in: [Greek:
pleie men gar gaia, pleie de thalassa] so I have laughed ever since.'

Upon her, too, Katharine turned.

'You also,' she said; 'you also.'

'No, before God, I am no coward,' Cicely Elliott said. 'When all my
menfolk were slain by the headsman something broke in my head, and
ever since I have laughed. But before God, in my way I have tried to
plague Cromwell. If he would have had my head he might have.'

'Yet what hast thou done for the Church of God?' Katharine said.

Cicely Elliott sprang to the floor and raised her hands with such
violence that Throckmorton moved swiftly forward.

'What did the Church of God for me?' she cried. 'Guard your face from
my nails ere you ask me that again. I had a father; I had two
brothers; I had two men I loved passing well. They all died upon one
day upon the one block. Did the saints of God save them? Go see their
heads upon the gates of York?'

'But if they died for God His pitiful sake,' Katharine said--'if they
did die in the quarrel of God's wounds----'

Cicely Elliott screamed, with her hands above her head.

'Is that not enow? Is that not enow?'

'Then it is I, not thou, that love them,' Katharine said; 'for I, not
thou, shall carry on the work for which they died.'

'Oh gaping, pink-faced fool!' Cicely Elliott sneered at her.

She began to laugh, holding her black sides in, her face thrown back.
Then she closed her mouth and stood smiling.

'You were made for a preacher, coney,' she said. 'Fine to hear thee
belabouring my old, good knight with doughty words.'

'Gibe as thou wilt; scream as thou wilt----' Katharine began. Cicely
Elliott tossed in on her words:

'My head ached so. I had the right of it to scream. I cannot be minded
of my menfolk but my head will ache. But I love thy fine preaching.
Preach on.'

Katharine raised herself from her chair.

'Words there must be that will move thee,' she said, 'if God will give
them to me.'

'God hath withdrawn Himself from this world,' Cicely answered. 'All
mankind goeth a-mumming.'

'It was another thing that Polycrates said.' Katharine, in spite of
her emotion, was quick to catch the misquotation.

'Coney,' Cicely Elliott answered, 'all men wear masks; all men lie;
all men desire the goods of all men and seek how they may get them.'

'But Cromwell being down, these things shall change,' Katharine
answered. '_Res, aetas, usus, semper aliquid apportent novi._'

Cicely Elliott fell back into her c