e, "Twilight" beneath the
willows, his hounds at his feet, had fallen asleep.

Undisturbed, dreamless, "the unseemly hours sped light of foot." He
awoke again, between sunset and dark; the owl astir; "the silver gnats
yet netting the shadows," and so returned to the palace.

But the spell had fallen--king and courtier, queen and lady and page
and scullion, hawk and hound, slept a sleep past waking--"while I,
roamed and roam yet in a solitary watch beyond all sleeping.
Wherefore, sir, I only of the most hospitable house in these lands am
awake to bid you welcome. But as for that, a few dwindling and harsh
fruits in my orchards, and the cold river water that my dogs lap with
me, are all that is left to offer you. For I who never sleep am never
hungry, and they who never wake--I presume--never thirst. Would, sir,
it were otherwise! After such long silence, then, conceive how
strangely falls your voice on ears that have heard only wings
fluttering, dismal water-songs, and the yelp and quarrel and
night-voice of unseen hosts in the forests."

He glanced at me with a mild austerity and again lowered his eyes. I
cannot now but wonder how the rhythm of a voice so soft, so
monotonous, could give such pleasure to the ear. I almost doubted my
own eyes when I looked upon his yellow, on that unmoved, sad, mad,
pale face.

I had no doubt of his dogs, however, and walked scarcely at ease
beside him, while they, shadow-footed, closely followed us at heel.

"Prince Ennui" conducted me with shining lantern into a dense orchard
thickly under-grown, marvellously green, with a small, hard fruit upon
its branches, shaped like a medlar, of a crisp, sweet odour and,
despite its hardness, a delicious taste. The interwoven twigs of the
stooping trees were thickly nested; a veritable wilderness of moonlike
and starry flowers ran all to seed amid the nettles and nightshade of
this green silence. And while I ate--for I was hungry enough--Prince
Ennui stood, his hand on Sallow's muzzle, lightly thridding the dusky
labyrinths of the orchard with his faint green eyes.

Mine, too, were not less busy, but rather with its lord than with his
orchard. And the strange thought entered my mind, Was he in very deed
the incarnation of this solitude, this silence, this lawless
abundance? Somewhere, in the green heats of summer, had he come forth,
taken shape, exalted himself? What but vegetable ichor coursed through
veins transparent as his? What but the