“I smiled at mine own thought,” she said. “You’ll laugh to hear it, O my Lord the King, being so different from what we spoke on. But sure, of women’s thoughts is no more surety nor rest than is in a vane that turneth at all winds.” “Let me hear it,” said the King, bending forward, his lean hairy hand flung idly across the table’s edge. “Why thus it was, Lord,” said she. “There came me in mind of a sudden that saying of the Lady Prezmyra when first she was wed to Corund and dwelt here in Carcë. She said all the right part of her body was of Witchland but the left Pixy. Whereupon our people that were by rejoiced much that she had given the right part of her body to Witchland. Whereupon she said, but her heart was on the left side.” “And where wearest thou thine?” asked the King. She durst not look at him, and so saw not the comic light go like summer lightning across his dark countenance as she spoke Prezmyra’s name. His hand had dropped from the table edge; Sriva felt it touch her knee. She trembled like a full sail that suddenly for an instant the wind leaves. Very still she sat, saying in a low voice, “There’s a word, my Lord the King, if you’d but speak it, should beam a light to show you mine answer.” But he leaned closer, saying, “Dost think I’ll chaffer with thee? I’ll know the answer first i’ the dark.” “Lord,” she whispered, “I would not have come to you in this deep and dead time of the night but that I knew you noble and the great King, and no amorous surfeiter that should deal falsely with me.” Her body breathed spices: soft warm scents to make the senses reel: perfume of malabathrum bruised in wine, essences of sulphur-coloured lilies planted in Aphrodite’s garden. The King drew her to him. She cast her arms about his neck, saying close to his ear, “Lord, I may not sleep till you tell me they must sail, and Corsus must be their captain.” The King held her gathered up like a child in his embrace. He kissed her on the mouth, a long deep kiss. Then he sprang to his feet, set her down like a doll before him upon the table by the lamp, and so sat back in his own chair again and sat regarding her with a strange and disturbing smile. On a sudden his brow darkened, and thrusting his face towards hers, his thick black square-cut beard jutting beneath the curl of his shaven upper lip, “Girl,” he said, “who sent thee o’ this errand?” He rolled his eye upon her with such a gorgon look that her blood ran back with a great leap towards her heart, and she answered, scarce to be heard, “Truly, O King, my father sent me.” “Was he drunk when he sent thee?” asked the King. “Truly, Lord, I think he was,” said she. “That cup that he was drunken withal,” said King Gorice, “let him prize and cherish it all his life natural. For if in his sober senses he should make no more estimation of me than think to bribe my favours with a bona roba; by my soul, in his evil health he had sought to do it, for it should cost him nothing but his life.”