"Oh yes, I suppose he must die. Surely he must die. His plea is specious, but Randolph Harby is dead." "Brave, murdered Randolph." Rufus's regret was pathetic. "Shall I give order for the firing party?" He made as if to write. Charles frowned. "You are over-zealous, sir; I have not made up my mind." Rufus read obstinacy in the royal face and knew that it were useless to argue further then. "As your Majesty please," he submitted. The King seated himself heavily at the table and fixed his eyes upon an open map. Behind his back Rufus shrugged his shoulders and left the room. Halfman followed, a very Jaques of meditations, touched by the pathos of the tired King, grimly diverted by the ruffianism of Rufus. A mad world! XXVII THE KING'S IMAGE The melancholy King sat in the great room alone. His eyes were fixed on the map, but his mind was far away, over yonder in Holland where she was--she, the Queen. The thought of her beauty troubled him; her soft voice seemed to be whispering at his ear in her pretty broken English. Some lines in a play he knew came into his mind, lines uttered by a king who, like himself, had known the horror of civil war, lines which said that it were better to be a shepherd and tend sheep than to be an English king. He sighed and his handsome head drooped upon his breast, and the brown hair that was graying so fast hid his cheeks. His eyes were wet and he could not see the map; it was all a blur of meaningless criss-cross lines. This would not do; he must think, he must plan, he must decide; but his head remained bent and the map remained a criss-cross puzzle. The image of himself, which faced him as he sat, that picture of a king, royal, joyous, unchallenged, seemed to move a little, as if the bright figure on the canvas sought to approach and reassure the dejected man who crouched over the map of a divided kingdom. It did move, the serene Van Dyck portrait; it moved a little, and a little, and a little more; moved sideway as a door moves, yawned a foot of space between frame and wall, and through that foot of space Brilliana slipped into the room. "Your Majesty," she said, softly. The King gave a little start as he lifted his head and looked at her. She thought she had never seen so pitifully a weary face as the face of her King, and her heart ached for him, but it ached most for her lover. Charles rose to his feet, flawlessly courteous, much wondering. "How did you come here, mistress?" he asked, and she sighed at the tired sound of his voice. "I understood from Sir Rufus that you were for the time--" He paused, and Brilliana calmly finished the sentence. "Confined to my apartments. Yes, that was Rufus's plan. But though Rufus calls himself captain of this castle he does not know it so well as I do. There are ways of getting hither and thither that he does not dream of." "You are a determined young woman," the King said, with a faint smile, "if you think so lightly of the privacy of your King."