My workers at the Gobelins
must look to their laurels." He raised one border of the glossy roll,
while she, having reseated herself, though not without a quick
questioning glance at her companion, took the other end into her lap and
continued her work.

"Yes, sire. It is a hunting scene in your forests at Fontainebleau.
A stag of ten tines, you see, and the hounds in full cry, and a gallant
band of cavaliers and ladies. Has your Majesty ridden to-day?"

"No. How is it, Francoise, that you have such a heart of ice?"

"I would it were so, sire. Perhaps you have hawked, then?"

"No. But surely no man's love has ever stirred you! And yet you have
been a wife."

"A nurse, sire, but never a wife. See the lady in the park! It is
surely mademoiselle. I did not know that she had come up from Choisy."

But the king was not to be distracted from his subject.

"You did not love this Scarron, then?" he persisted. "He was old, I
have heard, and as lame as some of his verses."

"Do not speak lightly of him, sire. I was grateful to him; I honoured
him; I liked him."

"But you did not love him."

"Why should you seek to read the secrets of a woman's heart?"

"You did not love him, Francoise?"

"At least I did my duty towards him."

"Has that nun's heart never yet been touched by love then?"

"Sire, do not question me."

"Has it never--"

"Spare me, sire, I beg of you!"

"But I must ask, for my own peace hangs upon your answer."

"Your words pain me to the soul."

"Have you never, Francoise, felt in your heart some little flicker of
the love which glows in mine?" He rose with his hands outstretched, a
pleading monarch, but she, with half-turned bead, still shrank away from
him.

"Be assured of one thing, sire," said she, "that even if I loved you as
no woman ever loved a man yet, I should rather spring from that window
on to the stone terraces beneath than ever by word or sign confess as
much to you."

"And why, Francoise?"

"Because, sire, it is my highest hope upon earth that I have been chosen
to lift up your mind towards loftier things--that mind the greatness and
nobility of which none know more than I."

"And is my love so base, then?"

"You have wasted too much of your life and of your thoughts upon woman's
love. And now, sire, the years steal on and the day is coming when even
you will be called upon to give an account of your actions, and of the
innermost thoughts of your heart. I wo