her arms about my neck. I felt
them quiver upon my shoulders. Her eyes looked directly up into mine, and
whether they were the eyes of an angel or of a tempting fiend I could not
tell. Very lovely, at any rate, they were, and might have tempted even
Saint Anthony to sin.

"Ysolinde," I said, at last, "it is small wonder that I am strongly
moved; you have offered me great things to-night. I feel my heart very
humble and unworthy. I deserve not your love. I am but a man, a soldier,
dull and slow. Were it not for one man and one woman it should be as you
say. But Karl of Plassenburg is my good master, my loyal friend. Helene
is my true love. I beseech you put this thought from you, dear lady, and
be once more my true Princess, I your liege subject--faithful, full of
reverence and devotion till life shall end!"

As I spoke she drew herself away from me. My hand had unconsciously
rested on her hair, for at first she had leaned her head towards me. When
I had finished she took my hand by the wrist and gripped it as if she
would choke a snake ere she dropped it at arm's-length. I knew that our
interview was at an end.

"Go!" she commanded, pointing to the door. "One day you shall know how
precious is the love you have so lightly cast aside. In a dark, dread
hour, you, Hugo Gottfried, shall sue as a suppliant. And I shall deny
you. There shall come a day when you shall abase yourself--even as you
have seen Ysolinde the Princess abase herself to Hugo, the son of the Red
Axe of the Wolf mark. Go, I tell you! Go--ere I slay you with my knife!"

And she flashed a keen double-edged blade from some recess of her silken
serpentine dress.

"My lady, hear me," I pleaded. "Out of the depths of my heart I
protest to you--"

"Bah!" she cried, with a sudden uprising of tigerish fierceness in her
eyes, quick and chill as the glitter of her steel. "Go, I tell you, ere I
be tempted to strike! _Your heart!_ Why, man, there is nothing in your
heart but empty words out of monks' copy-books and proverbs dry and
rotten as last year's leaves. Ye have seen me abased. By the lords of
hell, I will abase you, Executioner's son! Aye, and you yourself, Hugo
Gottfried, shall work out in flowing blood and bitter tears the doom of
the pale trembling girl for whom you have rejected and despised Ysolinde,
Princess of Plassenburg!"

CHAPTER XLVII

THE RED AXE DIES STANDING UP

How I stumbled down the stairs and found myself outside the house