like a queen. She goes clad in white like a bride and her arms are held
out to you.

"But another shall love you, and between them two there is darkness and
hate, from which come bursting clouds of fire, bringing forth lightnings
and angers and deadly jealousies!

"Again I see you, great, honored, and sitting on a high seat. The
woman whose face I cannot distinguish is beside you, clothed in a
robe of purple. And, yes, she wears a crown on her head like the
coronet of a queen."

Ysolinde withdrew her eyes gradually from the ink-pool, as if it were a
pain to look yet a greater to look away. Then with a quick jerk she threw
up her head, and tears were standing in her eyes ready to overflow. But
the wetness made them beautiful, like a pebble of bright colors with the
dew upon it and shone on by the sunshine of the morning.

"You hurt me," she murmured reproachfully, looking at me more like a
child than ever I had seen her. She was very near to me.

"_I_ make you suffer!" cried I, greatly astonished. "How can Hugo
Gottfried have done this thing?"

For it seemed impossible that a poor lad, and one alien by his birth from
the hearts of ordinary folk, should yet have the power to make a great
lady suffer. For a great lady I knew Ysolinde to be even then, when her
father seemed to be no more in the city of Thorn than Master Gerard, the
fount and treasure-house of law and composer-general of quarrels.