master deals more fairly than fair."

"Oh, well, I'll think the matter over," I said airily, as I bowed the
priest to the door.

He stopped abruptly at the threshold.

"The time for thinking is past," he said. "It is decision I came for."

"I will think the matter over," I repeated, then added, as afterthought:
"If the lady's plans do not accord with mine, then mayhap the plans of
your master may fruit as he desires. For remember, priest, he is no
master of mine."

"You do not know my master," he said solemnly.

"Nor do I wish to know him," I retorted.

And I listened to the lithe, light step of the little intriguing priest
go down the creaking stairs.

Did I go into the minutiae of detail of all that I saw this half a day
and half a night that I was Count Guillaume de Sainte-Maure, not ten
books the size of this I am writing could contain the totality of the
matter. Much I shall skip; in fact, I shall skip almost all; for never
yet have I heard of a condemned man being reprieved in order that he
might complete his memoirs--at least, not in California.

When I rode out in Paris that day it was the Paris of centuries agone.
The narrow streets were an unsanitary scandal of filth and slime. But I
must skip. And skip I shall, all of the afternoon's events, all of the
ride outside the walls, of the grand fete given by Hugh de Meung, of the
feasting and the drinking in which I took little part. Only of the end
of the adventure will I write, which begins with where I stood jesting
with Philippa herself--ah, dear God, she was wondrous beautiful. A great
lady--ay, but before that, and after that, and always, a woman.

We laughed and jested lightly enough, as about us jostled the merry
throng; but under our jesting was the deep earnestness of man and woman
well advanced across the threshold of love and yet not too sure each of
the other. I shall not describe her. She was small, exquisitely
slender--but there, I am describing her. In brief, she was the one woman
in the world for me, and little I recked the long arm of that gray old
man in Rome could reach out half across Europe between my woman and me.

And the Italian, Fortini, leaned to my shoulder and whispered:

"One who desires to speak."

"One who must wait my pleasure," I answered shortly.

"I wait no man's pleasure," was his equally short reply.

And, while my blood boiled, I remembered the priest, Martinelli, and the
gray old man at Rome. The t