"I should like to hear it very much indeed," answered Alan, when he had
mastered her meaning, "though it is strange that none of the rest of us
remember such things. Meanwhile, O Asika, I will tell you that I desire
to return to my own land, taking with me that gift of gold that you have
given me. When will it please you to allow me to return?"

"Not yet a while, I think," she said, smiling at him weirdly, for no
other word will describe that smile. "My spirit remembers that it was
always thus. Those wanderers who came hither always wished to return
again to their own country, like the birds in spring. Once there was a
white man among them, that was more than twenty hundred years ago; he
was a native of a country called Roma, and wore a helmet. He wished to
return, but my mother of that day, she kept him and by and by I will
show him to you if you like. Before that there was a brown man who came
from a land where a great river overflows its banks every year. He was
a prince of his own country, who had fled from his king and the desert
folk made a slave of him, and so he drifted hither. He wished to return
also, for my mother of that day, or my spirit that dwelt in her, showed
to him that if he could but be there they would make him king in his own
land. But my mother of that day, she would not let him go, and by and by
I will show him to you, if you wish."

Bewildered, amazed, Alan listened to her. Evidently the woman was mad,
or else she played some mystical part for reasons of her own.

"When will you let me go, O Asika?" he repeated.

"Not yet a while, I think," she said again. "You are too comely and I
like you," and she smiled at him. There was nothing coarse in the smile,
indeed it had a certain spiritual quality which thrilled him. "I like
you," she went on in her dreamy voice, "I would keep you with me until
your spirit is drawn up into my spirit, making it strong and rich as all
the spirits that went before have done, those spirits that my mothers
loved from the beginning, which dwell in me to-day."

Now Alan grew alarmed, desperate even.

"Queen," he said, "but just now your husband sat here, is it right then
that you should talk to me thus?"

"My husband," she answered, laughing. "Why, that man is but a slave who
plays the part of husband to satisfy an ancient law. Never has he so
much as kissed my finger tips; my women--those who waited on you last
night--are his wives, not I,--or may be, if he will