The early afternoon brought Philos’s wife with her small son to ask after me, and to thank me for having saved her husband’s life. Philos had gone on with the army the day after the Astara, having apparently given her a most exaggerated account of my doings, and, woman-like, she would take no notice of my version of the real facts. The boy sat on the foot of my bed playing with the sword which the old archer reached down for him from the wall, and studying me with great blue eyes. I envied Philos very much when she left again--a slim girlish figure in her riding-clothes--smiling us a farewell, and telling the boy to salute us both with my sword, which he was not at all ready to relinquish. Paulos and I had just finished our afternoon glass of wine, when his apple-cheeked, wrinkled, white-haired housekeeper entered and spoke to him. I gathered from his tone that he was giving her some instructions. Shortly after she left us in came the old archer, evidently with some news. A little later, as Paulos’s bearers came to carry him away, I heard horses’ feet outside, and then Forsyth’s voice calling to Payindah. I wondered if he had seen Ziné, and envied him being able to ride about. I picked up Basil once more, and studied the crabbed writing by the light of the lamp which had just been lit. But my thoughts were very far removed from the good bishop’s dissertation on Sakae customs. They were following a twisted chain, of which the nearest link was Philos’s wife and her stout, little blue-eyed son; an intermediate link was connected with a fireside in Aornos and a talk of dragons; while somewhere in the mists at the far end was a dream vision seen by a tired man sleeping out on the stones, while Wrexham and Payindah held the mouth of the Shamans’ gate. Then a footstep as some one pulled back the curtain and entered. I looked up, and there, in the dim circle of the lamp and the bright glow of the fire--my lady herself, the big fur collar of her riding-coat thrown back, a sparkle in her eyes, and the glow of the winter wind in her cheeks, as she stood looking at me, pulling off her riding-gauntlets--my gauntlets. “Aryenis!” I gasped, rather foolishly. “Yes, Harilek. Aryenis in person, as you see.” She came forward. “I thought I should like to win some more bets, and, since one-legged Harilek couldn’t come to Miletis, two-legged Aryenis had to come here.” Then her laughing note changed as she held out both her hands. “Are you badly hurt, Harilek?”--the laughing note came back--“or is it only another wiggly mark?” She stood holding my hands, looking down at me, all the red-gold glory of her hair aflame in the firelight which played across her beautiful face, now lighting up the wonderful clear depths of her big hazel-grey eyes, now casting tender little shadows about the witching curves of her dear lips. Then, without waiting for an answer, she went on: