes on that ancient night when a tall girl came to him, running, stumbling in her haste to bring him kingship. Now at last he understood the heart of Philippa.

“Let me live!” the King prayed; “O Eternal Father, let me live a little while that I may make atonement!” And meantime John Copeland sang without and the Brabanter’s heart was big with joy.

Sang John Copeland:

“Long I besought thee, nor vainly,
Daughter of water and air–
Charis! Idalia! Hortensis!
Hast thou not heard the prayer,
When the blood stood still with loving,
And the blood in me leapt like wine,
And I murmured thy name, Melaenis?–
That heard me, (the glory is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!

“Falsely they tell of thy dying,
Thou that art older than Death,
And never the Hoerselberg hid thee,
Whatever the slanderer saith,
For the stars are as heralds forerunning,
When laughter and love combine
At twilight, in thy light, Melaenis–
That heard me, (the glory is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!”