“Madam, recall that in the sun we play But for an hour, then have the worm for wife, The tomb for habitation--and to-day Grudge us not life!” Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the crotch of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but the Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort. “You came!” this harper said, transfigured; and then again, “You came!” She breathed, “Yes.” So for a long time they stood looking at each other. She found adoration in his eyes and quailed before it; and in the man’s mind no grimy and mean incident of the past but marshalled to leer at his unworthiness: yet in that primitive garden the first man and woman, meeting, knew no sweeter terror. It was by the minstrel that a familiar earth and the grating speech of earth were earlier regained. “The affair is of the suddenest,” Alain observed, and he now swung the lute behind him. He indicated no intention of touching her, though he might easily have done so as he sat there exalted by the height of his horse. “A meteor arrives with more prelude. But Love is an arbitrary lord; desiring my heart, he has seized it, and accordingly I would now brave hell to come to you, and finding you there, would esteem hell a pleasure-garden. I have already made my prayer to Destiny that she concede me love. Now of God, our Father and Master, I entreat quick death if I am not to win you. For, God willing, I shall come to you again, even if in order to do this I have to split the world like a rotten orange.” “Madness! Oh, brave, sweet madness!” Katharine said. “You are a minstrel and I am a king’s daughter.” “Is it madness? Why, then, I think sane persons are to be commiserated. And indeed I spy in all this same design. Across half the earth I came to you, led by a fox. Hey God’s face!” Alain swore, “the foxes which Samson, that old sinewy captain, loosed among the corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as this fox has set afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and olives spoilt, a bushel or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin. There will be martial argument shortly if you bid me come again.” “I bid you come,” said Katharine; and after they had stared at each other for a long while, he rode away in silence. It was through a dank and tear-flawed world that she stumbled conventward, while out of the east the sun came bathed in mists, a watery sun no brighter than a silver coin.