and
eternally to burn, and, worst of all, to know that the torment was
eternal! ay, it would be hard; but, at the cost of Richard's ignoble
life and of Edward's inconsiderable soul, to win so many men to
manhood was not a bargain to be refused.

The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden which
adjoined Dame Anne's apartments. He found the Queen there, alone, as
nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused to wonder at her
bright and singular beauty. How vaguely odd was this beauty, he
reflected, too; how alien in its effect to that of any other woman in
sturdy England, and how associable it was, somehow, with every wild
and gracious denizen of the woods which blossomed yonder.

In this place the world was all sunlight, temperate but undiluted.
They had met in a wide, unshaded plot of grass, too short to ripple,
which everywhere glowed steadily, like a gem. Right and left, birds
sang as if in a contest. The sky was cloudless, a faint and radiant
blue throughout, save where the sun stayed as yet in the zenith, so
that the Queen's brows cast honey-colored shadows upon either cheek.
The priest was greatly troubled by the proud and heatless
brilliancies, the shrill joys, of every object within the radius of
his senses.

She was splendidly clothed, in a kirtle of very bright green, tinted
like the verdancy of young ferns in sunlight, and wore over all a gown
of white, cut open on each side as far as the hips. This garment was
embroidered with golden leopards and was trimmed with ermine. About
her yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein emeralds glowed. Her
blue eyes were as large and shining and changeable (he thought) as two
oceans in midsummer; and Maudelain stood motionless and seemed to
himself but to revere, as the Earl Ixion did, some bright unstable
wisp of cloud, while somehow all elation departed from him as water
does from a wetted sponge compressed. He laughed discordantly.

"Wait--! O my only friend--!" said Maudelain. Then in a level voice he
told her all, unhurriedly and without any apparent emotion.

She had breathed once, with a deep inhalation. She had screened her
countenance from his gaze the while you might have counted fifty.
Presently she said: "This means more war, for de Vere and Tressilian
and de la Pole and Bramber and others of the barons know that the
King's fall signifies their ruin. Many thousands die to-morrow."

He answered, "It means a war which will make me Ki