, and Jehane leaped from
her angle to confront him.

To say that he dropped like a shot bird is to say wrong; for a bird
drops compact, but Gilles went down disjunct. His jaw dropped, his hands
dropped, his knees, last his head. 'Ha, Heart of Jesus!' he said, and
covered his eyes. She began to talk like a hissing snake.

'What have you done with the King? What have you done?' King Richard on
the roof peered down and saw her. He turned quite grey.

'I could do nothing, Jehane,' Gilles whimpered; 'I went to kill him.'

'You fool, I know it. I saw you go. I could have stayed you as I do now.
But I would not.'

'Why not, Jehane?'

She spurned him with a look. 'Because I love King Richard, and know you,
Gilles, what you can do and what not. Pshutt! You are a rat.'

'Rat,' says Gilles, 'I may be, but a rat may be offended. This king
robbed me of you, and slew my father and brothers. Therefore I hated
him. Is it not enough reason?'

Her eyes grew cold with scorn. 'Your father? Your brothers?' she echoed
him. 'Pooh, I have given him more than that. I have burned my heart
quite dry. I have accepted shame, I have sold my body and counted as
nothing my soul. Robbed you? Nay, but I robbed myself, and robbed him
also, when I cut him out of my own flesh. From the day when, through my
prayers against blood, he was affianced to the Spanish woman, I held him
off me, though I drained more blood to do it. Then, that not sufficing
to save him, I gave myself to the Old Man of Musse; to be his wife, one
of his women, do you understand? His wife, I say. And you talk now of
father and brothers and your robbery, to me who am become an old man's
toy, one of many? What are they to my soul, and my heart's blood, to my
life and light, and the glory that I had from Richard? Oh, you fool, you
fool, what do you know of love? You think it is embracing, clipping,
playing with a chin: you fool, it is scorching your heart black, it is
welling blood by drops, it is fasting in sight of food, death where
sweet life offers, shame held more honourable than honour. Oh, Saint
Mary, star of women, what do men know of love?' Dry-eyed and pinched,
she looked about her as if to find an answer in the sullen moors. If she
had looked up to the heavy skies she might have had one; for on the
tower's top stood King Richard like a ghost.

'Listen now to me, Jehane,' said Gilles, red as fire. 'I have hated your
King for four years, and three times sought his life.