ing my host's
chickens. To-day I went out to slay him, and he led me, his murderer,
to the fairest lady earth may boast. Do you not think that, in
returning good for evil, this fox was a true Christian, my Princess?"

Katharine said: "I lament his destruction. Farewell, Messire Alain!
And since chance brought you hither--"

"Destiny brought me hither," Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his
eyes. "Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she
continue so." But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be,
Alain shook his tawny head. "Presently you shall know, Highness, but
not now. I return to Chateauneuf on certain necessary businesses;
to-morrow I set out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti's livery.
Farewell!" He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the
hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat. Thus
Tristran de Leonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall,
thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him.
She went to her apartments, singing an inane song about the amorous
and joyful time of spring when everything and everybody is happy,--

"El tems amoreus plein de joie,
El tems ou tote riens s'esgaie,--"

and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were born every day,
she reflected, such hosts of women-children, who were not princesses,
and therefore compelled to marry detestable kings.

Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a
cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant
trees. In the slaty twilight the garden's verdure was lustreless, the
grass and foliage were uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed
like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere
a vista unblurred; in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith,
two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers
swaddled by ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional
scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest
as much; and presently came a singing, less musical than that of many
a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart
in mouth. A lute accompanied the song demurely.

Sang Alain:

"O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,
Be not too obdurate to us who pray
That this our transient grant of youth be spent
In laughter as befits a holiday,
From which the evening summons us away,
From which to-morrow waken