'Your Highness,' she said, 'I would not have the Church brought back to this land by one deemed an adult'ress. Assuredly, it should not prosper.'
Again he sought to stay her going, holding out his arms to enfold her. She stepped back.
'Your Highness,' she said, 'I will speak some last words. And, as you know me well, you know that these irrevocably shall be my last to you!'
He cried—'Delay till you hear——'
'There shall be no delay,' she said; 'I will not hear.' She smoothed a strand of hair that had fallen over her forehead in a gesture that she always had when she was deep in thoughts.
'This is what I would say,' she uttered. And she began to speak levelly—
'Very truly you say when you say that once I made offer to be your leman. But it was when I was a young girl, mazed with reading of books in the learned tongue, and seeing all men as if they were men of those days. So you appeared to me such a man as was Pompey the Great, or as was Marius, or as was Sylla. For each of these great men erred; yet they erred greatly as rulers that would rule. Or rather I did see you such a one as was Cæsar Julius, who, as you well wot, crossed a Rubicon and set out upon a high endeavour. But you—never will you cross any Rubicon; always you blow hot in the evening and cold at dawn. Neither do you, as I had dreamed you did, rule in this your realm. For, even as a crow that just now I watched, you are blown hither and thither by every gust that blows. Now the wind of gossips blows so that you must have my life. And, before God, I am glad of it.'
'Before God!' he cried out, 'I would save you!'
'Aye,' she answered sadly, 'to-day you would save me; to-morrow a foul speech of one mine enemy shall gird you again to slay me. On the morrow you will repent, and on the morrow of that again you will repent of that. So you will balance and trim. If to-day you send a messenger to Rome, to-morrow you will send another, hastening by a shorter route, to stay him. And this I tell you, that I am not one to let my name be bandied for many days in the mouths of men. I had rather be called a sinner, adjudged and dead and forgotten. So I am glad that I am cast to die.'
'You shall not die!' the King cried. 'Body of God, you shall not die! I cannot live lacking thee. Kat—— Kat——'