's eyes."

"Now you talk like a silly prating priestling," she said. "You are both
mighty careful of your honesty, your virtue, your companionship--your
precious master and you. But you do not think what it is to starve a
woman's heart, to bid her find her level among broiderers of bannerets
and stitchers in tapestry. Ah! if the particular God who happened to be
at the digging of us out of the happier pit of oblivion had only made me
a man, I, at least, should neither have been a straitlaced Jackanapes nor
yet a prating, callow-bearded wiseacre."

"And am I either?" said I, weakly enough.

"You are in danger of becoming both," she said, promptly. "Once I saw
better things in you. I thought I had won me a friend, and that for once
I might put my anchor down. My husband neglects me, so much cannot have
escaped your eagle eye. He is twice my age, and he thinks more of you,
more of Councillor Von Dessauer, more of his horse than of me, Ysolinde
of Plassenburg. And I was made to be loved and to love. How much of
either, think you, have I ever known? The true lot of a woman shut to me,
the sweet love of man and woman wiled from me, even the communion of the
spirit forbidden. I might as lief carry a wizened nut-kernel within my
brain-pan as a thinking soul, for all that any one cares. I am a woman of
another age stranded on the shores of a time made only for men. I am the
woman priests talk against, or perhaps rather the witch-woman Lilith on
the outside of Eden's wall. Or I may be the woman of a time yet to come,
when she who is man's mate shall not be only a gay-decked bird to sit on
his wrist, tethered with a leash and called back to her master with a
silver lure."

These things I had never listened to before, nor, indeed, thought of.
Nevertheless, though I could not answer her, I felt in my heart that
she was wrong, and that a woman has always power over men, being
stronger than all ideals, philosophies, kingdoms--aye, even our holy
religion itself.

"After all," I said, piqued a little at her tone, as men are wont to be
at that which they do not understand, "my Lady Ysolinde, wherefore should
you not tell these things to the Prince, your husband, and not to me,
that am neither your husband nor your lover?"

"And if you had been both?" she interjected, a little breathlessly.

"Then, my lady," I replied, stirred by her persistence, "you would have
obeyed me and served me just as you say. Or else I should have broken