That they may judge righteously!
Yet, O Eternal Father, Thou who art merciful, grant us to temper judgment with mercy.
Judgment with mercy!
Thou, who art Everlasting Truth, grant us to be true.
Grant us to be true!
And then, while the Archbishop was standing with hands outspread in benediction over the kneeling throng, the music of a wonderful, rhythmic Amen, oft repeated, thrilled and throbbed from arch to arch.
How cruel the changes that had swept the island-kingdom since the last High Court had assembled in this Council-Chamber! Their young and charming monarch, in the very exuberance of life, had been summoned without warning to lay it down. His little child, the hope of the realm, had come and passed as swiftly as some fair vision of the night, leaving scarcely a trace of his short earthly career save in the heart of the mother where its every memory would be cherished deathlessly. And for their fair young Queen, who stood among them widowed and childless—in lieu of the fulfilment of the radiant hopes which had brought her hither, there had been a pitiful record of conspiracy, betrayal and captivity.
These memories smote upon the nobler souls in the throng, moving them to compassion and admiration; for what knight among them could more bravely have borne such suffering and thwarting?
But Caterina, in trailing garments glistening like the snows of Troödos, stood like a queenly lily among her white-robed maids of honor, exalted by the solemnity of the service and looking deep into the heart of her life-problems—ignoring self and contests—dreaming only of duty and the achievement that her people's love might render possible.