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And Sire Edward moved one step toward this tiny lady and paused. “Madame, I do not understand.”

Dame Meregrett looked up into his face unflinchingly. “It means that I love you, sire. I may speak without shame now, for presently you die. Die bravely, sire! Die in such fashion as may hearten me to live.”

The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming to Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful haze of forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes a god and transmutes whatever in corporeal man had been a defect into some divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence. I must tell you in this place, since no other occasion offers, that even until the end of her life it was so. For to her what in other persons would have seemed but flagrant dulness showed, somehow, in Sire Edward, as the majestic deliberation of one that knows his verdict to be decisive, and hence appraises cautiously; and if sometimes his big, calm eyes betrayed no apprehension of the jest at which her lips were laughing, and of which her brain very cordially approved, always within the instant her heart convinced her that a god is not lightly moved to mirth.

And now it was a god–O deus certe!–who had taken a woman’s paltry face between his hands, half roughly. “And the maid is a Capet!” Sire Edward mused.

“Never has Blanch desired you any ill, beau sire. But it is the Archduke of Austria that she loves, beau sire. And once you were dead, she might marry him. One cannot blame her,” Meregrett considered, “since he wishes to marry her, and she, of course, wishes to make him happy.”

“And not herself, save in some secondary way!” the big King said. “In part I comprehend, madame. And I, too, long for this same happiness, impotently now, and much as a fevered man might long for water. And my admiration for the Death whom I praised this morning is somewhat abated. There was a Tenson once–Lord, Lord, how long ago! I learn too late that truth may possibly have been upon the losing side–” He took up Rigon’s lute.

Sang Sire Edward:

“Incuriously he smites the armored king
And tricks his wisest counsellor–

ay, the song ran thus. Now listen, madame–listen, while for me Death waits without, and for you ignominy.”

Sang Sire Edward:

“Anon
Will Death not bid us cease from pleasuring,
And change for idle laughter i’ the sun
The grave’s long silence and the peace thereof,–
Where we entranced. Death our Viviaine
Implacable, may never more regain
The unforgotten passion, and the pain
And grief and ecstasy of life and love?

“Yea, presently, as quiet as the king
Sleeps now that laid the walls of Ilion,
We, too, will sleep, and overhead the spring
Laugh, and young lovers laugh–as we have done–
And kiss–as we, that take no heed thereof,
But slumber very soundly, and disdain
The world-wide heralding of winter’s wane
And swift sweet ripple of the April rain
Running about the world to waken love.

“We shall have done with Love, and Death be king
And turn our nimble bodies carrion,
Our red lips dusty;–yet our live lips cling
Spite of that age-long severance and are one
Spite of the grave and the vain grief thereof
We mean to baffle, if in Death’s domain
Old memories may enter, and we twain
May dream a little, and rehearse again
In that unending sleep our present love.

“Speed forth to her in sorry unison,
My rhymes: and say Death mocks us, and is slain
Lightly by Love, that lightly thinks thereon;
And that were love at my disposal lain–
All mine to take!–and Death had said, ‘Refrain,
Lest I demand the bitter cost thereof,’
I know that even as the weather-vane
Follows the wind so would I follow Love.”