He had reached a considerable height when he came suddenly to a chasm so deep that he could not see its bottom. The rock on either side was worn smooth, as though with the passing of many feet, and the opening was narrow enough for a man to stride across without difficulty. The horse stopped, and the rein being loose on his neck, snuffed delicately at the strange gash that divided his path; then he picked his way over it, snorting and cocking his ears. They were scarcely ten yards on the farther side when there was a loud cracking noise, and, looking back, the King saw that the chasm had split wider asunder and now yawned behind him like the mouth of a pit. The horse dashed forward, and had gone some distance before his rider could check him. When at last they stood still, they had come to a smooth face of high rock, with a wide ledge at its foot, over which the track went. Crowning its summit, some feet above their heads, ran a battlemented wall, and on it sat a woman who looked down at the King while she supported herself with one white arm. Whirling vapour floated behind her, through which appeared the outline of a fantastic castle whose towers seemed to climb to heaven. Her hair was bound about with cords of silver and livid purple poppies. Their petals were dropping down and falling in the King’s path. A dull dark blue garment was wound round her which left only her bare arms free and trailed over the wall below her feet, mixing with her heavy plaits and the silver tassels at the ends of them. She smiled, bending forward till she looked as though she must fall from her high place; she was like some great unearthly gull poised upon a wave’s crest. “Soon it will be too dark to travel among these precipices,” she cried. “Come up, O King, before the light falls. The way winds up to my gates.” And, indeed, the path took a turn at the end of the ledge, and, twisting like a ribbon, vanished in the vapour. There was no going back, for the chasm was behind him, and the light, as she said, was failing; so he rode upwards till he came to a gate whose top was lost in the clouds. It opened, disclosing a castle, and inside it the lady was coming to meet him, her draperies trailing behind her and the silver tassels on her plaits making a tinkling sound as they swept the stones. A noiseless person came from a doorway and led away his horse. She was very beautiful. Her pale face and scarlet lips and her heavy-lidded eyes made him think of things he had seen in dreams, and a faint misgiving touched him as he followed her. Before the castle was a terrace, on the wall of which he had seen her sitting above him as he entered. He passed through stone galleries, over whose sides he thought he could see wild faces staring; the misgiving deepened with every step.