Then he said, “You have eight sisters, and a mother who cries for her children to return!” Yet still she thought he was dreaming, and speaking only in his sleep. The other peahens came no nearer, but stood weeping silently. She looked from him to them. “O,” she cried, “I have a wicked heart, to let one stand in the way of nine!” Then she threw up her neck and cried lamentably with her peafowl’s voice, wishing that the Prince would wake up and see her, and so escape. And at that all the other peahens lifted up their heads and wailed with her: but the Prince never turned, nor lifted a finger, nor uttered a sound. Then she drew in a deep breath, and closed her eyes fast. “Let my sisters go, but let me be as I am!” she cried; and with that she stooped down, and pecked out his heart. All her sisters shrieked as their human shapes returned to them. “O, sister! O, wicked little sister!” they cried, “What have you done!” The little white peahen crouched close down to the side of the dead Prince. “I loved him more than you all!” she tried to say: but she only lifted her head, and wailed again and again the peafowl’s cry. The Prince’s heart lay beating at her feet, so glad to be rid of its nine sorrows that mere joy made it live on, though all the rest of the body lay cold. The peahen leaned down upon the Prince’s breast, and there wailed without ceasing: till suddenly, piercing with her beak her own breast, she drew out her own living heart and laid it in the place where his had been. And, as she did so, the wound where she had pierced him closed and became healed; and her heart was, as it were, buried in the Prince’s breast. In her death agony she could feel it there, her own heart leaping within his breast for joy. The Prince, who had seemed to be dead, flushed from head to foot as the warmth of life came back to him; with one deep breath he woke, and found the little white peahen lying as if dead between his arms. Then he laughed softly and rose (his goodness making him wise), and taking up his own still beating heart he laid it into the place of hers. At the first beat of it within her breast, the peahen became transformed as all her sisters had been, and her own maiden form came back to her. And the pain and the wound in her breast grew healed together, so that she stood up alive and well in the Prince’s arms. “Dear heart!” said he: and “Dear, dear heart!” said she; but whether they were speaking of their own hearts or of each other’s, who can tell? for which was which they themselves did not know.