rvention at this late stage, I
take it, can have no outcome save to render you absurd. So, come now!
be advised by me, messire--"

Prince Edward said, "I am not here to talk."

"--For, messire, I grant you that in ordinary disputation the cutting of
one gentleman's throat by another gentleman is well enough, since the
argument is unanswerable. Yet in this case we have each of us too much
to live for; you to govern your reconquered England, and I--you perceive
that I am candid--to achieve in turn the kingship of another realm. Now
to secure this realm, possession of the Lady Ellinor is to me essential;
to you she is nothing."

"She is a woman whom I have deeply wronged," Prince Edward said, "and to
whom, God willing, I mean to make atonement. Ten years ago they wedded
us, willy-nilly, to avert the impending war between Spain and England;
to-day El Sabio intends to purchase Germany with her body as the price;
you to get Sicily as her husband. Mort de Dieu! is a woman thus to be
bought and sold like hog's flesh! We have other and cleaner customs, we
of England."

"Eh, and who purchased the woman first?" de Gatinais spat at him,
viciously, for the Frenchman now saw his air-castle shaken to the
corner-stone.

"They wedded me to the child in order that a great war might be averted.
I acquiesced, since it appeared preferable that two people suffer
inconvenience rather than many thousands be slain. And still this is my
view of the matter. Yet afterward I failed her. Love had no clause in
our agreement; but I owed her more protection than I have afforded.
England has long been no place for women. I thought she would comprehend
that much. But I know very little of women. Battle and death are more
wholesome companions, I now perceive, than such folk as you and
Alphonso. Woman is the weaker vessel--the negligence was mine--I may not
blame her." The big and simple man was in an agony of repentance.

On a sudden he strode forward, his sword now shifted to his left hand
and his right hand outstretched. "One and all, we are weaklings in the
net of circumstance. Shall one herring, then, blame his fellow if his
fellow jostle him? We walk as in a mist of error, and Belial is fertile
in allurements; yet always it is granted us to behold that sin is sin. I
have perhaps sinned through anger, Messire de Gatinais, more deeply than
you have planned to sin through luxury and through ambition. Let us then
cry quits, Messire de Gatinais, an