e word had been spoken by
those inspired lips. O dreadful destiny! To dwell alone, to tread alone
that desert desolate, that illimitable waste of burning sand stretching
from star to star through infinite space, where was no rock nor tree to
give her shade, no fountain to quench her fiery thirst! For that was how
she imaged the future life, as a desert to be dwelt in until in the end,
when in God's good time--the time of One to whom a thousand years are as
one day--she would receive the final pardon and be admitted to rest in a
green and shaded place.

Overcome with the agonising thought she sank down on her couch and fell
into a faint. In that state she was found by her women, reclining, still
as death, with eyes closed, the whiteness of death in her face; and
thinking her dead they rushed out terrified, crying aloud and lamenting
that the queen was dead.

XII

She was not dead. She recovered from that swoon, but never from the
deep, unbroken sadness caused by those last words of the maid Editha,
which had overcome and nearly slain her. She now abandoned her
seclusion, but the world she returned to was not the old one. The
thought that every person she met was saying in his or her heart: This
is Elfrida; this is the queen who murdered Edward the Martyr, her
step-son, made that world impossible. The men and women she now
consorted with were the religious and ecclesiastics of all degrees, and
abbots and abbesses. These were the people she loved least, yet now into
their hands she deliberately gave herself; and to those who questioned
her, to her spiritual guides, she revealed all her life and thoughts and
passions, opening her soul to their eyes like a manuscript for them to
read and consider; and when they told her that in God's sight she was
guilty of the murder both of Edward and Athelwold, she replied that they
doubtless knew best what was in God's mind, and whatever they commanded
her to do that should be done, and if in her own mind it was not as they
said this could be taken as a defect in her understanding. For in her
heart she was not changed, and had not yet and never would learn the
bitter lesson of humility. Furthermore, she knew better than they what
life and death had in store for her, since it had been revealed to her
by holier lips than those of any priest. Lips on which had been laid a
coal from the heavenly altar, and what they had foretold would come to
pass--that unearthly pilgrimage and pu