"

The words had escaped him, involuntarily, but already he was chiding
himself that he could bring her, at such a time, even the shadow of a
reproach.

But Caterina was beyond any perception of minor shades of feeling. She
answered him in the same passionless tone in which she had greeted him,
with no suggestion of self-pity, nor any claim for sympathy in her
manner, as she motioned him to a seat near her.

"Nay, Father," she said, "in this hath Heaven been merciful: I feel
nothing; my heart is a stone. For this I thank the Holy Mother; she knew
that I could not bear it, else."

She made the statement simply, as if it implied nothing unusual, and
waited for him to speak.

But for once Father Johannes had no words; his eyes grew dim as he
looked at the young, passive face of the Queen, "stripped of every joy,"
alone on the threshold of life. "Daughter," he said, stumblingly, "I
fain would comfort thee."

"Nay, Father," she answered, still without emotion, "there is no
comfort. Let us speak of other things."

"Nay, _of this_," he said, with an awkward wave of his rough brown hand,
as if he would have put everything else away: and then relapsed into
silence, for in the presence of the grief which had mastered her, words
seemed to have lost their meaning.

She also waited--as a gray stone might wait by the wayside, unconscious
of the lapse of time: for him the moments were quick with thought--for
her it was as if they had not been, because life had ended.

"There must be comfort for all sorrow that Heaven permitteth," he
protested at last.

She looked at him wondering.

"But not for mine," she said in the same colorless tone. "Thou knowest
naught of such sorrow, for thou livest apart from men. Thou canst not
know the pain, when thou hast not known the joy."

"Yet from sympathy one may know," he began feebly. But she took no
notice of the interruption, and as he looked at her he realized that he
had never known life in its poignancy--that he stood outside the depths
of human suffering, though he had dwelt forever in its shadow, nor had
his stern life measured the height of holy, human joy.

"I left my people and my land," she said, "and came hither for a great
love, and that--that"--there was the sound of a sob in her throat as she
paused for a moment, then caught her breath and went on in the same even
tone,--"and that was taken from me. And now--oh, God!--my child!"

She strained her arms tightly to her