The queen stared astonished at the face before her with its new look of pride and excitement, then with rising anger she said: Is my maid too proud then to accept a gift from me? Does she not know that a single one of those gems thrown on the floor would be more than a fortune to her? The girl replied in the same proud way: I am not your maid, and gems are no more to me than pebbles from the brook! Then all at once recovering her meek, gentle manner she cried in a voice that pierced the queen's heart: O, not your maid, only your fellow-worker in our Master's fields and pleasure-grounds! Before I ever beheld your face, and since we have been together, my heart has bled for you, and my daily cry to God has been: Forgive her! Forgive her, for his sake who died for our sins! And this shall I continue to cry though I shall see you no more on earth. But we shall meet again. Not, O unhappy queen, at life's end, but long afterwards--long, long years! long ages! Dropping on her knees she caught and kissed the queen's hand, shedding abundant tears on it, then rose and was quickly gone. Elfrida, left to herself, scarcely recovered from the shock of surprise at that sudden change in the girl's manner, began to wonder at her own blindness in not having seen through her disguise from the first. The revelation had come to her only at the last moment in that proud gesture and speech when her gift was rejected, not without scorn. A child of nobles great as any in the land, what had made her do this thing? What indeed but the heavenly spirit that was in her, the spirit that was in Christ--the divine passion to save! Now she began to ponder on those last words the maid had spoken, and the more she thought of them the greater became her sadness until it was like the approach of death. O terrible words! Yet it was what she had feared, even when she had dared to hope for forgiveness. Now she knew what her life after death was to be since the word had been spoken by those inspired lips. O dreadful destiny! To dwell alone, to tread alone that desert desolate, that illimitable waste of burning sand stretching from star to star through infinite space, where was no rock nor tree to give her shade, no fountain to quench her fiery thirst! For that was how she imaged the future life, as a desert to be dwelt in until in the end, when in God's good time--the time of One to whom a thousand years are as one day--she would receive the final pardon and be admitted to rest in a green and shaded place. Overcome with the agonising thought she sank down on her couch and fell into a faint. In that state she was found by her women, reclining, still as death, with eyes closed, the whiteness of death in her face; and thinking her dead they rushed out terrified, crying aloud and lamenting that the queen was dead. XII