e swung the Magister round
him till, backwards and staggering, the eyes growing fixed in his brown
and rigid face, he was pushed, jerking at each step of the King, out of
sight behind the green silk curtains.

The Queen sat motionless in her purple velvet. She twisted one hand into
the chain of the medallion about her throat, and one hand lay open and
pale by her side. Margot Poins knelt at her side, her face hidden in the
Queen's lap, her two arms stretched out beyond her grey coifed head. For
a minute she was silent. Then great sobs shook her so that Katharine
swayed upon her seat. From her hidden face there came muffled and
indistinguishable words, and at last Katharine said dully--

'What, child? What, child?'

Margot moved her face sideways so that her mouth was towards Katharine.

'You can unmake it! You can unmake the marriage,' she brought out in
huge sobs.

Katharine said--

'No! No!'

'You unmade a King's marriage,' Margot wailed.

Katharine said--

'No! No!' She started and uttered the words loudly; she added pitifully,
'You do not understand! You do not understand!'

It was the more pitiful in that Margot understood very well. She hid her
face again and only sobbed heavily and at long intervals, and then with
many sobs at once. The Queen laid her white hand upon the girl's head.
Her other still played with the chain.

'Christ be piteous to me,' she said. 'I think it had been better if I
had never married the King.'

Margot uttered an indistinguishable sound.

'I think it had been better,' the Queen said; 'though I had jeoparded my
immortal part.'

Margot moved her head up to cry out in her turn--

'No! No! You may not say it!'

Then she dropped her face again. When she heard the King coming back and
breathing heavily, she stood up, and with huge tears on her red and
crumpled face she looked out upon the fields as if she had never seen
them before. An immense sob shook her. The King stamped his foot with
rage, and then, because he was soft-hearted to them that he saw in
sorrow, he put his hand upon her shoulder.

'Sha't have a better mate,' he uttered. 'Sha't be a knight's dame!
There! there!' and he fondled her great back with his hand. Her eyes
screwed tightly up, she opened her mouth wide, but no words came out,
and suddenly she shook her head as if she had been an enraged child. Her
loud cries, shaken out of her with her tears, died away as she went
across the terrace, a loud one an