"Enra, Enra, why don't you pray?" the queen repeated like one insane, looking at him with dry, tearless eyes. "Pray! Your prayer is strong: the Father will hear His son. Save her, Enra!"
The king was silent. He felt so ashamed that he could have screamed with shame, as with pain, but worse than shame, pain and death was the mockery "what will you sing when you do know death?"
At the same time princess Meritatona was lying ill in the apartments of Saakera, the heir-apparent.
Maki kept talking of her as of one dead.
"All through me, through me!" she repeated in anguish.
"But, darling, Rita is alive," her mother said, trying to comfort her. But she would not believe it.
"No, mother, don't deceive me, I saw how they carried her, dead."
"She might be saved if only she believed me," the queen thought. "But how can I convince her? And what has happened between them? A fine mother I am—I don't know why one daughter strangled herself and by whom the other has had a child.... Perhaps Enra knows? He spoke with her then—he must know."
She questioned the king when they were alone together.
"Enra, do you know who the baby's father is?"