"Kiss me and go," she said. "What can I say? You know my whole heart. All hath been said between you and me. We have been surprised by misfortune, and I am something unprepared. But never doubt that I love thee wholly."
The King again made that gesture of his hand, pressed first to his heart and then to his forehead, as if heart and head were equally wounded, then he went to a corner of the room where an old clavichord stood and lifted up the cover.
"Sing to me before I go, Mary," he whispered.
The Queen rose heavily. Her bold spirit was bent with gloom; ill-health and the continual failure of the King's intrigues and the King's arms had given her a kind of disgust of life. As she had been more despotic than the King in prosperity, so she was more bitter and stern in adversity. As she crossed the window, open on the soft dimness of the garden, she thought, through her miserable languor, "If, indeed, I never see him again, the scent of these roses will be with me all my life."
"I will light the candles," said Charles.
"No—no," she answered. She seated herself and her hands touched the keys.
Her voice, once the pride of two courts and her greatest accomplishment, rose in a little French song; but tears and suffering had taken the clearness from her notes that once had rung so true.
At the end of the first verse she broke down and, putting her hands before her face, wept.
"I do love thee," said the King, bending over her in a passion of tenderness. "More than words can rehearse I do love thee, dear Mary, and have loved thee all my days. Be not confounded—it cannot be God's will to desert us utterly. Hold up your heart. Oh I do love thee, or I had rather not have lived to see my present miseries—but thou hast made life worth while to me. My dear wife—my dear, dear wife."
The Queen did not move, and her dry, difficult sobs did not cease.