“Flower of the marsh!” he said, and his voice pulsed with tender cadences—­“flower of the marsh! it is not the King of England who now comes to you, but Alain the harper.  Henry Plantagenet God has led hither by the hand to punish the sins of this realm, and to reign in it like a true king.  Henry Plantagenet will cast out the Valois from the throne they have defiled, as Darius cast out Belshazzar, for such is the desire and the intent of God.  But to you comes Alain the harper, not as a conqueror but as a suppliant,—­Alain who has loved you whole-heartedly these two years past, and who now kneels before you entreating grace.”

Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he had fitted action.  Suddenly and for the first time she understood that he believed France to be his by Divine favor and Heaven’s peculiar intervention.  He thought himself God’s factor, not His rebel.  He was rather stupid, this huge, handsome, squinting boy; and as she comprehended this, her hand went to his shoulder, half maternally.

“It is nobly done, sire.  But I understand.  You must marry me in order to uphold your claim to France.  You sell, and I with my body purchase, peace for France.  There is no need of a lover’s posture when hucksters meet.”

“So changed!” he said, and he was silent for an interval, still kneeling.  Then he began:  “You force me to point out that I do not need any pretext for holding France.  France lies before me prostrate.  By God’s singular grace I reign in this fair kingdom, mine by right of conquest, and an alliance with the house of Valois will neither make nor mar me.”  She was unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact.  “But I love you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you.  Do you not understand that there can be between us no question of expediency?  Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know of; now in Troyes they meet again,—­not as princess and king, but as man and maid, the wooer and the wooed.  Once I touched your heart, I think.  And now in all the world there is one thing I covet—­to gain for the poor king some portion of that love you would have squandered on the harper.”  His hand closed upon her hand.

At his touch the girl’s composure vanished.  “My lord, you woo too timidly for one who comes with many loud-voiced advocates.  I am daughter to the King of France, and next to my soul’s salvation I esteem the welfare of France.  Can I, then, fail to love the King of England, who chooses the blood of my countrymen as a judicious garb to come a-wooing in?  How else, since you have ravaged my native land, since you have besmirched the name I bear, since yonder afield every wound in my dead and yet unburied Frenchmen is to me a mouth which shrieks your infamy?”

He rose.  “And yet, for all that, you love me.”

She could not at the first effort find words with which to answer him, but presently she said, quite simply, “To see you lying in your coffin I would willingly give up my hope of heaven, for heaven can afford no sight more desirable.”