hich you overcame? As the hour is late
she is by this tipsy, but she will come. Or perhaps she is with some
paid lover, but if this conqueror, this second Alexander, wills it she
will come. O God!" the girl wailed, on a sudden; "O just and
all-seeing God! are not we of Valois so contemptible that in conquering
us it is the victor who is shamed?"

"Flower o' the marsh!" he said, and his big voice pulsed with many
tender cadences--"flower o' the marsh! it is not the King of England
who now comes to you, but Alain the harper. Henry Plantagenet God has
led hither by the hand to punish the sins of this realm and to reign in
it like a true king. Henry Plantagenet will cast out the Valois from
the throne they have defiled, as Darius Belshazzar, for such is the
desire and the intent of God. But to you comes Alain the harper, not
as a conqueror but as a suppliant--Alain who has loved you
whole-heartedly these two years past and who now kneels before you
entreating grace."

Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he had
fitted action. Suddenly and for the first time she understood that he
believed France his by a divine favor and Heaven's peculiar
intervention. He thought himself God's factor, not His rebel. He was
rather stupid, this huge handsome boy; and realizing it, her hand went
to his shoulder, half maternally.

"It is nobly done, sire. I know that you must wed me to uphold your
claim to France, for otherwise in the world's eyes you are shamed. You
sell, and I with my body purchase, peace for France. There is no need
of a lover's posture when hucksters meet."

"So changed!" he said, and he was silent for an interval, still
kneeling. Then he began: "You force me to point out that I no longer
need a pretext to hold France. France lies before me prostrate. By
God's singular grace I reign in this fair kingdom, mine by right of
conquest, and an alliance with the house of Valois will neither make
nor mar me." She was unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact.
"But I love you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you. Do you
not understand that there can be between us no question of expediency?
Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know of;
now in Troyes they meet again--not as princess and king, but as man and
maid, the wooer and the wooed. Once I touched your heart, I think.
And now in all the world there is one thing I covet--to gain for the
poor k