But the King paced the room like a prowling lion. “Did he fear I should supply Corund in his place?” said he. “This was a cocksure way to make me do it, if indeed his practice had might to move me at all. Let him learn to come to me with his own mouth if he hope to get good of me. Other else, out of Carcë let him go and avoid my sight, that all the great masters of Hell may conduct him thither.”
The King paused at length beside Sriva, that was perched still upon the table, showing a kind of sweetness in tears, sobbing very pitifully, her face hidden in her two hands. So for a time he beheld her, then lifted her down, and while he sat in his great chair, holding her on his knee with one hand, with the other drew hers gently from before her face. “Come,” he said, “I blame it not on thee. Give over all thy weeping. Reach me that writing from the table.”
She turned in his arms and stretched a hand out for the parchment.
“Thou knowest my signet?” said the King.
She nodded, ay.
“Read,” said he, letting her go. She stood by the lamp, and read.
The King was behind her. He took her beneath the arms, bending to speak hot-breathed in her ear. “Thou seest, I had already chose my general. Therefore I let thee know it, because I mean not to let thee go till morning; and I would not have thee think thy loveliness, howe’er it please me, moveth such deep-commanding spells as to sway my policy.”
She lay back against his breast, limp and strengthless, while he kissed her neck and eyes and throat; then her lips met his in a long voluptuous kiss. Surely the King’s hands upon her were like live coals.
Bethinking her of Corinius, fuming at an open door and an empty chamber, the Lady Sriva was yet content.
