"I shall never forget that night when mother told me. Nobody will ever know what she suffered bravely, quietly, hopelessly, wearing what she called her crown of thorns. And then one night she took me on her knee—a poor, little, scraggy thing I was, all arms and legs. How she cried—and I was crying too. She told me that after her I must be brave and wear the crown of thorns, and I nearly cried my head off. Yes"—Margaret's voice broke with a little whimper—"and I didn't know then all that it meant."
She brushed away a tear with her gloved hand, then looked up.
"I wonder," she said abruptly, "why I told you—you of all men. Forget what I said, do you hear?—forget that I whined like a sick child—forget, I say! No, don't speak to me." Then in low, awed tones, "I've got to think for the people." The horror rushed in upon her senses, and feeling as one does in the presence of the dead, in overwhelming sorrow: "I am the Queen," she said, "and I must hold the scales, must judge for the people. I can't, I daren't. Oh, what am I that I should judge for the people? A little while ago I was playing with dolls, on Monday rode with my Guard, on Tuesday danced, and to-day I have to judge between you and Ulster, between life and death, between war and peace!"
But to Brand it seemed a dispensation of heaven that the fate of mankind was not at the mercy either of a treacherous politician, or of a master of industry, stained with the vices of the world, blunted and brutalized by lifelong struggle. This child, in her innocence and her purity, could only see the great plain issue between right and wrong.
Margaret looked up into his face. "And I must make up my mind?" she asked.
The whole fate of the world hung in the balance, and he answered gently—
"Yes."
A burst of triumphant music filled the theatre, and then the clatter of applause, and, in the silence afterwards, from some far distance of the streets, a sound, a confused murmur growing to a dull, ominous roar.
"Hark," whispered the Queen, "what is that?"
And Brand answered, "That is the beginning of the storm."