s to the King, and
only got home in time to light the fire for breakfast, so she never knew
how the Princess put out the lamp every night, and cried in the dark.

The years went by and went by, and the Princess grew old and gray, for
she had never had the heart to leave the lamp alight, for fear that some
poor mariners who were not her King should be drawn by the lamp to those
cruel rocks and wrecked on them, for of course it wouldn't and couldn't
be the poor mariners' fault that they didn't happen to be the one and
only King who could land safely on the Forlorn Island.

And when the Princess was quite old, and the tear pearls that had been
swept up by the Cat filled seven big chests in the back-kitchen, the
Princess fell ill.

'I think I am going to die,' she said to the Cat, 'and I am not really
at all sorry except for you. I think you'll miss me. Tell me now--it's
almost all over--who are you, really?'

'I give it up,' said the Cat as usual. 'Ask another.'

But the Princess asked nothing more. She lay on her bed in her white
gown and waited for death, for she was very tired of being alive. Only
she said:

'Put out that lamp in the window; it hurts my eyes.'

For even then she thought of the poor men whose ships might be wrecked
just because they didn't happen to be the one and only King with whom
she could be happy.

So the Cat took the lamp away, but she did not put it out; she set it in
the window of the parlour, and its light shone out over the black waters
of the Perilous Sea.

And that very night the one and only King--who in all these years had
never ceased to follow the leading of the dreams the Cat whispered in
his ear--came in the black darkness sailing over the Perilous Sea. And
in the black darkness he saw at last the bright white light that his
dreams had promised, and he knew that where the light was his Princess
was, and his heart leaped up, and he bade the helmsmen steer for the
light.

And for the light they steered. And because he was the only possible
King to mate that Princess, the helmsman found the only possible passage
among the rocks, and the ship anchored safely in a little quiet creek,
and the King landed and went up to the door of the tower and knocked.

'Who's there?' said the Cat.

'Me,' said the King, just as you or I might have done.

'You're late,' said the Cat. 'I'm afraid you've lost your chance.'

'I took the first chance I got,' said the King. 'Let me in, and let me