So he gave orders, and the stone was carted to the Palace, and built into the wall over the great gate; and while they were gone to fetch the red paint to cover up the stone and the mortar the Lord Chief Magician came out from under his bed, and went sneaking up to the Palace and in at the gate, and the stone fell on him and smashed him quite flat. Then Perihelia came running out, and she washed the mortar off the white stone by her Sunlight Magic; and when the Magician come out she said: “Let it lie here to-night, and to-morrow, if you will let me go, I will take it away to my own kingdom, so that it shall never trouble you again.” Negretti agreed, because he did not know what else to do, and he was beginning to despair of the Princess ever marrying him, because he had now asked her to do so every day for a month, and always with more display of plush and jewels, and she said “No” more decidedly, and even crossly, every time. So he began to lose heart. That night, just when the moon was waning, and before morning broke, Princess Perihelia slipped down the Palace stairs and into the garden to look once more on the place where the White King had promised to love her always. And when she came to that same place there was the white stone lying under the shadow of the white rose bushes, and pearly rose leaves had fallen all over it, and were falling still, like tears. Perihelia knelt down beside the stone and put her arms round it, and said— “Poor stone, dear stone, what is it that troubles you so that you cannot rest? If I only knew, I might help you with my Sunlight Magic. Why are you so troubled, and why do I pity you so? Oh, if my White King were here he would understand and help you! But I can do nothing!” With that she began to weep over the stone, calling on the White King to come back to her. And all the while she was talking and weeping the moon was waning and the light in the East grew pearlier and prettier minute by minute. And as she wept and clasped the stone she presently saw in the glowing light that the stone was changing in her arms. Like white sands falling in an hour-glass, the white stone fell away and fell away until the sun looked through the white rose bushes and saw Perihelia clasp the living form of the White King in her loving arms. The sun’s was not the only eye which saw that meeting. The Magician had had a bad night, and he came out early, curious to see whether the stone had moved again. His curiosity was gratified. When the White King saw his treacherous brother his tongue was loosed—hitherto kisses had been speech enough for him—and he spoke the words which he found in his mouth. And they were, naturally enough, the last words that had gone in at his ears, and the words were first Persian and then Greek, and then Arabic and Spanish, and the language of foreigners from Essex; and the words he wound up with were, “be changed into a stone.”