Seeing that the King smiled, as though he had received a just panegyric, a great clamour of applause went up in the hall, and swaying beneath the weight of the cornucopia she came to the King over the path of green herbs and boughs. Henry reached out his hands, himself, to take his present, smiling and genial; and that alone was a sign of great favour, for by rights she should have knelt with it, offered it and then receded, giving it into the arms of a serving man. She passed on, and would have crowned the Queen with the silver wreath; but the great hood that Anne wore stood in the way, therefore she laid it in the Queen's lap. Henry caught at her hanging sleeve. 'That was a gay fine speech,' he said. 'I will have it printed.' Little ripples of fear and coldness ran over her, for her dress was thin and her arms bared between the loops above. Her eyes roved round upon the people as if, tall and white, she were a Christian virgin in the agonies of martyrdom. She tried to pull her sleeve from between his great fingers, and she whispered in a sort of terror: 'You stay the masque!' He lay back in his chair, laughing so that his grey beard shook. 'Why, thou art a pert baggage,' he said. 'I could stay their singing for good an I would.' He looked her up and down, commanding and good-humouredly malicious. She put her hand to her throat as if it throbbed, and uttered with a calmness of desperation: 'That were great pity. They have practised much, and their breaths are passable sweet.' The godheads with their beards of tow, their lyres and thunderbolts all gilt, stood in an awkward crescent, their music having stopped. Henry laughed at them. 'I know thy face,' he said. 'It would be less than a king to forget it.' 'I am Katharine Howard,' she faltered, stretching out her hands beseechingly. 'Let me go back to my place.' 'Oh, aye!' he answered. 'But thou'st shed thy rags since I saw thee on a mule.' He loosed her sleeve. 'Let the good men sing, 'a God's name.' In her relief to be free she stumbled on the sweet herbs. * * * * *