“You loved Alain.”

“I loved the husk of a man.  You can never comprehend how utterly I loved him.”

“You are stubborn.  I shall have trouble with you.  But this notion of yours is plainly a mistaken notion.  That you love me is indisputable, and this I propose to demonstrate.  You will observe that I am quite unarmed except for this dagger, which I now throw out of the window—­” with the word it jangled in the courtyard below.  “I am in Troyes alone among some thousand Frenchmen, any one of whom would willingly give his life for the privilege of taking mine.  You have but to sound the gong beside you, and in a few moments I shall be a dead man.  Strike, then!  For with me dies the English power in France.  Strike, Katharine!  If you see in me but the King of England.”

She was rigid; and his heart leapt when he saw it was because of terror.

“You came alone!  You dared!”

He answered, with a wonderful smile, “Proud spirit!  How else might I conquer you?”

“You have not conquered!” Katharine lifted the baton beside the gong, poising it.  God had granted her prayer—­to save France.  Now the past and the ignominy of the past might be merged in Judith’s nobler guilt.  But I must tell you that in the supreme hour, Destiny at her beck, her main desire was to slap the man for his childishness.  Oh, he had no right thus to besot himself with adoration!  This dejection at her feet of his high destiny awed her, and pricked her, too, with her inability to understand him.  Angrily she flung away the baton.  “Go!  Ah, go!” she cried, like one strangling.  “There has been enough of bloodshed, and I must spare you, loathing you as I do, for I cannot with my own hand murder you.”

But the King was a kindly tyrant, crushing independence from his associates as lesser folk squeeze water from a sponge.  “I cannot go thus.  Acknowledge me to be Alain, the man you love, or else strike upon the gong.”

“You are cruel!” she wailed, in her torture.

“Yes, I am cruel.”

Katharine raised straining arms above her head in a hard gesture of despair.  “You have conquered.  You know that I love you.  Oh, if I could find words to voice my shame, to shriek it in your face, I could better endure it!  For I love you.  With all my body and heart and soul I love you.  Mine is the agony, for I love you! and presently I shall stand quite still and see little Frenchmen scramble about you as hounds leap about a stag, and afterward kill you.  And after that I shall live!  I preserve France, but after I have slain you, Henry, I must live.  Mine is the agony, the enduring agony.”  She stayed motionless for an interval.  “God, God!  Let me not fail!” Katharine breathed; and then:  “O fair sweet friend, I am about to commit a vile action, but it is for the sake of the France that I love next to God.  As Judith gave her body to Holofernes, I crucify my heart for the preservation of France.”  Very calmly she struck upon the gong.