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She had leaned, while thus he spoke, upon the sill of an open casement. “Indeed, it had been far better,” she said, and with averted face, “had we never met. For this love of ours has proven a tyrannous and evil lord. I have had everything, and upon each feast of will and sense the world afforded me this love has swept down, like a harpy–was it not a harpy you called the bird in that old poem of yours?–to rob me of delight. And you have had nothing, for of life he has pilfered you, and he has given you in exchange but dreams, my poor Antoine, and he has led you at the last to infamy. We are as God made us, and–I may not understand why He permits this despotism.”

Thereafter, somewhere below, a peasant sang as he passed supperward through the green twilight, lit as yet by one low-hanging star alone.

Sang the peasant:

“King Jesus hung upon the Cross,
‘And have ye sinned?’ quo’ He,–
‘Nay, Dysmas, ’tis no honest loss
When Satan cogs the dice ye toss,
And thou shall sup with Me,–
Sedebis apud angelos,
Quia amavisti!’

“At Heaven’s Gate was Heaven’s Queen,
‘And have ye sinned?’ quo’ She,–
‘And would I hold him worth a bean
That durst not seek, because unclean,
My cleansing charity?–
Speak thou that wast the Magdalene,
Quia amavisti!'”

“It may be that in some sort the jingle answers me!” then said Jehane; and she began with an odd breathlessness: “Friend, when King Henry dies–and even now he dies–shall I not as Regent possess such power as no woman has ever wielded in Europe? can aught prevent this?”

“Naught,” he answered.

“Unless, friend, I were wedded to a Frenchman. Then would the stern English lords never permit that I have any finger in the government.” She came to him with conspicuous deliberation and laid one delicate hand upon either shoulder. “Friend, I am aweary of these tinsel splendors. I crave the real kingdom.”

Her mouth was tremulous and lax, and her gray eyes were more brilliant than the star yonder. The man’s arms were about her, and an ecstasy too noble for any common mirth had mastered them, and a vast desire whose aim they could not word, or even apprehend save cloudily.

And of the man’s face I cannot tell you. “King’s daughter! mistress of half Europe! I am a beggar, an outcast, as a leper among honorable persons.”

But it was as though he had not spoken. “Friend, it was for this I have outlived these garish, fevered years, it was this which made me glad when I was a child and laughed without knowing why. That I might to-day give up this so-great power for love of you, my all-incapable and soiled Antoine, was, as I now know, the end to which the Eternal Father created me. For, look you,” she pleaded, “to surrender absolute dominion over half Europe is a sacrifice. Assure me that it is a sacrifice, Antoine! O glorious fool, delude me into the belief that I deny myself in choosing you! Nay, I know it is as nothing beside what you have given up for me, but it is all I have–it is all I have, Antoine!” she wailed in pitiful distress.

He drew a deep and big-lunged breath that seemed to inform his being with an indomitable vigor, and doubt and sorrow went quite away from him. “Love leads us,” he said, “and through the sunlight of the world he leads us, and through the filth of it Love leads us, but always in the end, if we but follow without swerving, he leads upward. Yet, O God upon the Cross! Thou that in the article of death didst pardon Dysmas! as what maimed warriors of life, as what bemired travellers in muddied byways, must we presently come to Thee!”

“But hand in hand,” she answered; “and He will comprehend.”