"By all means,"--he assented,--" and see how
much it will profit you."
She realized then that walls were for shutting people in as well as for
shutting people out, and she could have screamed for very temper. Yet she made
one more attempt before giving way. Abandoning her struggle for the lines, she
let her little gloved hands alight like fluttering birds upon his mailed arm,
and summoned all the eloquence of her beauty into her heavenly eyes.
"No, sooner would I trust to you," she murmured. "You could not mistreat me
so! I beseech it of you, take me to the Palace where the King is."
On what she based her belief that he was incapable of thwarting her is not
quite clear, for he had never taken the trouble to hide the fact that he
considered her a nuisance, and her civil marriage with the King a piece of
youthful folly on Canute's part. Sinister satisfaction was in his tone when he
answered her.
"The Palace where the King is," he said, "is the Palace for a Queen."
At first, it seemed that she would either scratch out his eyes or throw
herself from her saddle. But in the end she did neither, for a sense of her
helplessness turned her faint. To one who has always ruled undisputed, there
is something benumbing in the first collision with the pitiless hand of Force.
"If I had the good luck to see a bee caught in a brier, I should wish your
death," she threatened.
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