es toward either peace or throat-cutting.

This was the posture of affairs on the evening of the Sunday after
Ascension day, when Katharine sat at cards with her father in his
apartments at the Hotel de Ville. The King was pursing his lips over
an alternative play, when somebody began singing below in the
courtyard.

Sang the voice:

"I can find no meaning in life,
That have weighed the world,--and it was
Abundant with folly, and rife
With sorrows brittle as glass,
And with joys that flicker and pass
Like dreams through a fevered head;
And like the dripping of rain
In gardens naked and dead
Is the obdurate thin refrain
Of our youth which is presently dead.

"And she whom alone I have loved
Looks ever with loathing on me,
As one she hath seen disproved
And stained with such smirches as be
Not ever cleansed utterly;
And is both to remember the days
When Destiny fixed her name
As the theme and the goal of my praise;
And my love engenders shame,
And I stain what I strive for and praise.

"O love, most perfect of all,
Just to have known you is well!
And it heartens me now to recall
That just to have known you is well,
And naught else is desirable
Save only to do as you willed
And to love you my whole life long;--
But this heart in me is filled
With hunger cruel and strong,
And with hunger unfulfilled.

"Fond heart, though thy hunger be
As a flame that wanders unstilled,
There is none more perfect than she!"

Malise now came into the room, and, without speaking, laid a fox-brush
before the Princess.

Katharine twirled it in her hand, staring at the card-littered table.
"So you are in his pay, Malise? I am sorry. But you know that your
employer is master here. Who am I to forbid him entrance?" The girl
went away silently, abashed, and the Princess sat quite still, tapping
the brush against the table.

"They do not want me to sign another treaty, do they?" her father
asked timidly. "It appears to me they are always signing treaties, and
I cannot see that any good comes of it. And I would have won the last
game, Katharine, if Malise had not interrupted us. You know I would
have won."

"Yes, Father, you would have won. Oh, he must not see you!" Katharine
cried, a great tide of love mounting in her breast, the love that
draws a mother fiercely to shield her backward boy. "Father, will you
not go into your chamber? I have a new book for yo