would be banished there would be a great gulf set between her soul
and theirs.

But perhaps there would be others she had known, whose lives had been
interwoven with hers, she would be allowed to commune with in that same
place. Edgar of a certainty would be there, although Glastonbury had
built him a chapel and put him in a silver tomb and had begun to call
him Saint Edgar. Would he find her and seek to have speech with her? It
was anguish to her even to think of such an encounter. She would say, Do
not come to me, for rather would I be alone in this dreadful solitude
for a thousand years than have you, Edgar, for company. For I have not
now one thought or memory of you in my soul that is not bitter. It is
true that I once loved you: even before I saw your face I loved you, and
said in my heart that we two were destined to be one. And my love
increased when we were united, and you gave me my heart's desire--the
power I loved, and glory in the sight of the world. And although in my
heart I laughed at your pretended zeal for a pure religion while you
were gratifying your lower desires and chasing after fair women all over
the land, I admired and gloried in your nobler qualities, your activity
and vigilance in keeping the peace within your borders, and in making
England master of the seas, so that the pirate kings of the North
ventured not to approach our shores. But on your own gross appetites you
would put no restraint, but gave yourself up to wine and gluttony and
made a companion of Death, even in the flower of your age you were
playing with Death, and when you had lived but half your years you rode
away with Death and left me alone; you, Edgar, the mighty hunter and
slayer of wolves, you rode away and left me to the wolves, alone, in a
dark forest. Therefore the guilt of Edward's death is yours more than
mine, though my soul is stained red with his blood, seeing that you left
me to fight alone, and in my madness, not knowing what I did, I stained
myself with this crime.

But what you have done to me is of little moment, seeing that mine is
but one soul of the many thousands that were given into your keeping,
and your crime in wasting your life for the sake of base pleasures was
committed against an entire nation, and not of the living only but also
the great and glorious dead of the race of Cerdic--of the men who have
laboured these many centuries, shedding their blood on a hundred
stricken fields, to build up this