"Very well, I will try to tell the story as my father once told it to me. But whether he drew it from those strange histories in which he is so learned, or whether he drew it from his own fancy, I do not know. For he is more poet than professor, and more antiquarian than either—and more dear than you can know until you meet him, Anthony. Now imagine yourself in our neglected old garden, and listen.
"Long, long ago, before the beauty of Cava brought the Moors across Gibraltar into Spain, there lived in the East a king named Selim the Sorrowful. The name was his alone. His kingdom was as rich as vast; his people were content; it seemed that all the country laughed except its ruler. Upon him lay a vague, sinister spell, and had so lain from the hour of his birth.
"For always he grieved for a thing unknown, a want undefined and unsatisfied. Royalty was his, and youth, and absolute power, yet, because of this great longing of his he moved like a beggar through his splendor and knew hunger of the heart by night and day. Wise men and temples were questioned in vain, rich gifts vainly sent to distant oracles; none could tell the king's desire, or cure it. And his dark, wistful face came to be accepted by his people as a thing usual and royal.
"One day, when the king walked alone in his garden by the sea, a strange mist crept over the land and water, silvery, opalescent, wonderful. He stood, watching. Suddenly a gigantic wave loomed through the haze and swept curling and hissing shoreward to his very feet, where it broke with a great sound. When the glittering foam and spray fell away again, a girl was standing on the sands before him; a girl clad in the floating gray of the mist, girdled and crowned with soft, dim pearls. Her lustrous eyes were green as the heart of the ocean, and when the king gazed into them his sorrow shrank and fled.
"'Who are you, desire of mine?' asked Selim.
"'Alenya of the Sea,' she answered him, and her voice was the lap of waves on a summer night.
"Then the king took her in his arms and bore her to his palace."
"And she cured him?"
"Better! She satisfied him. Never was a change more marvellous; in all the kingdom there was no man so happy as Selim the king. Day and night, night and day, he lingered by the sea-maiden. Riotous prosperity came to the land, the fields yielded double crops; it seemed that the king's smile was a very sunshine of the South.
"But by-and-by superstitious dread fell upon the people, and the jealous priests fostered it. Strange, strange and weirdly sweet was the music that drifted from Alenya's apartments. There came a day when the country demanded that Selim put away the evil enchantress, or die. One month they gave him for the choice."