een
Nemean." He would exultantly have accepted the test, have thought it
right that he should earn what he so ardently desired.

"And when, shortly after, she carried
Her shame from the Court, and they married,
To that marriage some happiness, maugre
The voice of the Court, I dared augur."

De Lorge led for some time the most brilliant of envied careers, and
finally married a beauty who had been the King's mistress for a week.
Thenceforth he fetched her gloves very diligently, at the hours when the
King desired her presence and his absence--and never did he set off on
that errand (looking daggers at her) but Francis took occasion to tell
the Court the story of the other glove. And she would smile and say that
he brought _hers_ with no murmur.

+ + + + +

Was the first lady right or wrong? She was right to hesitate in
accepting De Lorge's "devotion"--not because De Lorge was worthless, but
because she did not love him. The King spoke truly when he said that not
love set that task to humanity. Neither did mere vanity set it, as we
now perceive; but _only_ love could excuse the test which love could
never have imposed. De Lorge was worthless--no matter; the lady held no
right over him, whatever he was, for she did not love him. And not alone
her "test" was the proof of this: her hesitation had already proved it.

But, it may be said, the age was different: women still believed that
love could come to them through "wooing." Nowadays, to be sure, so
subtle a woman as this would know that her own heart lay passive, and
that women's hearts do not lie passive when they love. . . . But I think
there were few things about love that women did not know in the days of
King Francis! We have only to read the discourses of Marguerite de
Valois, sister of the King--we have only to consider the story of Diane
de Poitiers, seventeen years older than her Dauphin, to realise _that_
most fully. Women's hearts were the same; and a woman's heart, when it
loves truly, will make no test for very pride-in-love's dear sake. It
scorns tests--too much scorns them, it may be, and yet I know not. Again
it is the Meredithian axiom which arrests me: "He learnt how much we
gain who make no claims." Our lovers then may be, should be, prepared to
plunge among the lions for our gloves--but we should not be able to send
them! And if so, a De Lorge here and there should win a "hand" he merits
not, we ma