Her head had the poise of an empress, and at its shapely crown, piled high, were lustrous coils of hair which at first glance seemed black; but when the light struck on it, glowed as an ember glows when a breath renews its dullness into fire. Such was the beauty of the woman on whom Polaris looked--and as he gazed, acknowledgment was forced within him that here was one that surpassed in fairness even the Rose-maid whom he loved. And there was no disloyalty in that acknowledgment. Rose Emer was a beautiful woman; but she who sat before him, and who seemed of nearly the same age and whose figure much resembled that of his own dear lady, she had the beauty of unearthly things. For a moment he stared in silence. "Where am I, and who are you?" he asked, and smiled faintly in response to her little exclamation of delight that his senses had come back to him. Before she could speak, he muttered, "I had forgotten; she will not understand." "But I do understand, my poor friend," she said, "and can make answer in your own tongue--if we keep to simple talk." As the quality of that voice had thrilled old Zenas, so now it sent a tremor through the veins of the son of the snows. "You are in the city of Zele-omaz, and I, who have watched while you lay wounded and ill, am a poor lady of wild Ruthar," she continued. "'Poor' and 'wild' are words that ill beseem you, lady," replied Polaris in the quaint expression that in the long years when his father had been his sole companion, he had absorbed from the pages of Scott's romantic "Ivanhoe," and which contact with modern English had not worn away. "I think that one Oleric has spoken oft of you, and that I can guess the name you bear--and I find it a most fitting name." Rose-pink the Goddess Glorian flushed, in a most mortal fashion, and was glad that at that moment black Rombar thrust his head forward over the edge of the bed to claim a share in the attention of his master. Polaris stirred his hands, and then looked up wonderingly. "I am weak," he said. "How long have I lain ill, and what misfortune befell me to so lay me by the heels? I understand it not at all; for my memory has tricked me." Toying with Rombar's collar, Glorian told him what she had learned from the others of the fight at the mouth of the Illia. "And I do thank you for the life of my faithful captain," she said, "as he will presently. It was a brave deed, a very brave deed. Now you must talk no more, and no more must I weary you. You are worn with sickness, and it will be many days before your strength comes back. Rest and fret not. All things are going well." She left him, and presently he slept. CHAPTER VI ZOAR OF THE AMALOCS