“Nothing--nothing--nothing!” ran through her head and sat in her heart. “Nothing--grey nothing--black nothing. I am come to that. I stick in that. I go not up nor down, nor to nor fro. Nothing--nothing--nothing! Nothing that yet is wretched, being nothing!” She lay with dark eyes hidden in bend of arm. “Oh, something--something--something come to me!” She lay in the grey room in the world of grey fog. A pebble wrapped in a glove, thrown from without, struck the glass of the window above her. She knew that kind of sound, that kind of knock. “Ho, you within!” At first she meant not to look, not to answer. It was all grey nothing--no sun out there to lift the cloud. Habit, old, dull and very strong, at last haled her from her pillows and set her face against the pane. She could not see. She pressed the catch that opened the small square in the larger square. Now the fog poured in, and the sound of the river. She made out the small boat below, one man standing in it. He saw her face come out of the mist. Blue eyes looked into black eyes. “Ah, so doleful is it in this fog!” cried young Thomas Bettany. “Aye, and aye again. I yawn with death up here!” “So grey it is none will see and steal my boat fastened here. Foot here and foot there, and so I could climb--were the window opened more wide!” She opened it. He did as he had pictured and entered the oak room. “I have been,” she said, “in two minds whether to hang myself or drown myself. I want no kisses. I like you because you have blue speedwell eyes and are truly gay. If you can sit and talk and make me who sit inside gay, do it! If you cannot--back to the river!” “Your blue and red warm the grey cloud. Are you melancholy? Sometimes I am so until I would give the world a buffet and depart.” “You are nineteen and a young king and know naught about it!” said Morgen Fay. She took her seat by the small fire on the hearth and he sat opposite. He had no amorous passion for her and she knew it. Once she would have set herself to making him find it. Now she did not care. She had not cared once this year. She felt no amorous movement toward him, but she liked him. She was thirty-two. Now, sitting there, she could have said “Son--” He nursed his knee, looking now at the blue and red flames and now at Morgen Fay. “To get back a gay heart why not go to Saint Leofric’s?” “I don’t believe in miracles. If they are, they are for others, not for me.” “Why don’t you believe?”