"Forgive me, Eos. An eagle cannot fly with crows, and I will never again put myself forward. When you have need of me, I will be here, and when you need only your own thoughts, why then go apart; I will not seek you out. I forget who and what you are, for my senses are strained beyond endurance with the power of you." "You are no crow, Druga. But in me is an adult mind, and you are as a child, whom I must teach and raise up gradually to my estate. Every parent grows impatient of ignorance in their offspring. One day, if time keeps treading the self-same mill, we will be crushed together like grapes and pressed clean. Until then, be my knight, and think not of me, except with pity for the broken heart that beats inside me." Druga did not look at her more, but went in and sat at the board where the thousand dead stared, each stony eye broodingly centered upon the spot where he had placed Feronia. And as Druga's eye likewise centered upon that seat that had been the scene of a thousand deaths, he felt a wave of anger from the stony body of Feronia, and a sense of guilt came over him. He felt remorse that he should forget her and desire Eos. If he had known that those eyes were not dead, but seeing and remembering all that passed before them, he would have been shivering with fear of her anger. But Druga did not know. Yet it seemed to his senses that each of those eyes was likewise angry with him, and he got up in haste from that table of dead men and one dead woman, and went and drank wine by himself until sleep came. * * * * * With the first rays of morning light Eos woke him, and Druga learned that she had lowered the disk over the garden of live-oaks beside the palace of Dionaea, and Druga looked out. No one was yet astir; they had not yet been seen. Druga and Eos descended by the ladder of ruby glass, and went side by side through the garden and Druga took the stairs he knew well up to the sleeping chamber of Dionaea. For in the many-locked cabinets of that chamber were her many acquisitions of magical apparatus, and if anything was there that would help them, they meant to find it. As they entered the room, opening the door with a pick-lock, Eos cried out in a triumphant voice: "We are not in vain. The Queen is not dead, Druga!" The sleepy-eyed Dionaea poked her head above the covers at the sound of their entry. At sight of them, she hissed like a great snake, and writhed the long hideous body of Baena free of the encumbrance of the quilts, and Baena reared his own hideous, fanged head up beside Dionaea's. Druga stood astonished to see the fabled Amphis-Baena here in the bed of Dionaea, and with the head of Dionaea! A great laugh broke from him to see the reptilian change the grafting had wrought in Dionaea's beauty.