vour. But you--never will you cross any Rubicon;
always you blow hot in the evening and cold at dawn. Neither do you, as
I had dreamed you did, rule in this your realm. For, even as a crow that
just now I watched, you are blown hither and thither by every gust that
blows. Now the wind of gossips blows so that you must have my life. And,
before God, I am glad of it.'

'Before God!' he cried out, 'I would save you!'

'Aye,' she answered sadly, 'to-day you would save me; to-morrow a foul
speech of one mine enemy shall gird you again to slay me. On the morrow
you will repent, and on the morrow of that again you will repent of
that. So you will balance and trim. If to-day you send a messenger to
Rome, to-morrow you will send another, hastening by a shorter route, to
stay him. And this I tell you, that I am not one to let my name be
bandied for many days in the mouths of men. I had rather be called a
sinner, adjudged and dead and forgotten. So I am glad that I am cast to
die.'

'You shall not die!' the King cried. 'Body of God, you shall not die! I
cannot live lacking thee. Kat---- Kat----'

'Aye,' she said, 'I must die, for you are not such a one as can stay in
the wind. Thus I tell you it will fall about that for many days you will
waver, but one day you will cry out--Let her die this day! On the morrow
of that day you will repent you, but, being dead, I shall be no more to
be recalled to life. Why, man, with this confession of mine, heard by
grooms and mayors of cities and the like, how shall you dare to save me?
You know you shall not.

'And so, now I am cast for death, and I am very glad of it. For, if I
had not so ensured and made it fated, I might later have wavered. For I
am a weak woman, and strong men have taken dishonourable means to escape
death when it came near. Now I am assured of death, and know that no
means of yours can save me, nor no prayers nor yielding of mine. I came
to you for that you might give this realm again to God. Now I see you
will not--for not ever will you do it if it must abate you a jot of your
sovereignty, and you never will do it without that abatement. So it is
in vain that I have sinned.

'For I trow that I sinned in taking the crown from the woman that was
late your wife. I would not have it, but you would, and I yielded. Yet
it was a sin. Then I did a sin that good might ensue, and again I do it,
and I hope that this sin that brings me down shall counterbalance that
other that