ountries. You quite unlike
my Women, doubtless because you are a slave."

And she thought--"No, but because I am a Princess,"--but this she did
not say. She laughed and told him the most marvellous stories in the
world until he laid his head upon her warm bosom, dreaming awake.

There were stories of the great Himalayan solitudes where in the winter
nights the white tiger stares at the witches' dance of the Northern
Lights dazzled by the hurtling of their myriad spears. And she told
how the King-eagle, hanging motionless over the peaks of Gaurisankar,
watches with golden eyes for his prey, and falling like a plummet
strikes its life out with his clawed heel and, screaming with triumph,
bears it to his fierce mate in her cranny of the rocks.

"A gallant story!" the King would say. "More!" Then she told of the
tropical heats and the stealthy deadly creatures of forest and jungle,
and the blue lotus of Buddha swaying on the still lagoon,--And she spoke
of loves of men and women, their passion and pain and joy. And when she
told of their fidelity and valour and honour that death cannot quench,
her voice was like the song of a minstrel, for she had read all the
stories of the ages and the heart of a Princess told her the rest. And
the King listened unwearying though he believed this was but a slave.

(The face of the man at the feet of the Dweller in the Heights twitched
in a white agony. Pearls of sweat were distilled upon his brows, but
he moved neither hand nor foot, enduring as in a flame of fire. And the
voice continued.)

So one day, in the misty green of the Spring, while she rested at his
feet in the garden Pavilion, he said to her:

"Little slave, why do you love me?"

And she answered proudly:

"Because you have the heart of a King."

He replied slowly;

"Of the women who have loved me none gave this reason, though they gave
many."

She laid her cheek on his hand.

"That is the true reason."

But he drew it away and was vaguely troubled, for her words, he knew
not why, reminded him of the Far Away Princess and of things he had long
forgotten, and he said; "What does a slave know of the hearts of Kings?"
And that night he slept or waked alone.

Winter was at hand with its blue and cloudless days, and she was
commanded to meet the King where the lake lay still and shining like an
ecstasy of bliss, and she waited with her chin dropped into the cup of
her hands, looking over the water with eyes that d