’Beau sire, God strikes in divers places, but always finds out the joints of our harness.’

‘Go on,’ says King Richard, sitting very still.

’Dear sire, my cousin, the Abbot Milo went out of Acre three weeks before the death of the Marquess.  With him also went Madame Jehane; but he returned without her.  This is all I know, though it is not all that the abbot knows.’

At the mention of her name the King took a sharp breath, as you or I do when quick pain strikes us.  To the rest he listened without a sign; and asked at the end, ‘Where is Milo?’

‘He is at Acre, sire,’ says the Count; ‘and in prison.’

‘Who put him there?’

‘Myself, sire.’

‘You did wrong, Count.  Get you back to Acre and bring him to me.’  Champagne went away.

* * * * *

Great trouble, as you know, always made Richard dumb; the grief struck inwards and congealed.  He became more than ever his own councillor, the worst in the world.  Lucky for the Abbot Milo that he was in bonds; but now you see why he penned the aphorism with which I began this chapter.

After that short, stabbing flash across his face, he shut down misery in a vice.  The rest of his talk with the Count might have been held with a groom.  Henry of Champagne, knowing the man, left him the moment he got the word; and King Richard sat down by the table, and for three hours never stirred.  He was literally motionless.  Straightly rigid, a little grey about the face, white at the cheek-bones; his clenched hand stiff on the board, white also at the knuckles; his eyes fixed on the door—­men came in, knelt and said their say, then encountering his blank eyes bent their heads and backed out quietly.  If he thought, none may learn his thought; if he felt, none may touch the place; if he prayed, let those who are able imagine his prayers.  What Jehane had been to him this book may have shadowed out:  this only I say, that he knew, from the very first hint of the fact, why she had gone out with Milo and sent Milo home alone.  The Queen knew, because Jehane had told her; but he knew with no telling at all.  She had gone away to save him from herself.  Needing him not, because she so loved him, it was her beauty which was hungry for his desire.  Not daring to mar her beauty, she had sought to hide it.  Greater love hath none than this.  If he thought of that it should have softened him.  He did not think of it:  he knew it.

At the end of his grim vigil he got up and went out of his house.  He was served with his horse, his esquires came at call to the routine of garrison days and nights.  He rode round the walls, out at one of the gates, on a sharp canter of reconnaissance in the hills.  Perhaps he spoke more shortly than usual, and more drily; there may have been a dead quality in his voice, usually so salient.  There was no other sign.  At supper he sat before them all, ate and drank at his wont.  Once only he startled the hallful of them.  He dropped his great gold cup, and it split.