in effect
a fratricide, and after death irrevocably damned. To burn, 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 one ignoble life and
one inconsiderable soul, to win so many men to manhood bedazzled his
every faculty, in anticipation of the exploit.

The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden he knew so
well 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 it was, 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 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 over all a gown of
white, cut open on either side as far as the hips. This garment was
embroidered with golden leopards and trimmed with ermine. About her
yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein emeralds glowed. Her blue
eyes were as large and bright 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 and never stable wisp of
cloud, while somehow all elation departed from him as water does from a
wetted sponge compressed. He laughed discordantly; but within the
moment his sun-lit face was still and glorious, like that of an image.

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

She had breathed once, with an aweful inhalation. She had screened her
countenance from his gaze what while you might have counted fifty.
More lately the lithe body of Dame Anne was alert, as one suddenly