in. And he said: Sweet wife, since thou art
so very certain, then as it must be, let it be. What care I for
to-morrow, if I am with thee all to-day? Know, that but an hour ago,
when first I saw thee, I would have given my life, doubly dear as it was
by reason of its recent escape from death, to win from thee a little
love, even a very little. But as it is, a single day is life enough,
provided it is spent with thee, even though I were really destined never
to see another.

[18] This was the privilege of kings' daughters.

And she looked at him with wistful eyes; and after a while, she said:
Thou art brave, and as I would have had thee. And thou dost not believe
me: and it may be, it is better so. And then she turned to the King, and
said: O father, go away now: and leave me alone with my husband. And be
not afraid, either for thy honour or my own, for there shall be as it
were a sword between us. But I wish to have him all to myself, until the
end. And when the time has come, let the gong be sounded, and I will
send him out to thee, and thou canst show him the way to death. And
thereupon the old King went away as she desired, moaning and muttering,
and wringing his hands with grief.

So when he was gone, those two lovers sat together all day long, gazing
at each other like the sunflower and the sun. And he utterly forgot the
morrow, but it never left her mind, even for a single instant. And she
made him relate to her his whole life from the very beginning, drinking
in his words, and hanging on his lips, and watching him keenly, with
eyes that never left his face, holding all the while his hand, with the
grasp of one who knows that her husband must be led to execution in the
evening. And she said to herself, at every moment: Still he is here:
still he is here. And when the sun set, she sent for food and delicacies
and wine, and fed him like a child with her own hand, tasting herself
nothing. And she surfeited him with the honey of her sweetness and the
syrup of her kisses and the nectar of the young new moon of beauty
bathed in the sun of love, the redder[19] because of its approaching
set. And all at once, she started to her feet, in the very middle of a
caress. And she stood, listening. And Aja listened also: and he heard in
the silence the sound of a gong.

[19] A play on words: meaning also _more affectionate_.

So as he watched her, she turned paler and ever paler, like the east at
the break of dawn. And