‘I go to pray for him,’ said the Queen, and went in.

Stiffly she knelt at his bedhead, and with both hands held up the crucifix to her face.  She began to talk to it in a low worn voice, as though she were asking the Christ to reckon her misery.

‘Thou Christ,’ she complained, ’Thou Christ, look upon me, the daughter of a king, crucified terribly with Thee.  This dying man is the King my husband, who denied me as Thou, Christ, wert denied; who sought to put me by, and yet is loved.  Yet I love him, Christ; yet I have worked for him against my honour, holding it as cheap as he did.  When he was in prison I humbled myself to set him loose; when he was loosed I held his enemies back, while he, cruelly, held me back.  I have prayed for him, and pray now, while he lies there, struck secretly, and dies not knowing me; and leaves me alone, careless whether I live or die.  Ah, Saviour of the world, do I suffer or not?’

She awoke the sick man, who opened his eyes and stared about him.  He signed to Milo to draw nigh, which the snuffling old man did.

‘Who is here?’ he whispered.  ‘Not—?’

‘No, no, dearest lord,’ said Milo quickly.  ‘But the Queen is here.’

‘Ah,’ said he, ‘poor wretch!’ And he sighed.  Then he said, ’Turn me over, Milo.’  It was done, with a flux of blood to the mouth.  They stayed that and brought him round with aqua vitae.

The Queen was terribly moved to see his ravaged face.  No doubt she loved him.  But she had nothing to say.  For some time their eyes were fixed, each on the other; the Queen’s misty, the King’s fever-bright, terribly searching, terribly intelligent.  He read her soul.

‘Madame,’ he said, but she could scarcely hear him, ’I have done you great wrong, yet greater wrong elsewhere.  I cannot die in comfort without your pardon; but I cannot ask it of you, for if I still had years to live, I should do as I have done.’  A sob of injury shook the Queen.

‘Richard!  Richard!  Richard!’ she wailed, ’I suffer!  You have my heart; you have always had it.  And what have I?  Nothing, O God!  Nothing at all.’

‘Madame,’ said he, ’the wrong I did you was that I gave you the right to anything.  That was the first and greatest wrong.  To give it you I thieved, and in taking it again I thieved again.  God knoweth—­’ He shut his eyes, and kept them shut.  She called to him more urgently, ’Richard, Richard!’ but he made no answer, and appeared to sleep.  The Queen shivered and sniffed, turned to her Christ, and so spent the night.

* * * * *

The last to come was Jehane in a white gown; and she came with the dawn.  Eager and flushed she was, with dawn-colour in her face; and stepped lightly over the dewy grass, her lips parted and hair blown back.  She came in exalted with grief, so that no wardens of the door, nor queens, nor college of queens, could have stayed her.  She was as tall as any there, and went past the guard at the door without question or word said, and so lightly and fiercely to the bed.  There she stood, dilating and glowing, looking not back on her spent life, but on to the glory of the dying.