of affairs. (Kick number two.) But see what a fine nature he has: he bears her no malice for it. No one shall hurt her. 'Fear not: thou shalt be guarded till my death.' Afterwards, of course, she must not reckon on him, and he wants to remind her that he is most likely going to die very shortly in this struggle, and why should he desire it otherwise? 'She has not made his life so sweet to him that he, the King, should greatly care to live.' The truth is that she has 'spoilt the purpose of his life.' (Kick number three.) The thing is done and cannot be undone, one would think, and there can be no possible use in going over it all again. But not so thinks Arthur. His idea is to explain it all to her carefully, very, very carefully, so that she shall realise what a supreme and perfect wretch she is, and this he does (so he says) 'even for her sake'. And so he starts off. Heaven forbid that we should follow him over the seventy-one lines of pitiless blank verse wherein he points his moral and adorns his tale to his own and Lord Tennyson's satisfaction. During the course of this appalling apologia pro vita sua, he takes occasion to yet again impress upon her the fact of the impracticability of a future for himself where, whatever he did, he 'should evermore be vexed with her,' and the broken-spirited woman now responds to this last application of his knightly
