ut's one window. We
know nowadays it was not merely the trees she considered.

Dame Blanch, it seemed, was undisposed to mirth. "For we have slain
the stag, beau sire," she said, "and have made of his death a brave
diversion. To-day we have had our sport of death,--and presently the
gay years wind past us, as our cavalcade came toward the stag, and
God's incurious angel slays us, much as we slew the stag. And we will
not understand, and we will wonder, as the stag did, in helpless
wonder. And Death will have his sport of us, as in atonement." Here
her big eyes shone, as the sun glints upon a sand-bottomed pool. "Ohe,
I have known such happiness of late, beau sire, that I am hideously
afraid to die." And again the heavily fringed eyelids lifted, and
within the moment sank contentedly.

For the King had murmured "Happiness!" and his glance was rapacious.

"But I am discourteous," Blanch said, "to prate of death thus drearily.
Let us flout him, then, with some gay song." And toward Sire Edward
she handed Rigon's lute.

The King accepted it. "Death is not reasonably mocked," Sire Edward
said, "since in the end he conquers, and of the very lips that gibed at
him remains but a little dust. Nay, rather should I who already stand
beneath a lifted sword make for my immediate conqueror a Sirvente,
which is the Song of Service."

Sang Sire Edward:

"_I sing of Death, that cometh to the king,
And lightly plucks him from the cushioned throne,
And drowns his glory and his warfaring
In unrecorded dim oblivion,
And girds another with the sword thereof,
And sets another in his stead to reign,
What time the monarch nakedly must gain
Styx' hither shore and nakedly complain
'Midst twittering ghosts lamenting life and love._

"_For Death is merciless: a crack-brained king
He raises in the place of Prester John,
Smites Priam, and mid-course in conquering
Bids Caesar pause; the wit of Salomon,
The wealth of Nero and the pride thereof,
And prowess of great captains--of Gawayne,
Darius, Jeshua, and Charlemaigne--
Wheedle and bribe and surfeit Death in vain
And get no grace of him nor any love._

"_Incuriously he smites the armored king
And tricks his wisest counsellor--_"

"True, O God!" murmured the tiny woman, who sat beside the window
yonder. And Dame Meregrett rose and in silence passed from the room.

The two started, and laughed in common, and af