"'Do you know how fascinating you were this evening?' said the king. 'Older by forty years than my father,' thought I, as, dissembling still, I replied, 'Your slave does not know.' 'But you were, and I am sure you deserve to be a queen,' he added, trying to play the gallant. 'My lord is too gracious to his slave,' I murmured.
"'Why, Thieng!' he said, speaking to my eldest sister; 'why have you hidden this beauty away from me so long? Let her not be called Choy[17] any longer, but Chorm.'[18] I would weary you if I tried to tell you how he praised and flattered me, and how before a week was over I was the proudest woman in the palace.
"I became a stranger to my dismal rooms in the street, to my slave-women as well as to my companions. I lived entirely in his Majesty's apartments, and it was only when he was asleep or in the council hall that I rushed down to plunge into the lotus-lake or to ramble in the rose-garden. But I never stopped to think. I would not give my heart a moment to reflect, not a moment to the past, not a moment to the future. I was intoxicated with the present. Every day gifts rare and costly were brought to me from the king; I affected to despise them, but he never relaxed his endeavors to suit my taste, to match my hair and my complexion. The late proud, insolent favorite, who used to order us girls about as if we were dogs, knelt before me, as half from ennui and half from coquetry I feigned illness and inability to rise from my master's couch. I cannot tell you how well I acted my part; I was more daring than any favorite had yet been.
"In the tumult and excess of the passion I felt for a stranger, I was able to make the king believe that he was himself its object; and he was so flattered at my seeming admiration and devotion, that he called me by the tender name 'Look' (child), and indulged me in all my whims and fancies.
"But at length I grew tired of so much acting, and the intensity of my manner began to flag. I complained of illness in order to escape to my own room, where I flung myself down upon my leather pillow, and drove my teeth through and through it in the after-agony that my falseness brought upon me. I was worn with woe, more than wasted by want of food. My sister observed my paleness, and said, half in earnest and half in jest: 'Don't take it so much to heart, child; we have all had our day; it is yours now, but it can't last forever. Remember, there are other dancing-girls growing up, and some of them are handsomer than you are.'
"'What do you mean?' I retorted, fiercely; 'do you suppose I am sorrowing because of my grandfather? Bah! take him, if you want him.' 'Hush, child,' she replied, 'and don't forget that you are in a lion's den.'
"'Lion or tiger,' I said, laughing bitterly, 'I mean to play with his fangs, even if they tear my heart, until I am rich as you at least.' 'Do you, indeed?' she rejoined. 'Be quick, then, and give him a p'hra ong.'[19] With that she left me to my own wild, bitter, maddening, condemning self.
"Months of triumph, rage, agony, and despair wore away, and my day was not over I was acknowledged by all to be the wilful favorite 'Chorm.' In the mean time I had one ray of comfort. I found out the name of the man I loved, from a new slave-woman who had just entered into my service. It was P'haya P'hi Chitt. That very day I took a needleful of golden thread and worked the name into a scrap of silk which I made into an amulet and wore round my neck. This greatly solaced me for a little while, after which I began to crave something more.
"The new slave-woman who had entered my service, just because I was the favorite, seemed so kind and attentive, and was such a comfort to me, whenever I rushed to my rooms for a respite, that I determined to employ her in obtaining information of the outside world for me. 'Just to beguile me of my weary hours,' I said. She seconded the idea with great alacrity. 'To whose house shall I go first?' she inquired. 'O, anywhere,' I replied, carelessly; then, as if suddenly remembering myself, I said, 'O Boon, go to P'haya P'hi Chitt, and find out how the groom of the Queen Thèwâdee lives in his harem.'
"When she returned, which was close upon nightfall, I was impatient to hear all she had to tell me; but after she had told me all, I became more impatient and restless still. Her face lighted up as she expatiated on the manly beauty of P'haya P'hi Chitt, and her voice trembled slightly—she did it on purpose, I thought—as she went on to say that ever since the day he had met the lovely Thèwâdee he had become so changed, and had grown so melancholy, that all his dearest friends and relatives began to fear some secret distemper, or that some evil spirit had entered into him. This was ample food for me for months. It comforted me to think that he shared my misery.