There were hours wherein he was prone to pass the matter by, to forgive these lovers who had balked his will by a wit more subtle than his own; yet moments would come when he longed to strip her shoulders bare and watch the lash laid on; and in such a mood he caused her to be brought before him as he lolled in his garden in the noontide heat.
His couch had been set beside a fountain's edge, beneath a trellaced arbor whereon a vine of Syria climbed, the great black grapes in clusters peeping from their leaves and set apart for the lips of the King alone. At his hand were a jeweled flagon and a dish of fruit on which he regaled himself from time to time as he waited for Semiramis, while at his head stood a eunuch who waved a fan of feathered plumes and watched lest a buzzing insect rest upon his monarch's skin.
King Ninus, smiling grimly, watched Semiramis coming down a garden-path, and hardened his heart, for now, alone with her, he would speak his mind as befit the master of the world, and even learn, perchance, if her arrogance would break beneath the lash.
Then presently she stood before him, clothed in a white simar, whose edges were stitched with pale blue feathers of some tiny bird, crossed on her breast and caught by a silver girdle at her waist, the soft folds falling to her sandaled feet. Her hair was drawn from her temples in a drooping curve, confined with jeweled pins in a knot behind, and was covered by a gauzy veil, now lifted from her face in deference to the King.
In the eyes of Ninus she was fair beyond his fondest dreams of womankind, yet, withal, she galled him by her calm assurance of the power to charm. So, for a space he regarded her and spoke no word, till Semiramis, uninvited, perched herself upon a stool and inquired into the monarch's health as though she had been his leech in charge.
"Woman," growled the King, "knowest thou why I bring thee here—alone—where none may hear my words or thine?"
She smiled and looked into his eyes, striving to read the mind beneath, then plucked a bunch of his sacred grapes from the vine about her head and began to eat them thoughtfully.
"Mayhap my lord is weary of himself and willeth to be amused."
The King half raised himself upon his arm in angry astonishment, for the impudence of both her act and speech was past belief. Serene and undismayed, she spoke as an equal, to him—the lord of all Assyria—and pecked at his royal fruit with the recklessness of some wanton bird. His mouth went open, while he vainly sought for words wherein to shape his wrath; yet, ere he could find them, Semiramis had poised a luscious grape between her thumb and finger and thrust it between his lips.
"Eat, my lord," she murmured, smiling happily, "for never have I tasted fruit that lay more sweet upon my tongue."