llity above her and the silence of the shrine. This ended,
the Queen rose and did obeisance to the Lord and, retiring, paced back
beneath the White Canopy and entered the courtyard where the palace
stood--a palace of noble teakwood, brown and golden and carved like lace
into strange fantasies of spires and pinnacles and branches where Nats
and Tree Spirits and Beloos and swaying river maidens mingled and met
amid fruits and leaves and flowers in a wild and joyous confusion. The
faces, the blowing garments, whirled into points with the swiftness of
the dance, were touched with gold, and so glad was the building that it
seemed as if a very light wind might whirl it to the sky, and even
the sad Queen stopped to rejoice in its beauty as it blossomed in the
sunlight.

And even as she paused, her little son Ananda rushed to meet her, pale
and panting, and flung himself into her arms with dry sobs like those of
an overrun man. She soothed him until he could speak, and then the grief
made way in a rain of tears.

"Mindon has killed my deer. He bared his knife, slit his throat and cast
him in the ditch and there he lies."

"There will he not lie long!" shouted Mindon, breaking from the palace
to the group where all were silent now. "For the worms will eat him and
the dogs pick clean his bones, and he will show his horns at his lords
no more. If you loved him, White-liver, you should have taught him
better manners to his betters."

With a stifled shriek Ananda caught the slender knife from his girdle
and flew at Mindon like a cat of the woods. Such things were done daily
by young and old, and this was a long sorrow come to a head between the
boys.

Suddenly, lifting the hangings of the palace gateway, before them stood
the mother of Mindon, the Lady Dwaymenau, pale as wool, having heard the
shout of her boy, so that the two Queens faced each other, each holding
the shoulders of her son, and the ladies watched, mute as fishes, for it
was years since these two had met.

"What have you done to my son?" breathed Maya the Queen, dry in the
throat and all but speechless with passion. For indeed his face, for a
child, was ghastly.

"Look at his knife! What would he do to my son?" Dwaymenau was stiff
with hate and spoke as to a slave.

"He has killed my deer and mocks me because I loved him, He is the devil
in this place. Look at the devils in his eyes. Look quick before he
smiles, my mother."

And indeed, young as the boy wa