"Shall you
indeed grieve?"
She rose abruptly to her feet.
"I beg that your Highness will rise," she enjoined him coldly, a coldness
which changed swiftly to alarm as her endeavours to release her hand
proved vain. For despite her struggles he held on stoutly. This was
mere coyness, he assured himself, mere maidenly artifice which he must
bear with until he had overcome it for all time.
"My lord, I implore you!" she continued. "Bethink you of where you are--
of who you are."
"Here will I stay until the crack of doom," he answered, with an odd
mixture of humour, ardour and ferocity, "unless you consent to listen to
me."
"I am ready to listen, my lord," she answered, without veiling a
repugnance that he lacked the wit to see. "But it is not necessary that
you should hold my hand, nor fitting that you should kneel."
"Not fitting?" he exclaimed. "Lady, you do not apprehend me rightly. Is
it not fitting that all of us--be we princes or vassals--shall kneel
sometimes?"
"At your prayers, my lord, yes, most fitting."
"And is not a man at his prayers when he woos? What fitter shrine in all
the world than his mistress's feet?"
"Release me," she commanded, still struggling. "Your Highness grows
tiresome and ridiculous."
"Ridiculous?"
His great, sensual mouth fell open. His white cheeks grew mottled, and
his little eyes looked up with a mighty evil gleam in their cruel blue.
A moment he stayed so, then he rose up. He released her hands as she had
bidden him, but he clutched her arms instead, which was yet worse.
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