I remember Kyrlos’s disappointment when Wrexham had to explain that it was beyond his power to make rifles with the plant and labour available. They spent many hours together in Kyrlos’s armouries, Stephnos following Wrexham like a shadow. About the fourth day these visits to the armoury began to grow longer, and after that we saw less and less of the pair each day. Firoz, too, was generally absent, and I saw Payindah going about much with Temra. Evidently Wrexham was evolving something, but somehow it never occurred to me to ask details, and Forsyth was far too busy with Ziné to consider anything else. As often as not the two of them went off riding with Aryenis and Andros, but I somehow think that Forsyth, who squired Ziné, was not over-careful about keeping the sections closed up too much, as the cavalry term is. I met them coming back one day, and there were a good many horse-lengths between the two sections. Still, as I say, I did see a good deal of Aryenis--when Andros was at work. And the more I saw, the more I wanted to see, and the less could I contemplate the idea of six months’ march back to settle in civilization with Aryenis in Sakaeland. On the other hand, apart from this most disturbing appearance of Andros, a factor which I judged outweighed most others, I could not conceive Aryenis in any other surroundings than below the snows of Saghar Mor among her pine forests and orchards and rose gardens. She seemed like the spirit of her beautiful land incarnate. There was snow and sunshine, blue skies, and cloud-dappled ones, the filmy mist of rain and the rippling laughter of the mountain streams, the light joyousness of the spring blossoms, and all the golden promise of late summer fruit. All these precious things were part and parcel of Aryenis’s self, and now one and now another predominated. There was about her, as her song had it, the fresh breath of dawn. Was there also the sequel of the warm summer night? Unless I was utterly and hopelessly mistaken, that was there, temporarily submerged, and only waiting the touch of a kindred hand to call it up in all its deep star-spangled loveliness. Was Andros the fairy prince the touch of whose magic kiss would wake all the greater depths hidden beneath the iridescent rose mist of Aryenis’s joyous girlhood, calling up those far sweeter “Silver lights and darks undreamed of, Where I hush and bless myself with silence”? The more I watched, the less could I doubt it. One morning, when every one else was occupied--Wrexham and Stephnos, hidden in the mysterious armoury along with old wrinkled-eyed smiths, amid clouds of fumes splashed with the vivid sparks of molten metal, and a deafening clangour of hammer and anvil; the two girls, with Andros and Forsyth in attendance, out riding; Kyrlos and his brother busy with affairs of State, and Annais engaged with mysterious female rites concerning linens and silks and other household business--I bethought me of Paulos.