d.'

'Then tell me what the King will do with me,' she answered.

He made a grimace.

'All your learning will not make of you but a very woman. It is: What
will he do? It is: A truce to words. It is: Get to the point. But the
point is this....'

'In the name of heaven,' she said, 'shall I go to gaol or no?'

'Then in the name of heaven,' he said, 'you shall--this next month, or
next year, or in ten years' time. That is very certain, since you goad
a King to fury.'

She opened her mouth, but he silenced her with his hand.

'No, you shall not go to gaol upon this quarrel!' She sank back into
her chair. He surveyed her with a sardonic malice.

'But it is very certain,' he said, 'that had there been there ready a
clerk with a warrant and a pen, you had not again seen the light of
day until you came to a worse place on a hill.'

Katharine shivered.

'Why, get you gone, and leave me to pray,' she said.

He stretched out towards her a quivering hand.

'Aye, there you be again, simple and brutal!' His jaws grinned beneath
his beard. 'I love the air you breathe. I go about to tell a tale in a
long way that shall take a long time, so that I may stay with you. You
cry: "For pity, for pity, come to the point." I have pity. So you cry,
having obtained your desire, "Get ye gone, and let me pray!"'

She said wearily:

'I have had too many men besiege me with their suits.'

He shrugged his great shoulders and cried:

'Yet you never had friend better than I, who bring you comfort hoping
for none in return.'

'Why,' she answered, 'it is a passing bitter thing that my sole friend
must be a man accounted so evil.'

He moved backwards again to the table; set his white hands upon it
behind him, and balancing himself upon them swung one of his legs
slowly.

'It is a good doctrine of the Holy Church,' he said, 'to call no man
evil until he be dead.' He looked down at the ground, and then,
suddenly, he seemed to mock at her and at himself. 'Doubtless, had
such a white soul as yours led me from my first day, you to-day had
counted me as white. It is evident that I was not born with a nature
that warped towards sin. For, let us put it that Good is that thing
that you wish.' He looked up at her maliciously. 'Let that be Good.
Then, very certainly, since I am enlisted heart and soul in the desire
that you may have what you wish, you have worked a conversion in me.'

'I will no longer bear with your mocking,' she said. She