“Oh, sir,” she pleaded mockingly, “do not make your rule over us too ascetic. I have given no orders for this change, but to-night there are no perfumes in the air; the food is so plain and I have half a mind to burn the cook; and as for the clothes and gauds of these diners, by my face! they might have come straight from the old King’s reign before I stepped in here to show how tasteful could be colours on a robe, or how pretty the glint of a jewel. It’s done by no orders of mine, Deucalion. They have swung round to this change by sheer courtier instinct. Why, look at the beards of the men! There is not half the curl about many of them to-day that they showed with such exquisiteness yesterday. By my face! I believe they’d reap their chins to-morrow as smooth as yours, if you go on setting the fashions at this prodigious rate and I do not interfere.” “Why hinder them if they feel more cleanly shaven?” “No, sir. There shall be only one clean chin where a beard can grow in all Atlantis, and that shall be carried by the man who is husband to the Empress. Why, my Deucalion, would you have no sumptuary laws? Would you have these good folk here and the common people outside imitate us in every cut of the hair and every fold of a garment which it pleases us to discover? Come, sir, if you and I chose to say that our sovereignty was marked only by our superior strength of arm and wit, they would hate us at once for our arrogance; whereas, if we keep apart to ourselves a few mere personal decorations, these become just objects to admire and pleasantly envy.” “You show me that there is more in the office of a ruler than meets the eye.” “And yet they tell me, and indeed show me, that you have ruled with some success.” “I employed the older method. It requires a Phorenice to invent these nicer flights.” “Flatterer!” said she, and smote me playfully with the back of her little fingers on my arm. “You are becoming as great a courtier as any of them. You make me blush with your fine pleasantries, Deucalion, and there is no fan-girl here to-night to cool my cheek. I must choose me another fan-girl. But it shall not be Ylga. Ylga seems to have more of a kindness for you than I like, and if she is wise she will go live in her palace at the other side of the city, and there occupy herself with the ordering of her slaves, and the makings of embroideries. I shall not be hard on Ylga unless she forces me, but I will have no woman in this kingdom treat you with undue civility.” “And how am I to act,” said I, falling in with her mood, “when I see and hear all the men of Atlantis making their protestations before you? By your own confession they all love you as ardently as they seem to have loved you hopelessly.”