here was no look of regret in his eyes or
sound of regret in his voice.

"No, no, no! Oh, not then, not yet! There are pleasures of Tantalus as
well as pains of Tantalus. Had I told her I was the King, she would have
flung herself into my arms and there would have been a workaday end to
the wonder. No. I lingered and sipped at sweet desires. I masqued and
ambled Arcady for her; was no more than I seemed, a simple hunter;
flattered her with honest boy-babble, said her farewell with a low sweep
of my cap, and left her with a new happiness in my heart, the happiness
of an unsatisfied longing, an unanswered ache. If your school-boy were
ever an epicure, he would sometimes leave the queen apples of the
orchard unfingered."

"Is this the end of the idyl?" Hildebrand asked, quietly, when the King
had run to the end of his rhapsody. Again Robert shook his head.

"You are a traitor, Hildebrand, to think such treason of your King. What
of the wisdom of Solomon? I am of the mind of the ungodly, and let no
flower of the spring go by me. But I have lived an exquisite
week--sunlight and starlight I have dreamed dreams. In other arms I have
sighed divinely for my dryad; but I know she will prove rarer than my
most adorable guesses. That I will tell you to-morrow."

"To-morrow?" Hildebrand asked.

Robert laughed joyously as he pointed to Theron's dwelling.

"She lives here, Hildebrand. She is the daughter of Theron the
executioner."

Hildebrand shrugged his shoulders. "Fie! A vile parentage!" he
protested.

"I am like Midas," Robert retorted. "All I touch turns to gold. My love
will make her flesh imperial as a pope's niece and her rags as purple as
Caesar's mantle."

Hildebrand smiled admiration.

"I have seldom seen your Majesty so enamoured," he said.

Robert put his arm affectionately round his companion's neck.

"I tell you, Hildebrand," he said, earnestly, "my heart sings as it has
never sung since its earliest love-flutter. I feel like a stainless god
in a sacred garden, listening for the first time to the dear madness of
the nightingale. No subtle Neapolitan ever stirred me as this wood-nymph
does with her flaming hair and her frank eyes. No wonder the old gods
loved mortal women, if they knew my royal joy with this child of earth.
Into the church, man, and leave me to my wooing!"

Hildebrand responded to the release of Robert's arm, and the impatient
gesture of dismissal that followed, by a reverential salutati