"
"Home! I have no home! Since _she_ died--" He paused, and a grey
shadow crossed his face like the hue of approaching sickness or death.
"I killed her, poor child! Of course you know that! I neglected her,--
deserted her--left her to die! Well! She is only one more added to the
list of countless women martyrs who have been tortured out of an unjust
world--and now--now I write verses to her memory!" He shivered as with
cold, still clinging to Thord's arm. "But I did not tell you what great
good comes of sending a book to the King! It means less to a writer
than to a boot-maker. For the boot-maker can put up a sign: 'Special
Fitter for the ease of His Majesty's Corns'--but if a poet should say
his verse is 'accepted' by a monarch, the shrewd public take it at once
to be bad verse, and will have none of it! That is the case with my
book to-day!"
"Why did you send it?" asked Thord, with grave patience. "Your business
with kings is to warn, not to flatter!"
"Just so!" cried Zouche; "And if His Most Gracious and Glorious had
been pleased to look inside the volume, he would have seen enough to
startle him! It was sent in hate, my Sergius,--not in humility,--just
as the flunkey-secretary's answer was penned in derision, aping
courtesy! How you look, under this wan sky of night! Reproachful, yet
pitying, as the eyes of Buddha are your eyes, my Sergius! You are a
fine fellow--your brain is a dome decorated with glorious ideals!--and
yet you are like all of us, weak in one point, as Achilles in the heel.
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