"I was a woman to you before you knew that I was a Princess," she said; "you need not forget that I am a woman still, cursed with the plate-mail of rank added to the weariness and inaction of a woman's breaking heart."
I grew acutely conscious that I was not distinguishing myself in this interview. So I dashed again at the wall, and this time, for a moment at least, overbore interruption.
"Ysolinde, my dear lady," I said to her, "you are the Prince's and my good master's wife. And if I have stood aloof, it is that I wished that he should have the companionship which one day I desire to find for myself—and also that I might always have the right to look straight into my master's eyes."
"Now you talk like a silly prating priestling," she said. "You are both mighty careful of your honesty, your virtue, your companionship—your precious master and you. But you do not think what it is to starve a woman's heart, to bid her find her level among broiderers of bannerets and stitchers in tapestry. Ah! if the particular God who happened to be at the digging of us out of the happier pit of oblivion had only made me a man, I, at least, should neither have been a straitlaced Jackanapes nor yet a prating, callow-bearded wiseacre."
"And am I either?" said I, weakly enough.
"You are in danger of becoming both," she said, promptly. "Once I saw better things in you. I thought I had won me a friend, and that for once I might put my anchor down. My husband neglects me, so much cannot have escaped your eagle eye. He is twice my age, and he thinks more of you, more of Councillor Von Dessauer, more of his horse than of me, Ysolinde of Plassenburg. And I was made to be loved and to love. How much of either, think you, have I ever known? The true lot of a woman shut to me, the sweet love of man and woman wiled from me, even the communion of the spirit forbidden. I might as lief carry a wizened nut-kernel within my brain-pan as a thinking soul, for all that any one cares. I am a woman of another age stranded on the shores of a time made only for men. I am the woman priests talk against, or perhaps rather the witch-woman Lilith on the outside of Eden's wall. Or I may be the woman of a time yet to come, when she who is man's mate shall not be only a gay-decked bird to sit on his wrist, tethered with a leash and called back to her master with a silver lure."
These things I had never listened to before, nor, indeed, thought of. Nevertheless, though I could not answer her, I felt in my heart that she was wrong, and that a woman has always power over men, being stronger than all ideals, philosophies, kingdoms—aye, even our holy religion itself.
"After all," I said, piqued a little at her tone, as men are wont to be at that which they do not understand, "my Lady Ysolinde, wherefore should you not tell these things to the Prince, your husband, and not to me, that am neither your husband nor your lover?"
"And if you had been both?" she interjected, a little breathlessly.
"Then, my lady," I replied, stirred by her persistence, "you would have obeyed me and served me just as you say. Or else I should have broken your spirit as a man is broken on the wheel."