one
about this situation. Come now, dear friend, in what way can we take
back the life we gave this lovely fiend?"

"And would I be wanting to kill my husband?" Queen Freydis asked, and
she smiled wonderfully. "Why, but yes, this fair lame child of yours is
my husband to-day,--poor, frightened, fidgeting gray Manuel,--and I love
him, for Sesphra is all that you were when I loved you, Manuel, and when
you condescended to take your pleasure of me."

Now an orange-colored rat came into the room, and sat down upon the
hearth to the left hand of Freydis, and looked at Dom Manuel. And the
rat was is large as the panther.

Then Freydis said: "No, Manuel, Sesphra must live for a great while,
long after you have been turned to graveyard dust: and he will limp
about wherever pagans are to be found, and he will always win much love
from the high-hearted pagans because of his comeliness and because of
his unfading jaunty youth. And whether he will do any good anywhere is
doubtful, but it is certain he will do harm, and it is equally certain
that already he weighs my happiness as carelessly as you once weighed
it."

Now came into the room another creature, such as no madman has ever seen
or imagined, and it lay down at the feet of Freydis, and it looked at
Dom Manuel. Couched thus, this creature yawned and disclosed
unreassuring teeth.

"Well, Freydis," says Dom Manuel, handsomely, "but, to be sure, what you
tell me puts a new complexion upon matters, and not for worlds would I
be coming between husband and wife--"

Queen Freydis looked up from the flames, toward Dom Manuel, very sadly.
Freydis shrugged, flinging out her hands above the heads of the accursed
beasts. "And at the last I cannot do that, either. So do you two dreary,
unimportant, well-mated people remain undestroyed, now that I go to seek
my husband, and now I endeavor to win my pardon for not letting him
torment you. Eh, I was tempted, gray Manuel, to let my masterful fine
husband have his pleasure of you, and of this lean ugly hobbling
creature and her brat, too, as formerly you had your pleasure of me. But
women are so queerly fashioned that at the last I cannot, quite, consent
to harm this gray, staid, tedious fellow, nor any of his chattels. For
all passes in this world save one thing only: and though the young
Manuel whom I loved in a summer that is gone, be nowadays as perished as
that summer's gay leaves, it is certain a woman's folly does not ever
peris