und thou needest for a grave
must be given thee at the last, unless, perchance, thou hast a handful of
stolen earth hidden somewhere among thy other jewels!"_

_"Your lordship," cried the fool, with a clear ring in his voice, "thou
shall not speak so to the man who is to wed thy daughter. I had not
thought to tell even her till after the priests had made us one, but for
our own protection, I am stung into speech._

_"Know then, that I am no fool, but a Prince of the House of Bernard. My
acres and my vineyards cover five times the space of this little realm of
thine. Chests of gold and jewels I have, storehouses overflowing with
grain and fine fabrics, three castles and a royal retinue. Of a truth,
thou art blind since thou canst see naught but the raiment. May not a
Prince wear motley if he chooses, thus to find a maid who will love him
for himself alone?"_

_"Prince Bernard," muttered the Lord of Content, "the son of my old
friend, whom I have long dreamed in secret shouldst wed my dear daughter
Elaine! Your Highness, I beg you to forgive me, and to take my hand."_

_But Prince Bernard did not hear, nor see the outstretched hand, for
Elaine was in his arms for the first time, her sweet lips close on his.
"My Prince, oh my Prince," she murmured, when at length he set her free;
"my eyes could not see, but my heart knew!"_

_So ended the Quest of the Lady Elaine._

With a sigh, Harlan wrote the last words and pushed the paper from him,
staring blankly at the wall and seeing nothing. His labour was at an end,
all save the final copying, and the painstaking daily revision which would
take weeks longer. The exaltation he had expected to be conscious of was
utterly absent; instead of it, he had a sense of loss, of change.

His surroundings seemed hopelessly sordid and ugly, now that the glow was
gone. All unknowingly, when Harlan pencilled: "The End," in fanciful
letters at the bottom of the last page, he had had practically his last
joy of his book. The torturing process of revision was to take all the
life out of it. Sentences born of surging emotion would seem vapid and
foolish when subjected to the cold, critical eye of his reason, yet he
knew, dimly, that he must not change it too much.

"I'll let it get cool," he thought, "before I do anything more to it."

Yet, now, it was difficult to stop working. The rented typewriter, with
its enticing bank of keys, was close at hand. A thousand sheets of paper
and a box o