"I had a better esteem of you, Fajal," I began in tones of reproachful chagrin, "than that you should still attempt to mock me by persisting in this threadbare pretence of a subject and his king. You know who I am, and what I am in the eyes of the body to which you belong; so why indulge in this sickly acting when there is no stage and no necessity for hypocrisy? Speak to me as man to man. Tell me what you wish to say, but tell it in the spirit of plain truth and reality."
Nevertheless, crouching yet more abjectly into the mire, Fajal still clung obstinately to my knees and even endeavoured to kiss my feet as he started to speak in a hollow voice that suggested intense emotion kept with difficulty under control.
"Majesty! Your rebuke is neither harsh nor undeserved; and if it so pleased you, I should willingly and joyfully feel the weight of your foot upon my neck, or even on my face. Cheerfully would I in my own person make the atonement justly due to you for the treacherous ingratitude that has been your Majesty's sole reward for your reign of virtue and self-sacrifice in Meleager. But there is no mockery in my attitude of subjection to the King of Meleager who has thus successfully defied and vanquished his fate, and now for a second time receives the entreaty to come and reign amongst us. And this time the loyalty I am authorised to proffer will not be confined to the uneducated populace, but it will also emanate freely from our hierarchy who have delegated me, seeing that I was in the past your most open admirer and warmest upholder, to implore your pardon and to beg you to acquire incalculable merit by returning and resuming that unselfish and beneficent sway for which at this moment all Meleager is sighing and praying. Do not suffer me to plead in vain, O King!"
Fajal paused, and then as I stood motionless and showed no disposition to interrupt he continued to entreat yet more vehemently, using at times the old arguments I had heard years ago from d'Aragno, and at times a novel system of reasoning based on the present affection and anxiety of the Meleagrians for my return.
"We are at the present time in a parlous state of unrest and transition in Meleager. Our people cry aloud for their vanished King, and threaten to over-turn our ancient constitution, for some peculiar instinct seems to have penetrated the common mind—by what means or influence assuredly even I cannot divine—that you have deserted our planet in wrath and dudgeon to seek again your Father's court. Already a revolution has taken place in the hierarchy itself, and Marzona's satellites have shared their leader's fate, the fate which you yourself inflicted on him, most noble, puissant and wonderful Being! All, all pray daily for your speedy return; whilst amongst such old councillors as have survived the late cataclysm and the newly elected members of our caste, there is but one ardent all-pervading desire—to see yourself installed again as our King, our King who has of his own motion mastered The Secret, who has flown back to Earth, who alone is fitted to rule in Meleager....
"And if you will but accept again our crown under these changed conditions of tardy sincerity in our hierarchy and of burning loyalty of our people in all its ranks, what results may you not achieve? The periods of your rejuvenation will continue unchecked; you will be living and ruling and bending life to your purpose for generations hence, nay, centuries after my poor bones and those of my colleagues have been converted to dust and ashes; for aught I know to the contrary you may even, if you so will, achieve immortality thanks to the unmatched potentialities of our marvellous fountain. The very salutation 'O King, live for ever!' that occurs again and again in your Book of the Christian cult will in your case cease to be the meaningless compliment of courtier and sycophant. You will rule and rule, always youthful, always dominant, the one thing stable in a community of perpetual change. There are certain limits perhaps which you may not exceed, but these you already recognise and will observe henceforward in the same spirit that you have so nobly and unselfishly exhibited in the past. And if the day should dawn—may it be untold æons hence from my own day of recall!—when you will have grown weary of well-doing, weary of your unending performance of duty even under the lightest of moral yokes, when you sigh for release and oblivion, and yearn to plunge into the dusky mazes of the Hereafter, are there not means accessible to gratify such a craving? There is but one mode of entering this world, and that involves travail and tears, but there are a hundred exits from the house of life, and many of these are pleasant and free of dolour. Remember what one of your own Herthian poets has dangled before the eyes of those who are exhausted and sighing for their euthanasia:
"'There are poppies by the river,
There is hemlock in the dell.'
"Nevertheless, may the time be far removed when the ideal King of Meleager thinks fit to abdicate, preferring the unseen unsubstantial bliss of the Other Life to the ceaseless routine of sovereignty with its attendant pleasures and burdens....
"Majesty, ponder all this in your present quiet retreat which as yet has been scarcely touched by the encroachments of the bloodshed and tumult that have been released to complete the utter downfall of your unhappy Earth. Have you not dimly apprehended the dire prospects that even now await your fellow-mortals on this devoted distracted planet? Is she not in the pangs of a fresh period of travail, and seeing her thus threatened and knowing her past history, do you expect her to bring forth a regenerating angel? I tell you, no. The horrors of carnage and greed and ambition have only begun; the stream of blood is trickling slowly, but it will continue to creep onward with increasing volume till scarcely a corner of the Earth will not be saturated with human gore....
"But enough of this awful theme, for my personal argument there is unsound insomuch as you yourself are concerned, for you at least will be spared the sight and taste of the evils that will assuredly follow. Your sojourn on Earth will be very brief; already the effects of your last immersion in our sacred pool are beginning to subside; so that before this fateful year draws to its bloody and hideous close, your spark of life will be extinguished. Do not therefore imagine that you will be permitted to achieve the allotted span of mankind on Earth; the hidden waters of the Meleagrian spring are both lethal and vitalising. Once the proper hour of renewal is passed, a species of decay, even of disintegration, will supervene, and you will sink into your miserable grave, a loathsome object, a mass of disease, impotence and decomposition.