From Margaret's neck there hung a cross of diamonds, a thing of pitiless white splendour. The Queen pressed the sharp stones of it against her forehead. "You," she said, "are ready to die for England, and I--and I--and I have sold my body to this Alexander of Russia. Death would be such a little thing compared with that. If you give yourself up, and I give myself up, there'll be no civil war." "There'll be no war," he answered thoughtfully. "No war if the people accept the shame of peace." "They will think as we do," said the Queen. "The men like you, the women like me. The same blood runs in them--and they'd cry out for war." Margaret laughed nervously, and dropping the cross, bent forward, her elbows resting on her knees, her face in her hands. "To think for the people--to live for the people, I was drilled to that, to be married for the people with a thing that one could not touch with the end of a glove. Ugh!" She shivered. "For the people, and I hate them! Yes, hate them. I wouldn't mind dying for them, but to live for them like that is horrible! "I shall never forget that night when mother told me. Nobody will ever know what she suffered bravely, quietly, hopelessly, wearing what she called her crown of thorns. And then one night she took me on her knee--a poor, little, scraggy thing I was, all arms and legs. How she cried--and I was crying too. She told me that after her I must be brave and wear the crown of thorns, and I nearly cried my head off. Yes"--Margaret's voice broke with a little whimper--"and I didn't know then all that it meant." She brushed away a tear with her gloved hand, then looked up. "I wonder," she said abruptly, "why I told you--you of all men. Forget what I said, do you hear?--forget that I whined like a sick child--forget, I say! No, don't speak to me." Then in low, awed tones, "I've got to think for the people." The horror rushed in upon her senses, and feeling as one does in the presence of the dead, in overwhelming sorrow: "I am the Queen," she said, "and I must hold the scales, must judge for the people. I can't, I daren't. Oh, what am I that I should judge for the people? A little while ago I was playing with dolls, on Monday rode with my Guard, on Tuesday danced, and to-day I have to judge between you and Ulster, between life and death, between war and peace!" But to Brand it seemed a dispensation of heaven that the fate of mankind was not at the mercy either of a treacherous politician, or of a master of industry, stained with the vices of the world, blunted and brutalized by lifelong struggle. This child, in her innocence and her purity, could only see the great plain issue between right and wrong. Margaret looked up into his face. "And I must make up my mind?" she asked. The whole fate of the world hung in the balance, and he answered gently-- "Yes."