"Bee of the Clarides, princess of the dwarfs, I love you in the hope that you will one day love me. But had I not that hope I would love you just as much. I request you, in return for my friendship, always to be sincere with me."
"Little King Loc, I promise you I will."
"Well, Bee, tell me if you love any one enough to marry him."
"Little King Loc, I love no one as much as that."
Then King Loc smiled, and seizing his golden goblet he proposed in ringing tones the health of the princess of the dwarfs. And a vast murmur rose from the depths of the earth, for the table at which they feasted stretched from one end to the other of the dwarfish empire.
CHAPTER XIII
TELLS HOW BEE SAW HER MOTHER AND
COULD NOT KISS HER
Bee, with a crown set on her forehead, was more pensive and more sad than in those days when her hair flowed unbound on her shoulders, and when she went laughing to the smithy of the dwarfs to pull the beards of her good friends, Pic, Tad, and Dig, whose faces, reddened by the glow of the flames, grew merry at her welcome. The good dwarfs, who once used to dandle her on their knees and call her their Bee, now bowed at her approach and kept deferentially silent. She regretted she was no longer a child, and she was oppressed by being the princess of the dwarfs.
It no longer gave her any pleasure to see King Loc since she had seen him cry on her account. But she liked him; for he was kind, and he was unhappy.
One day (if it can be said that there are days in the empire of the dwarfs) she took King Loc by the hand and drew him to the fissure of the rock admitting a beam in which golden motes danced gaily.