know, the end to which the Eternal
Father created me. For, look you," she pleaded, "to surrender absolute
dominion over half Europe is a sacrifice. Assure me that it is a
sacrifice, Antoine! O glorious fool, delude me into the belief that I
deny myself in choosing you! Nay, I know it is as nothing beside what
you have given up for me, but it is all I have--it is all I have,
Antoine!" she wailed in pitiful distress.

He drew a deep and big-lunged breath that seemed to inform his being
with an indomitable vigor, and doubt and sorrow went quite away from
him. "Love leads us," he said, "and through the sunlight of the world
he leads us, and through the filth of it Love leads us, but always in
the end, if we but follow without swerving, he leads upward. Yet, O
God upon the Cross! Thou that in the article of death didst pardon
Dysmas! as what maimed warriors of life, as what bemired travellers in
muddied byways, must we presently come to Thee!"

"But hand in hand," she answered; "and He will comprehend."

THE END OF THE NINTH NOVEL

X

The Story of the Fox-Brush

"_Dame serez de mon cueur, sans debat,
Entierement, jusques mort me consume.
Laurier souef qui pour mon droit combat,
Olivier franc, m'ostant toute amertume._"

THE TENTH NOVEL.--KATHARINE OF VALOIS IS WON BY A
HUNTSMAN, AND LOVES HIM GREATLY; THEN FINDS HIM, TO
HER HORROR, AN IMPOSTOR; AND FOR A SUFFICIENT REASON
CONSENTS TO MARRY QUITE ANOTHER PERSON, AND
NOT ALL UNWILLINGLY.

The Story of the Fox-Brush

In the year of grace 1417, about Martinmas (thus Nicolas begins), Queen
Isabeau fled with her daughter the Lady Katharine to Chartres. There
the Queen was met by the Duke of Burgundy, and these two laid their
heads together to such good effect that presently they got back into
Paris, and in its public places massacred some three thousand
Armagnacs. This, however, is a matter which touches history; the root
of our concernment is that when the Queen and the Duke rode off to
attend to this butcher's business, the Lady Katharine was left behind
in the Convent of Saint Scholastica, which then stood upon the
outskirts of Chartres, in the bend of the Eure just south of that city.
She dwelt a year in this well-ordered place.

There one finds her upon the day of the decollation of Saint John the
Baptist, the fine August morning that starts the tale. Katharine the
Fair, men called her, with some show of reason. Sh