rdly be heard for the voices of the
theologians in the hall before her.

Henry suddenly turned back, lifted his hand, and shouted:

'Be silent!'

Persephone's voice became very audible in the midst of the terrified
hush of all these people, who feared their enormous King as if he
were a wild beast that at one moment you could play with and the next
struck you dead.

'--How happy is England among the nations!' The voice rang out clear
and fluting like a boy's. 'Her people how free and bold! Her laws how
gentle and beneficent, her nobles how courteous and sweet in their
communings together for the public weal! How thrice happy that land
when peace is upon the earth! Her women how virtuous, her husbandmen
how satiated, her cattle how they let down their milk!'--She swayed
round to the gods that were uncovering their heads behind her: 'Aye,
my masters and fellow godheads: woe is me that we knew never this
happy and contented country. Better it had been there to dwell than
upon high Olympus: better than in the Cyclades: better than in the
Islands of the Blest that hide amid the Bermoothean tempest. Woe is
me!' Her expression grew more rapt; she paused as if she had lost the
thread of the words and then spoke again, gazing far out over the hall
as jugglers do in performing feats of balancing: 'For surely we had
been more safe than reigning alone above the clouds had we lived here,
the veriest hinds, beneath a King that is five times blessed, in that
he is most wealthy and generous of rewards, most noble of courage,
most eloquent, most learned in the law of men, and most high
interpreter of the law of God!'

Seeing that the King smiled, as though he had received a just
panegyric, a great clamour of applause went up in the hall, and
swaying beneath the weight of the cornucopia she came to the King over
the path of green herbs and boughs. Henry reached out his hands,
himself, to take his present, smiling and genial; and that alone was a
sign of great favour, for by rights she should have knelt with it,
offered it and then receded, giving it into the arms of a serving man.
She passed on, and would have crowned the Queen with the silver
wreath; but the great hood that Anne wore stood in the way, therefore
she laid it in the Queen's lap.

Henry caught at her hanging sleeve.

'That was a gay fine speech,' he said. 'I will have it printed.'

Little ripples of fear and coldness ran over her, for her dress was
thin and her a