"My father was a chess-player," she said simply. "He taught me. And it was not difficult, Most High. It was trivial."
For a second he looked really angry; then said quietly. "True again, O Châran. Stand up, woman! Wherefore shouldst thou grovel before--triviality?"
Standing there beside her their eyes met, and his showed admiration.
"So thou didst not lie, because the King can do no wrong. Then art thou, woman, to be judge? thy thought, thy standard, always to be right?"
"It--it was to-day, Great King," she said gravely.
He laughed outright.
"This is wholesome as a draught of bitter apples! Lo! Châran, thou didst give me a lesson in love last time we met. Give me one in tactics to-day! Not tactics in chess--that is past praying for--but in Kingship."
She looked at him with pitiful humility. "This slave knows not, she is only woman!"
"And yet thou didst come at dawn to save me from a broken promise! I have not thanked thee yet for that; but in truth"--here his voice grew softer, and leaning his elbow on the parapet, he looked into her eyes, "thanks being all on one side----" Then suddenly curiosity beset him. "How didst thou come?"--he looked down rapidly--"not by yonder projecting eave? not by that, surely? Why! even my head----" He paused a while, and her silence assuring him, murmured: "And thou didst that for me?"
"For the King, Most-High!" she protested in a low voice as she clutched convulsively at the talisman. For through her swept with tumultuous force her first real knowledge of what her womanhood might hold. Ye Gods! have pity! she must not lose herself. The King's Luck must be safe first. He must never know the tale.