“Destiny brought me hither,” Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his eyes. “Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she continue so.” But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be, Alain shook his tawny head. “Presently you shall know, Highness, but not now. I return to Châteauneuf on certain necessary businesses; to-morrow I set out at cock-crow for Milan and the Visconti’s livery. Farewell!” He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat. Thus Tristran de Léonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him. She went to her apartments, singing an inane song about the amorous and joyful time of spring when everything and everybody is happy,---- “El tems amoreus plein de joie, El tems où tote riens s’esgaie,--” and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were born every day, she reflected, such hosts of women-children, who were not princesses and therefore compelled to marry detestable kings. Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant trees. In the slaty twilight the garden’s verdure was lustreless, the grass and foliage were uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere a vista unblurred; in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith, two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers swaddled by ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest as much; and presently came a singing, less musical than that of many a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart in mouth. A lute accompanied the song demurely. Sang Alain: “O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, Be not too obdurate to us who pray That this our transient grant of youth be spent In laughter as befits a holiday, From which the evening summons us away, From which to-morrow wakens us to strife And toil and grief and wisdom,--and to-day Grudge us not life! “O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, Why need our elders trouble us at play? We know that very soon we shall repent The idle follies of our holiday, And being old, shall be as wise as they: But now we are not wise, and lute and fife Plead sweetlier than axioms,--so to-day Grudge us not life! “O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, You have given us youth--and must we cast away The cup undrained and our one coin unspent Because our elders’ beards and hearts are gray? They have forgotten that if we delay Death claps us on the shoulder, and with knife Or cord or fever flouts the prayer we pray-- ‘Grudge us not life!’