ou will have but the mild face of your queen by your
side!"

The King's lip writhed at that hinted rebuke, or implied consolation.

"Edith the Queen," he said, after a slight pause, "is pious and good; and
she hath never gainsaid my will, and she hath set before her as a model
the chaste Susannah, as I, unworthy man, from youth upward, have walked
in the pure steps of Joseph [123]. But," added the King, with a touch of
human feeling in his voice, "canst thou not conceive, Harold, thou who
art a warrior, what it would be to see ever before thee the face of thy
deadliest foe--the one against whom all thy struggles of life and death
had turned into memories of hyssop and gall?"

"My sister!" exclaimed Harold, in indignant amaze, "My sister thy
deadliest foe! She who never once murmured at neglect, disgrace--she
whose youth hath been consumed in prayers for thee and thy realm--my
sister! O King, I dream?"

"Thou dreamest not, carnal man," said the King, peevishly. "Dreams are
the gifts of the saints, and are not granted to such as thou! Dost thou
think that, in the prune of my manhood, I could have youth and beauty
forced on my sight, and hear man's law and man's voice say, 'They are
thine, and thine only,' and not feel that war was brought to my hearth,
and a snare set on my bed, and that the fiend had set watch on my soul?
Verily, I tell thee, man of battle, that thou hast known no strife as
awful as mine, and achieved no victory as hard and as holy. And now,
when my beard is silver, and the Adam of old is expelled at the precincts
of death; now, thinkest thou, that I can be reminded of the strife and
temptation of yore, without bitterness and shame; when days were spent in
fasting, and nights in fierce prayer; and in the face of woman I saw the
devices of Satan?"

Edward coloured as he spoke, and his voice trembled with the accents of
what seemed hate. Harold gazed on him mutely, and felt that at last he
had won the secret that had ever perplexed him, and that in seeking to be
above the humanity of love, the would-be saint had indeed turned love
into the hues of hate--a thought of anguish, and a memory of pain.

The King recovered himself in a few moments, and said, with some dignity,
"But God and his saints alone should know the secrets of the household.
What I have said was wrung from me. Bury it in thy heart. Leave me,
then, Harold, sith so it must be. Put thine earldom in order, attend to
the monasterie