"She said: 'It is the birthday of our Lord,'" repeated the Jew, slowly,
out of his weary brain. "'And I am doing a good deed.'"

"Is that all?" The Jew hesitated.

"Also she said: 'But you do not love our Lord.'"

Charles swore under his breath. "And you?"

"I said but little. I--"

"What did you say?"

"I said that her Lord was also a Jew." He was fearful of giving offence,
so he hastened to add: "It was by way of comforting the child. Only
that, my lord."

"She said nothing else?" The _seigneur's_ voice was dangerously calm.

The Jew faltered. He knew the gossip of the town.

"She said--she said she wished two things, my lord. To become a boy
and--to see her mother."

Then Charles lifted his face to where the stars were growing dim before
the uprising of the dawn, and where, as far away as the eye could reach
and as far again, lay the castle of his cousin Philip of the Black
Beard. And the rage was gone out of his eyes. For suddenly he knew that,
on that feast of mother and child, Clotilde had gone to her mother, as
unerringly as an arrow to its mark.