This she did not deny; but said she: ‘Vain wishing! I know that I shall not die until my lord has made me his. After that it had better be soon.’
He asked her, with trembling voice, what she wanted with the King; for he verily thought that she was going there for one dreadful purpose. She avoided the question. The King had been asking for her, she said, and it was her duty to obey him. ‘He is mending fast, they tell me; and with his health his strength will return. I had rather’—she said it with a sick shudder—‘I had rather see him before he is able to move.’
‘Madam,’ urged the young man, much agitated, ‘I entreat you, for the love of Christ! You must not touch him, or allow.... He is one sore—hideous—poisoned through and through. On my knees I beg of you. Nay, before you go you shall kill me.’
She looked beside and beyond him in her set, pinched way; he saw the doom written plain on her face. In an agony, not knowing what he did, he confronted her boldly. ‘I shall prevent you. You shall not go.’
She said, looking at him now with softened eyes: ‘Oh, if it were possible even now that I might be as once I was, even now I would say to thee, my friend, Take me, O true heart, for I would be true like thee! Ah, if it were possible! Ah, if it were possible!’ Her great eyes seemed homes of mournful light; so longingly did she look that, for a moment, he thought he had conquered her. She gave a shake of the head, and when she looked at him again the kindly hue had gone. ‘But it is not possible—and I am a soiled woman, wounded in the side and defiled by my own blood; for my desire is not as thine.’
‘Oh,’ cried he, ‘what are you saying? Do you condemn yourself?’
She shook her head. ‘I neither condemn nor condone: I speak the truth. I ache for my lover; I must work my fingers to the bone for him.’
‘Not while I have mine—to work for you—to sin for you.’
‘You cannot. Your fingers are too tender.’