With grim precision Laure finished dressing and broke her fast, meantime keeping her thoughts fixed on the most trivial subjects. But when her meal was over, and she knew how long the day must be, and realized that there was no escape from herself, she sat down in the largest chair in the room, let her eyes wander over the familiar objects, and allowed her thoughts to take what form they would. The terrible fatigue of her lonely journey was quite gone now. Nor was there in her own person anything to remind her of her recent suffering. Her body was clean, well-clothed, and warm, and, in her youth, the memory of the past terrible two months grew dim, and instead there rose up before her mental vision a very different picture,—an image,—the image of the idol and the ruin of her life: her joy, her shame, her ecstasy, and her despair; Bertrand Flammecœur, the troubadour, in his matchless, irresponsible untrustworthiness, his incomparable beauty, his fiery enthusiasm. For, strange as it may be, all the bitterness, all the suffering that this man had brought her, had not killed her love for him nor blackened his image in her heart. There being nothing to check her fancy, Laure went mentally back to the hour of her flight with the troubadour, and passed slowly over the whole period of their life together,—from the first days of physical agony and mental shame through the period of increasing delight, to the culmination of her happiness in him and the beginning of its end. Once more she reviewed their journey out of Brittany up the north coast to Calais, whence, in the fair spring weather, they had taken passage to Dover, in England, thence making their way by slow stages to London. Here, in the train of the Duke of Gloucester, uncle of the young Richard, the most powerful man in the kingdom, the two had passed their summer. To Laure it was a summer of fairyland. Flammecœur had become her god, and she saw him ascend height after height of popularity and favor. His nationality and his profession won for him instant recognition, for trouvères from Provence were Persian nightingales to the England of that day. And after his first introduction into high places, his breeding, his dress, and his graceful personality brought him an enviable position, especially among the women of the court. Laure passed always as his wife, and was adroitly exploited among the court gallants. She was still too single-minded to receive the slightest taint from this life. She was found to be as incorruptible as she was pretty, and by this unusual fact her own reputation went up, and her popularity rivalled that of the troubadour. If this manner of life sometimes weighed on her and brought her something of remorse, she found her consolation in the fact that Flammecœur never wavered in his fidelity. For the time being he was thoroughly infatuated with her; and in their stolen hours of golden solitude both of them found their reward for the ofttimes wearisome