'You have done well this ten years without one,' he cried out.
Her face seemed to set like adamant as she turned her cheek to him.
'Six and twenty pupils in the fair game of love I have had,' he said. 'You shall be the seven and twentieth. Twenty and seven are seven and two. Seven and two are nine. Now nine is the luckiest of numbers. Be you that one.'
'Nay,' she answered. 'It is time you learned husbandry who have taught so many and earned so little.'
He slipped himself softly into the cushions beside her.
'Would you spoil so fair a tale?' he said. 'Would you have me to break so many vows? I have promised a mort of women marriage, and so long as I be not wed I may keep faith with any one of them.'
She held her face away from him and laughed.
'That is as it may be,' she said. 'But when you wed with me to-night you will keep faith with one woman.'
'Woman,' he pleaded. 'I am a great scholar.'
'Ay,' she answered, 'and great scholars have climbed to great estates.'
She continued to count the coins that came from his little money-bags; the shadow of her hood upon the great beams grew more portentous.
'It is thought that your magistership may rise to be Chancellor of the Realm of England,' she added.
'Eheu!' he said. 'If you have heard men say that, you know that wedded to thee I could never climb.'
'Then I shall very comfortably keep my inn here in Paris town,' she answered. 'You have here fourteen pounds and eleven shillings.'
'Why, I will marry thee in the morning,' he said, and he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. Outside the door there was a shuffling of several feet.
'I knew not other guests were in the house,' he uttered, and fell again to kissing her.
'Knew you not an envoy was come from Cleves?' she whispered.
Her head fell back and he supported it with one trembling hand. He shook like a leaf when her voice rang out:
There was a great jangle, light fell into the dusky room through the doorhole, and he found himself beneath the eyes of many scullions with spits, cooks with carving forks, and kitchenmaids with sharpened distaffs of steel.
'Now I will be wed this night,' she laughed.
He moved to the end of the couch and blinked at her in the strong light.
'I will be wed this night,' she said again, and rearranged her head-dress, revealing, as her sleeves fell open, her white, plump arms.