o more, in a little, neat, round hand: it said, "It is not
Proper for you to be there alone."

THE QUEST OF THE QUEEN'S TEARS

Sylvia, Queen of the Woods, in her woodland palace, held court, and
made a mockery of her suitors. She would sing to them, she said, she
would give them banquets, she would tell them tales of legendary days,
her jugglers should caper before them, her armies salute them, her
fools crack jests with them and make whimsical quips, only she could
not love them.

This was not the way, they said, to treat princes in their splendour
and mysterious troubadours concealing kingly names; it was not in
accordance with fable; myth had no precedent for it. She should have
thrown her glove, they said, into some lion's den, she should have
asked for a score of venomous heads of the serpents of Licantara, or
demanded the death of any notable dragon, or sent them all upon some
deadly quest, but that she could not love them--! It was unheard
of--it had no parallel in the annals of romance.

And then she said that if they must needs have a quest she would offer
her hand to him who first should move her to tears: and the quest
should be called, for reference in histories or song, the Quest of the
Queen's Tears, and he that achieved them she would wed, be he only a
petty duke of lands unknown to romance.

And many were moved to anger, for they hoped for some bloody quest;
but the old lords chamberlain said, as they muttered among themselves
in a far, dark end of the chamber, that the quest was hard and wise,
for that if she could ever weep she might also love. They had known
her all her childhood; she had never sighed. Many men had she seen,
suitors and courtiers, and had never turned her head after one went
by. Her beauty was as still sunsets of bitter evenings when all the
world is frore, a wonder and a chill. She was as a sun-stricken
mountain uplifted alone, all beautiful with ice, a desolate and lonely
radiance late at evening far up beyond the comfortable world, not
quite to be companioned by the stars, the doom of the mountaineer.

If she could weep, they said, she could love, they said.

And she smiled pleasantly on those ardent princes, and troubadours
concealing kingly names.

Then one by one they told, each suitor prince the story of his love,
with outstretched hands and kneeling on the knee; and very sorry and
pitiful were the tales, so that often up in the galleries some maid of
the palace