“Then, since you will have it so,” said the woman eagerly, “you are the king I choose, mine own. The other is but the prince in the fairybook; the delicious unreality that obtrudes in the dreams of girls in the middle of the night. You are the true prince of flesh and blood; he, the vague shadow without an entity.” The husband and wife were drawn together in a caress of reconciliation, when footsteps were heard upon the stairs. They were followed by the entrance of the King. Now that their hearts were at peace one towards another, Charles’s friends were able to attend to the terrible situation in which all three found themselves. They both observed with something of a shock that, although the King knew his life to hang on a mere thread, he seemed wholly indifferent to his fate. It would have been superb had it not been too grievous to contemplate. “I have been talking with our landlord,” he said, “and I must say I like him no better now I am his master instead of his servant. There never was a countenance of such a concentrated villainy, I think. I never saw such greedy, shifty little eyes as that man hath. I have been talking to him for half an hour, but never once have I got him to look me in the face. I am sure Judas Iscariot was a man of scruples by comparison.” “Sire,” said the woman, “your only hope lies in immediate flight. You must go at once from here, Sire. That man, the landlord, is hungry to betray you, and probably hath already done so. Oh, flee at once, Sire!” “I know not where to go,” said the King. “Anywhere, anywhere away from this hateful house, Sire,” said the lady. “But you must go at once. Tarry an hour, and all may be lost.” The King sat down in a chair, wearily. He yawned, and covered his eyes with his hands. “I think not to-day, madam,” he said, in a voice whose diffidence hurt her like a blow,--“not to-day, I think. I have not the energy. Besides, how tired I am of it all, how utterly weary! The game is not worth the candle. My friends urge me to flee this way and that; they conceal me in ditches, up trees, behind secret panels, and in priests’ holes, day after day. They bring me food in the dark; paint my face; clap various disguises about me, each more hideous than the one before. They turn me about from pillar to post; head me, cut me off, send me back again; confound me with all manner of conflicting counsels. And for what? That I may still fall into the hands of my enemies. I am not now a yard nearer my freedom than I was when I rode from the field of Worcester. I am wearied to death by the whole business; I am tired; I yawn. I will take a day’s rest, the first for many a wretched month; I will take it in your society, madam, and see if I have a better inclination to continue this struggle of one unhappy man against overwhelming circumstance to-morrow.” “There will be no to-morrow, Sire,” said the lady. “Tarry here in this accursed place till then, and you will be surely ta’en.”