She laid her cheek on his hand.
“That is the true reason.”
But he drew it away and was vaguely troubled, for her words, he knew not why, reminded him of the Far Away Princess and of things he had long forgotten, and he said; “What does a slave know of the hearts of Kings?” And that night he slept or waked alone.
Winter was at hand with its blue and cloudless days, and she was commanded to meet the King where the lake lay still and shining like an ecstasy of bliss, and she waited with her chin dropped into the cup of her hands, looking over the water with eyes that did not see, for her whole soul said; “How long O my Sovereign Lord, how long before you know the truth and we enter together into our Kingdom?”
As she sat she heard the King’s step, and the colour stole up into her face in a flush like the earliest sunrise. “He is coming,” she said; and again; “He loves me.”
So he came beside the water, walking slowly. But the King was not alone. His arm embraced the latest-come beauty from Samarkhand, and, with his head bent, he whispered in her willing ear.
Then clasping her hands, the Princess drew a long sobbing breath, and he turned and his eyes grew hard as blue steel.
“Go, slave,” he cried. “What place have you in Kings’ gardens? Go. Let me see you no more.”
(The man lying at the feet of the Dweller in the Heights, raised a heavy arm and flung it above his head, despairing, and it fell again on the cross of his torment. And the voice went on.)
And as he said this, her heart broke; and she went and her feet were weary. So she took the wise book she loved and unrolled it until she came to a certain passage, and this she read twice; “If the heart of a slave be broken it may be mended with jewels and soft words, but the heart of a Princess can be healed only by the King who broke it, or in Yamapura, the City under the Sunset where they make all things new. Now, Yama, the Lord of this City, is the Lord of Death.” And having thus read the Princess rolled the book and put it from her.