answered,
and lifted a huge golden collar garnished with emeralds and sapphires
and with many pearls. "Friend, the chain is heavy, yet I lack the will
to cast it off. I lack the will, Antoine." And now with a sudden shout
of mirth her courtiers applauded the evolutions of the saltatrice.

"King's daughter!" said Riczi then; "O perilous merchandise! a god
came to me and a sword had pierced his breast. He touched the gold
hilt of it and said, 'Take back your weapon.' I answered, 'I do not
know you.' 'I am Youth' he said; 'take back your weapon.'"

"It is true," she responded, "it is lamentably true that after
to-night we are as different persons, you and I."

He said: "Jehane, do you not love me any longer? Remember old years
and do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God abhors nothing
so much as unfaith. For your own sake, Jehane,--ah, no, not for your
sake nor for mine, but for the sake of that blithe Jehane, whom, so
you tell me, time has slain!"

Once or twice she blinked, as if dazzled by a light of intolerable
splendor, but otherwise she stayed rigid. "You have dared, messire, to
confront me with the golden-hearted, clean-eyed Navarrese that once
was I! and I requite." The austere woman rose. "Messire, you swore to
me, long since, eternal service. I claim my right in domnei.
Yonder--gray-bearded, the man in black and silver--is the Earl of
Worcester, the King of England's ambassador, in common with whom the
wealthy dowager of Brittany has signed a certain contract. Go you,
then, with Worcester into England, as my proxy, and in that island, as
my proxy, become the wife of the King of England. Messire, your
audience is done."

Riczi said this: "Can you hurt me any more, Jehane?--no, even in hell
they cannot hurt me now. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face
I fling faith like a glove--old-fashioned, it may be, but clean,--and
I will go, Jehane."

Her heart raged. "Poor, glorious fool!" she thought; "had you but the
wit even now to use me brutally, even now to drag me from this
dais--!" Instead he went away from her smilingly, treading through the
hall with many affable salutations, while the jongleur sang.

Sang the jongleur:

"There is a land those hereabout
Ignore ... Its gates are barred
By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt.
These mercifully guard
That land we seek--the land so fair!--
And all the fields thereof,
Where daffodils flaunt everywhere
And ouzels chant of lov