Deep must be the guilt for which such hours as these are insufficient to atone!
But the queen's penance hath only just begun, for the black drop is not yet wrung out of her heart, and even in her cloister at Almesbury it is remorse rather than repentance that drives the iron into her soul. As it invariably does in moments of extreme feeling, the master-passion takes possession of her once more, and "my Lancelot" comes back in all his manly beauty and his devoted tenderness, so touching and so prized, that for him too it must make the sorrow of a life-time. Again, she sees him in the lists, best, bravest, and knightliest lance of all the Round Table, Again, sitting fair and courtly and gentle among dames in hall, his noble face none the less winsome, be sure, to her, for that she could read on it the stamp of sorrow set there by herself as her own indelible seal.
