n removed, and that he was free with a freedom he had never known
before.

When the reading was finished, the queen with eyes cast down remained
for some time immersed in thought; then with a keen glance at the maid's
face she asked for the book, and opening it began slowly turning the
leaves. By and by her face darkened, and in a stern tone of voice she
said: Come here and show me in this book the parable you have just read,
and then you shall also show me two or three other parables you have
read to me on former occasions, which I cannot find.

The maid, pale and trembling, came and dropped on her knees and begged
forgiveness for having recited these three or four tales, which she had
heard or read elsewhere and committed to memory, and had pretended to
read them out of the book.

Then the queen in a sudden rage said: Go from me and let me not see you
again if you do not wish to be stripped and scourged and thrust naked
out of the gates! And you only escape this punishment because the deceit
you have been practising on me is, to my thinking, not of your own
invention, but that of some crafty monk who is making you his
instrument.

Editha, terrified and weeping, hurriedly quitted the room.

By and by, when that sudden tempest of rage had subsided, the
despondence, which had been somewhat lightened by the maid's presence,
came back on her so heavily that it was almost past endurance. She rose
and went to her sleeping-room, and knelt before a table on which stood a
crucifix with an image of the Saviour on it--the emblem of the religion
she had so great a quarrel with. But not to pray. Folding her arms on
the table and dropping her face on them she said: What have I done? And
again and again she repeated: What have I done? Was it indeed a monk who
taught her this deceit, or some higher being who put it in her mind to
whisper a hope to my soul? To show me a way of escape from everlasting
death--to labour in his fields and pleasure-grounds, a wretched slave
with irons on her feet, to be scourged and mocked at, and in this state
to cast out hatred and bitterness from my own soul and all remembrance
of the injuries he had inflicted on me--to teach myself through long
miserable years that this powerful enemy and persecutor is a kind and
loving master? This is the parable, and now my soul tells me it would be
a light punishment when I look at the red stains on these hands, and
when the image of the boy I loved and murdered