“O love, most perfect of all,
  Just to have known you is well! 
  And it heartens me now to recall
  That just to have known you is well,
  And naught else is desirable
  Save only to do as you willed
  And to love you my whole life long;—­
  But this heart in me is filled
  With hunger cruel and strong,
  And with hunger unfulfilled.

  “Fond heart, though thy hunger be
  As a flame that wanders unstilled,
  There is none more perfect than she!”

Malise now came into the room, and, without speaking, laid a fox-brush before the Princess.

Katharine twirled it in her hand, staring at the card-littered table.  “So you are in his pay, Malise?  I am sorry.  But you know that your employer is master here.  Who am I to forbid him entrance?” The girl went away silently, abashed, and the Princess sat quite still, tapping the brush against the table.

“They do not want me to sign another treaty, do they?” her father asked timidly.  “It appears to me they are always signing treaties, and I cannot see that any good comes of it.  And I would have won the last game, Katharine, if Malise had not interrupted us.  You know I would have won.”

“Yes, Father, you would have won.  Oh, he must not see you!” Katharine cried, a great tide of love mounting in her breast, the love that draws a mother fiercely to shield her backward boy.  “Father, will you not go into your chamber?  I have a new book for you, Father—­all pictures, dear.  Come—­” She was coaxing him when Sire Henry appeared in the doorway.

“But I do not wish to look at pictures,” Charles said, peevishly; “I wish to play cards.  You are an ungrateful daughter, Katharine.  You are never willing to amuse me.”  He sat down with a whimper and began to pluck at his dribbling lips.

Katharine had moved a little toward the door.  Her face was white.  “Now welcome, sire!” she said.  “Welcome, O great conqueror, who in your hour of triumph can find no nobler recreation than to shame a maid with her past folly!  It was valorously done, sire.  See, Father; here is the King of England come to observe how low we sit that yesterday were lords of France.”

“The King of England!” echoed Charles, and he rose now to his feet.  “I thought we were at war with him.  But my memory is treacherous.  You perceive, brother of England, I am planning a new mouse-trap, and my mind is somewhat preempted.  I recall now that you are in treaty for my daughter’s hand.  Katharine is a good girl, a fine upstanding girl, but I suppose—­” He paused, as if to regard and hear some invisible counsellor, and then briskly resumed:  “Yes, I suppose policy demands that she should marry you.  We trammelled kings can never go free of policy—­ey, my compere of England?  No; it was through policy I wedded her mother; and we have been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in your ear, son-in-law:  Madame Isabeau’s soul formerly inhabited a sow, as Pythagoras teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the influence of the moon drew it hither.”