Yet she took heart to say, “Were I a great lord had done your majesty service as my father hath, or these others you did honour to-night, O King, it had been otherwise.” He said nothing, and still gathering courage she said, “I too would serve you, O King. And I came to ask you how.” The King smiled. “I am much beholden to thee, madam. Do as thou hast done, and thou shalt please me well. Feast and be merry, and charge not thine head with these midnight questionings, lest too much carefulness make thee grow lean.” “Grow I so, O King? You shall judge.” So speaking the Lady Sriva rose up and stood before him in the lamplight. Slowly she opened her arms upwards right and left, putting back her velvet cloak from her shoulders, until the dark cloak hanging in folds from either uplifted hand was like the wings of a bird lifted up for flight. Dazzling fair shone her bare shoulders and bare arms and throat and bosom. One great hyacinth stone, hanging by a gold chain about her neck, rested above the hollow of her breasts. It flashed and slept with her breathing’s alternate fall and swell. “You did threaten me, Lord, but now,” she said, “to transmew me to a mandrake. Would you might change me to a man.” She could read nothing in the crag-like darkness of his countenance, the iron lip, the eyes that were like pulsing firelight out of hollow caves. “I should serve you better so, Lord, than my poor beauty may. Were I a man, I had come to you to-night and said, ‘O King, let us not suffer any longer of that hound Juss. Give me a sword, O King, and I will put down Demonland for you and tread them under feet.’” She sank softly into her chair again, suffering her velvet cloak to fall over its back. The King ran his finger thoughtfully along the upstanding claws of the crown beside him on the table. “Is this the boon thou askest me?” he said at length. “An expedition to Demonland?” She answered it was. “Must they sail to-night?” said the King, still watching her. She smiled foolishly. “Only,” he said, “I would know what gadfly of urgency stung thee on to come so strangely and suddenly and after midnight.” She paused a minute, then summoning courage: “Lest another should first come to you, O King,” she answered. “Believe me, I know of preparations, and one that shall come to you in the morning praying this thing for another. What intelligence soever some hath, I am sure of that to be true that I have.” “Another?” said the King. Sriva answered, “Lord, I’ll say no names. But there be some, O King, be dangerous sweet suppliants, hanging their hopes belike on other strings than we may tune.” She had bent her head above the polished table, looking curiously down into its depths. Her corsage and gown of scarlet silk brocade were like the chalice of a great flower; her white arms and shoulders like the petals of the flower above it. At length she looked up. “Thou smilest, my Lady Sriva,” said the King.