robe in the sky, and its shadow
fell upon the city and the palace. A light footstep became audible,
a veiled woman entered the room and conducted him through the obscure
corridors and multiplied mazes of the royal edifice with as much
confidence as though she had been preceded by a slave bearing a lamp or
a torch.

The hand which held that of Gyges was cold, soft, and small;
nevertheless those slender fingers clasped it with a bruising force,
as the fingers of some statue of brass animated by a prodigy would
have done. The rigidity of an inflexible will betrayed itself in that
ever-equal pressure as of a vice--a pressure which no hesitation of head
or heart came to vary. Gyges, conquered, subjugated, crushed, yielded to
that imperious traction, as though he were borne along by the mighty arm
of Fate.

Alas! it was not thus he had wished to touch for the first time that
fair royal hand, which had presented the poniard to him, and was leading
him to murder, for it was Nyssia herself who had come for Gyges, to
conceal him in the place of ambuscade.

No word was exchanged between the sinister couple on the way from the
prison to the nuptial chamber.

The queen unfastened the thongs, raised the bar of the entrance, and
placed Gyges behind the folding-door as Candaules had done the evening
previous. This repetition of the same acts, with so different a purpose,
had something of a lugubrious and fatal character. Vengeance, this
time, had placed her foot upon every track left by the insult. The
chastisement and the crime alike followed the same path. Yesterday it
was the turn of Candaules, to-day it was that of Nyssia; and Gyges,
accomplice in the injury, was also accomplice in the penalty. He had
served the king to dishonour the queen; he would serve the queen to kill
the king, equally exposed by the vices of the one and the virtues of the
other.

The daughter of Megabazus seemed to feel a savage joy, a ferocious
pleasure, in employing only the same means chosen by the Lydian king,
and turning to account for the murder those very precautions which had
been adopted for voluptuous fantasy.

'You will again this evening see me take off these garments which are
so displeasing to Candaules. This spectacle should become wearisome to
you,' said the queen in accents of bitter irony, as she stood on the
threshold of the chamber; 'you will end by finding me ugly.' And
a sardonic, forced laugh momentarily curled her pale mouth; t