the man at the
feet of the Dweller in the Heights, tears forced themselves, as though
a corpse dead to all else lived only to anguish. They flowed like
blood-drops upon his face as he lay enduring, and the voice proceeded.)
What was the charm of the King? Was it his stately height and strength?
Or his faithless gayety? Or his voice, deep and soft as the sitar when
it sings of love? His women said--some one thing, some another, but none
of these ladies were of royal blood, and therefore they knew not.

Now one day, the all-privileged jester of the King, said, laughing
harshly:

"Maharaj, you divert yourself. But how if, while we feast and play, the
Far Away Princess glided past and was gone, unknown and unwelcomed?"

And the King replied:

"Fool, content yourself. I shall know my Princess, but she delays so
long that I weary."

Now in a far away country was a Princess, daughter of the Greatest,
and her Father hesitated to give her in marriage to such a King for all
reported that he was faithless of heart, but having seen his portrait
she loved him and fled in disguise from the palaces of her Father, and
being captured she was brought before the King in Ranipur.

He sat upon a cloth of gold and about him was the game he had killed in
hunting, in great masses of ruffled fur and plumage, and he turned the
beauty of his face carelessly upon her, and as the Princess looked upon
him, her heart yearned to him, and he said in his voice that was like
the male string of the sitar:

"Little slave, what is your desire?"

Then she saw that the long journey had scarred her feet and dimmed her
hair with dust, and that the King's eyes, worn with days and nights of
pleasure did not pierce her disguise. Now in her land it is a custom
that the blood royal must not proclaim itself, so she folded her hands
and said gently:

"A place in the household of the King." And he, hearing that the Waiting
slave of his chief favorite Jayashri was dead, gave her that place. So
the Princess attended on those ladies, courteous and obedient to all
authority as beseemed her royalty, and she braided her bright hair so
that it hid the little crowns which the Princesses of her House
must wear always in token of their rank, and every day her patience
strengthened.

Sometimes the King, carelessly desiring her laughing face and sad eyes,
would send for her to wile away an hour, and he would say; "Dance,
little slave, and tell me stories of the far c