" Dame Alianora said. "That is a venerable truism."

"Ho, madame," he returned, "is it on that account the less true?"

Pensively the Queen considered this. "You are a good man, my Osmund,"
she said, at last, "though you are very droll. Ohime! it is a pity that
I was born a princess! Had it been possible for me to be your wife, I
would have been a better woman. I shall sleep now and dream of that good
and stupid and contented woman I might have been." So presently these
two slept in Chantrell Wood.

Followed four days of journeying. As Messer Dante had not yet surveyed
Malebolge, Osmund Heleigh and Dame Alianora lacked a parallel for that
which they encountered; their traverse discovered England razed,
charred, and depopulate--picked bones of an island, a vast and absolute
ruin about which passion-wasted men skulked like rats. Messire Heleigh
and the Queen traveled without molestation; malice and death had
journeyed before them on this road, and had swept it clear.

At every trace of these hideous precessors Osmund Heleigh would say, "By
a day's ride I might have prevented this." Or, "By a day's ride I might
have saved this woman." Or, "By two days' riding I might have fed this
child."

The Queen kept Spartan silence, but daily you saw the fine woman age. In
their slow advance every inch of misery was thrust before her for
inspection; meticulously she observed and evaluated her handiwork.
Enthroned, she had appraised from a distance the righteous wars she set
afoot; trudging thus among the debris of these wars, she found they had
unsuspected aspects. Bastling the royal army had recently sacked.
There remained of this village the skeletons of two houses, and for the
rest a jumble of bricks, rafters half-burned, many calcined fragments of
humanity, and ashes. At Bastling, Messire Heleigh turned to the Queen
toiling behind.

"Oh, madame!" he said, in a dry whisper, "this was the home of so many
men!"

"I burned it," Dame Alianora replied. "That man we passed just now I
killed. Those other men and women--my folly slew them all. And little
children, my Osmund! The hair like flax, blood-dabbled!"

"Oh, madame!" he wailed, in the extremity of his pity.

For she stood with eyes shut, all gray. The Queen demanded: "Why have
they not slain me? Was there no man in England to strangle the proud
wanton? Are you all cowards here?"

He said: "I detect only one coward in the affair. Your men and
Leicester's men also ride ab