then, so chivalric? Was it to have been a second romaunt of `King
Cophetua and the Beggar Maid?' "

He met her look, and saw the fierce demand through the softness
and persiflage. He gave it no answer, but, turning to her,
kindled into the man whom she was so proud to show as her
capture,--a man far off from Stephen Holmes. Brilliant she
called him,--frank, winning, generous. She thought she knew him
well; held him a slave to her fluttering hand. Being proud of
her slave, she let the hand flutter down now somehow with some
flowers it held until it touched his hard fingers, her cheek
flushing into rose. The nerveless, spongy hand,--what a
death-grip it had on his life! He did not look back once at the
motionless, dusty figure on the road. What was that Polston had
said about starving to death for a kind word? LOVE? He was sick
of the sickly talk,--crushed it out of his heart with a savage
scorn. He remembered his father, the night he died, had said in
his weak ravings that God was love. Was He? No wonder, then, He
was the God of women, and children, and unsuccessful men. For
him, he was done with it. He was here with stronger purpose than
to yield to weaknesses of the flesh. He had made his choice,--a
straight, hard path upwards; he was deaf now and forever to any
word of kindness or pity. As for this woman beside him, he would
be just to her, in justice to himself: she never should know the
loathing in his heart: just to her as to all living creatures.
Some little, mean doubt kept up a sullen whisper of bought and
sold,--sold,--but he laughed it down. He sat there with his head
steadily turned towards her: a kingly face, she called it, and
she was right,--it was a kingly face: with the same shallow,
fixed smile on his mouth,--no weary cry went up to God that day