tle Melicent said,
"But, Father, why did that queer sad boy want me to be climbing out of
the window with him?"

"So that he might be kind to you, my dear, as he estimates kindness."

"But why did the sad boy want a piece of my hair?" asked Melicent; "and
why did he cut it off with his big shiny shears, while you were writing,
and he was playing with me?"

"It was to pay a price," says Manuel.

He knew now that the Alf charm was laid on his loved child, and that
this was the price of his junketings. He knew also that Suskind would
never remit this price.

Then Melicent demanded, "And what makes your face so white?"

"It must be pale with hunger, child: so I think that you and I had
better be getting to our dinner."

[Illustration]

XXXVIII

Farewell to Suskind

But after dinner Dom Manuel came alone into the Room of Ageus, and
equipped himself as the need was, and he climbed out of the charmed
window for the last time. His final visit to the depths was horrible,
they say, and they relate that of all the deeds of Dom Manuel's crowded
lifetime the thing that he did on this day was the most grim. But he won
through all, by virtue of his equipment and his fixed heart. So when Dom
Manuel returned he clasped in his left hand a lock of fine straw-colored
hair, and on both his hands was blood let from no human veins.

He looked back for the last time into the gray depths. A crowned girl
rose beside him noiselessly, all white and red, and she clasped her
bloodied lovely arms about him, and she drew him to her hacked young
breasts, and she kissed him for the last time. Then her arms were loosed
from about Dom Manuel, and she fell away from him, and was swallowed by
the gray sweet-scented depths.

"And so farewell to you, Queen Suskind," says Count Manuel. "You who
were not human, but knew only the truth of things, could never
understand our foolish human notions. Otherwise you would never have
demanded the one price I may not pay."

"Weep, weep for Suskind!" then said Lubrican, wailing feebly in the gray
and April-scented dusk; "for it was she alone who knew the secret of
preserving that dissatisfaction which is divine where all else falls
away with age into the acquiescence of beasts."

"Why, yes, but unhappiness is not the true desire of man," says Manuel.
"I know, for I have had both happiness and unhappiness, and neither
contented me."

"Weep, weep for Suskind!" then cried the soft and delicate v