She trembled and said, "O my Lord the King, I hope you will indulge and pardon in me this trespass. Truly I marvel at mine own boldness how I durst come to you."

With a gesture of his hand the King bade her be seated in a chair on his right beside the table. "Thou needest not be afraid, madam," he said. "That I admit thee, let it make thee assured of welcome. Let me know thine errand."

The fire of her father's wine shuddered down within her like a low-lit flame in a gust of wind as she sat there alone with King Gorice XII. in the circle of the lamplight. She took a deep breath to still her heart's fluttering and said, "O King, I was much afeared to come, and it was to ask you a boon: a little thing for you to give, Lord, and yet to me that am the least of your handmaids a great thing to receive. But now I am come indeed, I durst not ask it."

The glitter of his eyes looking out from their eaves of darkness dismayed her; and little comfort had she of the iron crown at his elbow, bright with gems and fierce with uplifted claws, or of the copper serpents interlaced that made the arms of his chair, or of the bright image of the lamp reflected in the table top where were red streaks like streaks of blood and black streaks like edges of swords streaking the green shining surface of the stone.

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.

"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 false 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 Gonce, "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."

Sriva began to weep, saying, "O King, your gentle pardon."

But the King paced the room like a prowling lion. "Did he fear I should supply Corund in his place?" said he. "This was a cock-sure way to make me do it, if indeed his practice had might to move me at all. Let him learn to come to me with his own mouth if he hope to get good of me. Other else, out of Carcë let him go and avoid my sight, that all the great masters of Hell may conduct him thither."