might not be.  She meant that; all her soul came sobbing to her lips as she prayed him.  He could not deny her that prayer.  If she would not mount his throne, she should not—­he was King.  But that other bidding:  Touch me not, she said.  He looked at her sleeping; her bosom filled and lifted his hand.  God have no mercy on him if he denied her that either.  ‘So take Thou, God, my heart’s desire, if I give her not hers.’  Then he stooped and kissed her forehead; she opened her eyes and smiled feebly, half awake.

He was not a man, I say it again, at the mercy of women’s lure.  Milo was right; he was Tristram, not Galahad nor Lancelot; a man of cold appetite, a man whose head was master, touched rarely, and then stirred only to certain deeps.  So far as he could love woman born he loved Jehane, saw her exceedingly lovely, loved her proud remote spirit, her nobility, her sobriety.  He saw her bodily perfections too, how splendid a person, how sumptuous in hue and light.  Admiring, taking glory in these, yet he required the sting of another man’s hand upon her to seize her for himself.  For purposes of policy, for ends which seemed to him good, he could have lived with Jehane as a brother with a sister:  one thing provided, Let no other man touch.

Now this policy was imperative, this end God said was good.  Jehane implored with tears, Christ called from the Cross; so King Richard fell upon his knees and kissed the girl’s forehead.  When he left her that morning he sought out Milo and confessed his sins.  Shriven he arose, to do what remained in the west before he could be crowned in Rouen, and crowned in Westminster.

CHAPTER XV

LAST TENZON OF BERTRAN DE BORN

I wish to be done with Bertran de Born, that lagging fox; but the dogs of my art must make a backward cast if they are to kill him in the open.  I beg the reader, then, to remember that when Richard left him half-throttled in his own house, and when he had recovered wind enough to stir his gall, he made preparations for a long journey to the South.  In that scandal concerning Alois of France he believed he had stuff which might wreck Count Richard more disastrously than Count Richard could wreck him.  He hoped to raise the South, and thither he went, his own dung-fly, buzzing over the offal he had blown; and the first point he headed for was Pampluna across the Pyrenees.  It is folly to dig into the mind of a man diseased by malice; better treat such like sour ground, burn with lime (or let God burn) and abide the event in faith.  If of all men in the world Bertran hated Richard of Anjou, it was not because Richard had misused him, but because he had used him too lightly.  Richard, offended with Bertran, gave him a flick on the ear and sent him to the devil with his japes.  He did no more because he valued him no more.  He thought him a perverse rascal, glorious poet, ill-conditioned