"Here comes your lady. I think your love-fruit is ripe and you need not stand on tip-toe to pick it." Villon answered him with burning eyes: "Sire, I believe I have won the rose of the world." Louis chuckled like an enraptured raven. "The Count of Montcorbier is luckier than François Villon. But the lady has a high mind and a fierce spirit. She may not relish the deception, pardon the cheat his lie!" Something in the king's words struck upon Villon's fiery hopes like a stream of ice-cold water and seemed to quench them. He was like a man who, long playing at blind-man's-buff, suddenly has the bandage plucked from his eyes and stands dazzled and blinking in the sunlight. After all, he was not the Count of Montcorbier; after all, he was not the Grand Constable of France; after all, he was only a masquerading beggar who had won the heart of a lady under false colours; who had triumphed by flying a false flag. In all those seven splendid days this simple thought had never come to him. His whole soul had been so taken captive by the fascination of the part he had been permitted to play that he forgot he was playing a part, and allowed his fancy to believe that a week-long dream would endure forever. Now he knew himself and what he had done and what he must do. A divine farce had turned to sudden tragedy. He turned to the king with a groan. "Cheat, lie," he repeated. "Sire, those words fling me from my fool's paradise. Kill me if I fail to win her, but I will tear this mask from my face, this falsehood from my heart." Louis grinned at him. "Please yourself. Win her or swing. Either way contents me." As he spoke, he turned away. Katherine had descended the steps and was moving across the grass to greet her hero, who stood with clasped hands in the moonlight like a man struck dumb. Katherine was carrying in her hands a crimson scarf fringed with gold, and she lifted it to him as she spoke. "Wear this with my prayers. With it, I give you my hand and heart. You shall carry my plighted troth with you into the battle. Let me tell my love to all the world." Swiftly and lightly she threw it about his neck before he could find words, but now he spoke: "Wait, wait! You must say no more until you know me." The girl's eyes widened with surprise. "Do I not know you?" Villon thrust his face forward very close to hers. "Look into my face," he said. "Look well. Do you see nothing there that reminds you of other hours?" Katherine smiled divinely. "Of happy hours in this rose garden." Villon insisted fiercely: "No, no! Of a dark night, a tavern, a cloaked woman, a sordid fellow dreaming sottishly by the fire, a prayer, a love-tale and a promise, a crowd of bullies and wantons, a quarrel, a fight with sword and lantern in the dark, a breast knot of ribbon flung from a gallery--" Katherine recoiled a little, with a horror in her eyes. "What are you trying to tell me?" she asked. Villon dropped on his knees with a groan.