will.  With what heart of lead she came, come she did to await him in black Angers, steep and hardy little city of slate; and the meeting of the two brought tears to many eyes.  She fell at his feet, clasped his knees, could not speak nor cease from looking up; and he, tall and kingly, stoops, lifts her, holds her upon his breast, strokes her face, kisses her eyes and sorrowful mouth.  ‘Child,’ he says, ’art thou glad of me?’ asking, as lovers love best to do, the things they know best already.  ‘O Richard!  O Richard!’ was all she could say, poor fond wretch; however, we go not by the sense of a bride’s language, but by the passion that breaks it up.  Every agony of self-reproach, of fear of him, of mistrust, of lurking fate, lay in those sobbed words, ’O Richard!  O Richard!’

When he had her alone at night, and she had found her voice, she began to woo him and softly to beguile him with a hand to his chin, judging it a propitious time, while one of his held her head.  All the arts of woman were hers that night, but his were the new purposes of a man.  He had had a rude shock, was full of the sense of his sin; that grim old mocking face, grey among the candle-flames, was plain across the bed-chamber where they lay.  To himself he made oath that he would sin no more.  No, no:  a king, he would do kingly.  To her, clasped close in his arms, he gave kisses and sweet words.  Alas, she wanted not the sugar of his tongue; she would have had him bitter, though it cost her dear.  Lying there, lulled but not convinced, her sobs grew weaker.  She cried herself to sleep, and he kissed her sleeping.

In the cathedral church of his fathers he did on, by the hands of the Archbishop, the red cap and girdle and shoes of Anjou; there he held up the leopard shield for all to see.  There also upon the bent head of Jehane—­she kneeling before him—­he laid for a little while the same cap, then in its room a circlet of golden leaves.  If he was sovereign Count, girt with the sword, then she was Countess of Anjou before her grudging world.  What more was she?  Wife of a dead man and his killer!  The words stayed by her, and tinged the whole of her life.

CHAPTER XIV

OF WHAT KING RICHARD SAID TO THE BOWING ROOD; AND WHAT JEHANE TO KING RICHARD

Miracles, as a plain man, I hold to be the peculiar of the Church.  This chapter must be Milo’s on that ground, if there were no other.  But there is one strong other.  Milo set the tune which caused King Richard to dance.  And a very good tune it is—­according to Milo.  Therefore let him speak.