"To bring you here," replied the major-domo.
"And that was all?"
"That was all."
"Why was I brought here?" persisted the girl.
"Because the King ordered it," replied the man.
"Why did he order it?"
"It is not for me to know or to seek to know more than the King divulges. I am but a servant." For a time the silence of the room was broken only by their breathing and the soft movements of the girl's skirt as she paced nervously the length of the gorgeous apartment that, had its walls been of cold granite, could have meant no more a prison to her.
Her thoughts were confused by the hopelessness of her situation. She had had no time to prepare for this, not in the sense of the preparation that was customary for a new bride for Lodivarman, but in a sterner, a more personal sense. She had sworn to herself that she would die before she would submit to the loathsome embraces of the Leper King; but taken thus unaware she had no means for death, so that now she concentrated every faculty of her ingenuity to discover some plan whereby she might postpone the fatal hour or find the means to liberate herself at once from the hateful crisis which she felt impended.
And then the door at the end of the room opened and Lodivarman entered. He halted just within the threshold, closing the door behind him, and stood thus for a moment in silence, his dead eyes upon her where, reacting unconsciously to a lifetime of training, she had gone on her knees before the King, as had the major-domo.
"Arise!" commanded Lodivarman, including them both in a gesture, and then he turned to the man. "You may go," he said. "See that no one enters this wing of the palace until I summon."