This sudden spate of falsehood had come upon him, as it were, from the outside.
"If the truth will not help me," he muttered, "why, I can lie with any man. Else wherefore was I born a Dane? But, by my faith, my mistress must have done some rare tall lying on her own account, and now I am reaping that which she hath sown."
As he kneeled thus the Princess bent over him with a quizzical expression on her face.
"You are sure that you speak the truth now? Your wound is not again causing you to dote?"
"Nay," said the Sparhawk; "indeed, 'tis almost healed."
"Where was the wound?" queried the Princess anxiously.
"There were two," answered Von Lynar diplomatically; "one in my shoulder at the base of my neck, and the other, more dangerous because internal, on the head itself."
"Let me see."
She came and stood above him as he put his hand to the collar of his doublet, and, unfastening a tie, he slipped it down a little and showed her at the spring of his neck Werner von Orseln's thrust.
"And the other," she said, covering it up with a little shudder, "that on the head, where is it?"