see into the other years you would be content to have it
as it is," he said gently--"the years ahead may--"

"I care nothing for the years ahead! I want the _now_!--I want--"

"Listen!" he said, and she fell silent with covered face. "That which
you feel for Ka-yemo is not the love of marriage. A man takes a wife
for love of a wife and a home and children in the home. A man does not
chain himself to a tigress whose bite and whose blows he has felt. A
man would wish to be master:--what man has been born who could be
master in your home?"

"You do not know. You have lived a different sort of life! I could be
more than another wife--than any other wife! I shall kill some one!--"
and she rose to her feet--"unless the magic comes I kill some one!"

"And then?"

"Then Phen-tza the governor will have me strangled, and they will
take me to my grave with ropes of raw hide and there will not any
where be a sad heart for Yahn Tsyn-deh."

"You see how it is--he is precious to you--as he always has been. But
your love is too great a love for happy days. Always it will bring you
the ache in the heart. No thing of earth should be given the love like
that:--it is a fire to burn a whole forest in the days of its summer,
and in the winter snows there will be only ashes."

"Good!--then I, Yahn, will rather burn to the ashes in such summer
days, and be dead under the snows in the winter of the year!"

"And after that?"

"After that will not the Po-Ahtun-ho be Ruler always? Will he not
remember his friends who are precious in the Beyond as he remembers
this one to-day?" she asked mockingly. "K[=a]-ye-fah told the council
that you have lived a life no other man lives, and that no woman is
precious to you:--when you find the woman who is yet to come, may a
viper poison her blood--may a cat of the hills tear her flesh! May you
love until madness comes--and may the woman find only death in your
arms--and find it quickly!"

When the Woman of the Twilight came in from the field with yellow corn
pollen for the sacred ceremonies, the lattice of reeds at the outer
door was yet shaking as from touch of a ruthless hand, or a strong
wind.

"Who was it that cried here?" she asked. "Who has left you sad?"

"Perhaps a prophetess, my mother," answered Tahn-te, and sat
thoughtful where Yahn had left him. And after a long time he arose
and sought the governor.

But it was fated that the governor and the new Ruler were not to talk
of the love