hat she herself was woman of the Rajputs,
knowledgeable in spells, incantations and elemental spirits such as the
Beloos that terribly haunt waste places, and all Powers that move in
the dark, and that thus she had won the King. Certainly she had been
captured by the King's war-boats off the coast from a trading-ship bound
for Ceylon, and it was her story that, because of her beauty, she was
sent thither to serve as concubine to the King, Tissa of Ceylon. Being
captured, she was brought to the Lord of the Golden Palace. The tongue
she spoke was strange to all the fighting men, but it was wondrous to
see how swiftly she learnt theirs and spoke it with a sweet ripple such
as is in the throat of a bird.

She was beautiful exceedingly, with a colour of pale gold upon her and
lengths of silk-spun hair, and eyes like those of a jungle-deer, and
water might run beneath the arch of her foot without wetting it, and her
breasts were like the cloudy pillows where the sun couches at setting.
Now, at Pagan, the name they called her was Dwaymenau, but her true
name, known only to herself, was Sundari, and she knew not the Law of
the Blessed Buddha but was a heathen accursed. In the strong hollow of
her hand she held the heart of the King, so that on the birth of her son
she had risen from a mere concubine to be the second Queen and a power
to whom all bowed. The First Queen, Maya, languished in her palace, her
pale beauty wasting daily, deserted and lonely, for she had been the
light of the King's eyes until the coming of the Indian woman, and she
loved her lord with a great love and was a noble woman brought up in
honour and all things becoming a queen. But sigh as she would, the King
came never. All night he lay in the arms of Dwaymenau, all day he sat
beside her, whether at the great water pageants or at the festival when
the dancing-girls swayed and postured before him in her gilded chambers.
Even when he went forth to hunt the tiger, she went with him as far as
a woman may go, and then stood back only because he would not risk his
jewel, her life. So all that was evil in the man she fostered and all
that was good she cherished not at all, fearing lest he should return
to the Queen. At her will he had consulted the Hiwot Daw, the Council of
the Woon-gyees or Ministers, concerning a divorce of the Queen, but
this they told him could not be since she had kept all the laws of Manu,
being faithful, noble and beautiful and having borne