I give you the gist of their talk, and that in all conscience is trivial. But it was a day when one entered love’s wardship with a plunge, not in more modern fashion venturing forward bit by bit, as though love were so much cold water. So they talked for a long while, with laughter mutually provoked and shared, with divers eloquent and dangerous pauses. The harper squatted upon the ground, the Princess leaned over the wall; but to all intent they sat together upon the loftiest turret of Paradise, and it was a full two hours before Katharine hinted at departure.
Alain rose, approaching the wall. “To-morrow I ride for Milan to take service with Duke Filippo. I had broken my journey these three days past at Châteauneuf yonder, where this fox has been harrying my host’s chickens. To-day I went out to slay him, and he led me, his murderer, to the fairest lady earth may boast. Do you not think that, in returning good for evil, this fox was a true Christian, my Princess?”
Katharine said: “I lament his destruction. Farewell, Messire Alain! And since chance brought you hither—”
“Destiny brought me hither,” Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his eyes. “Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she continue so.” But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be, Alain shook his tawny head. “Presently you shall know, Highness, but not now. I return to Châteauneuf on certain necessary businesses; to-morrow I set out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti’s livery. Farewell!” He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat. Thus Tristran de Léonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him. She went to her apartments, singing an inane song about the amorous and joyful time of spring when everything and everybody is happy,—
“El tems amoreus plein de joie,
El tems où tote riens s’esgaie,—”
and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were born every day, she reflected, such hosts of women-children, who were not princesses, and therefore compelled to marry detestable kings.
Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant trees. In the slaty twilight the garden’s verdure was lustreless, the grass and foliage were uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere a vista unblurred; in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith, two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers swaddled by ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest as much; and presently came a singing, less musical than that of many a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart in mouth. A lute accompanied the song demurely.
Sang Alain:
“O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,