The High Priest’s face relaxed almost to a smile--the suffering of beauty is not unpleasant, especially when beauty is in a reckless generous mood. “Here! silly child, take this silver. It is against my rule to give beggars anything but bread. Get what you want, and thank the Serpent.” “Indeed I will, your holiness. Indeed I will. I will do both.” And laughing and smiling, holding the coins to her bosom--its loveliness the more revealed by rags--she watched them drive away. And the High Priest leaned back and laughed, and rather wished the Chaplain were not present. For what had taken him back to over twenty years ago, he a younger man in the zenith of his power? Why, nothing that he could unravel; only, as they neared the Palace, he suddenly sat up, banging the light stick he walked with on the ground. “Damn it!” said he, as when Mr Barringcourt’s disciple, “where have I seen those eyes before?” CHAPTER III Marigold flew home, up the respectable little alley, where their cottage was, with feelings altogether mixed. She threw herself in the easy-chair that Alice had enjoyed so lately, and sighed and laughed in a breath. “Oh, Alice! I don’t like him! When you come near him, he is like a bit of stone--a bit of crumbly stone. I wouldn’t mind if he were marble. I would throw my heart against him and it would break, and then the poets would club together and write nice things about me--and so I’d easily become immortal.” “I knew your royal highness would soon be cured of your infatuation.” “My--my what?” “Your love.” She leant forward dreamily, and looked in the fire quite a long time, and you noticed the extreme delicacy and beauty of her face, and, above all, the sweetness and the merriness and recklessness so finely blended--that, whilst you thought one was uppermost, you found the other laughing at you right ahead. And at last, looking up at the more stolid woman, she said slowly: “All the same, I cannot help myself. I shall behave exactly as if I were in love.” “The Serpent will certainly punish us for this, Princess. I feel somehow you’re not behaving right.” “I’m playing a game. I feel like the queen on a chess-board. Somebody nips me up between their fingers and thumb, and then I’m off--all over the place, you know.” “Take care you don’t get nipped off the board.” “Yes. For then the king would be left unprotected. And if--we--were--checkmate--I--wonder---- Oh, Alice! if--we--were--checkmate I should die.” “Princess, are you ill? You’re not accustomed to wandering through the streets in rags. The High Priest or his servants have spoken roughly to you.” “Indeed, no. Not more than I deserved. But give me your hand, Alice. It is so strong, and big and unbeautiful except to such as me who have no strength. Alice--do you ever feel you _have_ to do a thing, and you hate it very much?” “Yes; I hate this cottage business.” Marigold laughed. “Ah! but I mean something unseen--something spiritual.”