ttle Love, poor Love, Time scares him away.

King:

What is this child of man that can conquer Time and that is braver
than Love?

Eznarza:

Even Memory.

King:

Yes. I will call to him when the wind is from the desert and the
locusts are beaten against my obdurate walls. I will call to him more
when I cannot see the desert and cannot hear the wind of it.

Eznarza:

He shall bring back our year to us that Time cannot destroy. Time
cannot slaughter it if Memory says no. It is reprieved, though
banished. We shall often see it though a little far off and all its
hours and days shall dance to us and go by one by one and come back
and dance again.

King:

Why, that is true. They shall come back to us. I had thought that they
that work miracles whether in Heaven or Earth were unable to do one
thing. I thought that they could not bring back days again when once
they had fallen into the hands of Time.

Eznarza:

It is a trick that Memory can do. He comes up softly in the town or
the desert, wherever a few men are, like the strange dark conjurors
who sing to snakes, and he does his trick before them, and does it
again and again.

King:

We will often make him bring the old days back when you are gone to
your people and I am miserably wedded to the princess coming from
Tharba.

Eznarza:

They will come with sand on their feet from the golden, beautiful
desert; they will come with a long-gone sunset each one over his head.
Their lips will laugh with the olden evening voices.

King:

It is nearly noon. It is nearly noon. It is nearly noon.

Eznarza:

Why, we part then.

King:

O, come into the city and be Queen there. I will send its princess
back again to Tharba. You shall be Queen in Thalanna.

Eznarza:

I go now back to my people. You will wed the princess from Tharba on
the morrow. You have said it. I have said it.

King:

O, that I had not given my word to return.

Eznarza:

A King's word is like a King's crown and a King's sceptre and a King's
throne. It is in fact a foolish thing, like a city.

King:

I cannot break my word. But you can be Queen in Thalanna.

Eznarza:

Thalanna will not have a gypsy for a Queen.

King:

I will make Thalanna have her for a Queen.

Eznarza:

You cannot make a gypsy live for a year in a city.

King:

I knew of a gypsy that lived once in a city.

Eznarza:

Not such a gypsy as I... come back to the tents of the Arabs.

King:

I ca