'I could sleep an you would let me,' he said sharply. 'I tell you the King shall be another man in the morning.' 'Ay, but now. But now....' He imagined the pens in that distant room creaking over the paper with their committals, and he wished to upbraid Cromwell. It was his policy of combining with Lutherans that had brought them to this. Heavy thundering came on the outer door. 'The King comes,' Cromwell cried victoriously. He went swiftly from the room. The Archbishop closed his eyes and suddenly remembered the time when he had been a child. Privy Seal had an angry and contemptuous frown at his return. 'They have kept him from me.' He threw a little scroll on to the table. Its white silence made Cranmer shudder; it seemed to have something of the heavy threatening of the King's self. 'We may go to bed,' Cromwell said. 'They have devised their shift.' 'You say?' 'They have temporised, they have delayed. I know them.' He quoted contemptuously from the letter: 'We would have you send presently to ask of the Almain Lords with the Lady Anne the papers concerning her pre-contract to the Duke of Lorraine.' Cranmer was upon the point of going away in the joy of this respite. But his desire to talk delayed him, and he began to talk about the canon law and pre-contracts of marriage. It was a very valid cause of nullity all the doctors held. 'Think you I have not made very certain the pre-contract was nullified? This is no shift,' and Cromwell spoke wearily and angrily. 'Goodman Archbishop, dry your tears. To-night the King is hot with disgust, but I tell you he will not cast away his kingdom upon whether her teeth be white or yellow. This is no woman's man.' Cranmer came nearer the fire and stretched out his lean hands. 'He hath dandled of late with the Lady Cassilis.' 'Well, he hath been pleasant with her.' Cranmer urged: 'A full-blown man towards his failing years is more prone to women than before.' 'Then he may go a-wenching.' He began to speak with a weary passion. To cast away the Lady Anne now were a madness. It would be to stand without a friend before all nations armed to their downfall. This King would do no jot to lose a patch upon his sovereignty. Cranmer sought to speak. 'His Highness is always hot o'nights,' Cromwell kept on. 'It is in his nature so to be. But by morning the German princes shall make him afraid again and the Lutherans of this goodly realm. Those mad swine our friends!' 'He will burn seven of them on to-morrow sennight,' Cranmer said. 'Nay! I shall enlarge them on Wednesday.' Cranmer shivered. 'They grow very insolent. I am afraid.' Cromwell answered with a studied nonchalance: 'My bones tell me it shall be an eastward wind. It shall not rain on the new Queen's bridals.' He drank up his warm wine and brushed the crumbs from the furs round his neck. 'You are a very certain man,' the Archbishop said.