For even just how many silken ladies wept, well out of eyeshot of their husbands, when it was known that courteous Anavalt had left Count Emmerick's court, remains an indeterminable matter. But it is certain the number was large. There were, in addition, the tale tells, three women whose grieving for him was not ever to be ended: these did not weep. In the meanwhile, with all this furtive sorrowing some leagues behind him, and with a dead horse at his feet, tall Anavalt stood at a sign-post, and doubtfully considered a rather huge dragon. "No," the dragon was saying, comfortably, "no, for I have just had dinner, and exercise upon a full stomach is unwholesome. So I shall not fight you, and you are welcome, for all of me, to go your ways into the Wood of Elfhame." "Yet what," says Anavalt, "what if I were to be more observant than you of your duty and of your hellish origin? and what if I were to insist upon a fight to the death?" When dragons shrug in sunlight their bodies are one long green glittering ripple. "I would be conquered. It is my business to be conquered in this world, where there are two sides to everything, and where one must look for reverses. I tell you frankly, tired man, that all we terrors who keep colorful the road to the Elle Maid are here for the purpose of being conquered. We make the way seem difficult, and that makes you who have souls in your bodies the more determined to travel on it. Our thin Queen found out long ago that the most likely manner of alluring men to her striped windmill was to persuade men she is quite inaccessible." Said Anavalt, "That I can understand; but I need no such baits." "Aha, so you have not been happy out yonder where people have souls? You probably are not eating enough: so long as one can keep on eating regularly, there is not much the matter. In fact, I see the hunger in your eyes, tired man." Anavalt said: "Let us not discuss anybody's eyes, for it is not hunger, nor indigestion either, which drives me to the Wood of Elfhame. There is a woman yonder, dragon, a woman whom ten years ago I married. We loved each other then, we shared a noble dream. To-day we sleep together, and have no dreams. To-day I go in flame-colored satin, with heralds before me, into bright long halls where kings await my counsel, and my advising becomes the law of cities that I have not seen. The lords of this world accredit me with wisdom, and say that nobody is more shrewd than Anavalt. But when at home, as if by accident, I tell my wife about these things, she smiles, not very merrily. For my wife knows more of the truth as to me and my powers and my achievements than I myself would care to know: and I can no longer endure the gaze of her forgiving eyes, and the puzzled hurt which is behind that forgiveness. So let us not discuss anybody's eyes."