"No," he said.
"You are right," she confirmed. "Had you done so, you would now be with one finger less than the number with which you w r ere born." She tossed in more powder. "Now shall each behold what he alone will behold."
And it was so.
To Leoncia was it given to see an ocean separate her and Francis. To Henry was it given to see the Queen and Francis married by so strange a ceremony, that scarcely did he realise, until at the close, that it was a wedding taking place. The Queen, from a flying gallery in a great house, looked down into a magnificent drawing-room that Francis would have recognized as builded by his father had her vision been his. And, beside her, his arm about her, she saw Francis. Francis saw but one thing, vastly perturbing, the face of Leoncia, immobile as death, with thrust into it, squarely between the eyes, a slended-bladed dagger. Yet he did not see any blood flowing from the wound of the dagger. Torres glimpsed the beginning of what he knew must be his end, crossed himself, and alone of all of them shrank back, refusing to see further. While the Sun Priest saw the vision of his secret sin, the face and form of the woman for whom he had betrayed the Worship of the Sun, and th face and form of the maid of the village at the Long House.
As all drew back by common consent when the visions faded, Leoncia turned like a tigress, with flashing eyes, upon the Queen, crying:
"Your mirror lies! Your Mirror of the World lies!"
Francis and Henry, still under the heavy spell of what they had themselves beheld, were startled and surprised by Leoncia's outburst. But the Queen, speaking softly, replied: My Mirror of the World has never lied. I know not what you saw. But I do know, whatever it was, that it is truth."
"You are a monster!" Leoncia cried on. "You are a vile witch that lies!"
You and I are women," the Queen chided with sweet gentleness, "and may not know of ourselves, being women. Men will decide whether or not I am a witch that lies or a woman with a woman's heart of love. In the meanwhile, being women and therefore weak, let us be kind to each other."
"And now, Priest of the Sun, to judgment. You, as priest under the Sun God, know more of the ancient rule and procedure than do I. You know more than do I about myself and how I came to be here. You know that always, mother and daughter, and by mother and daughter, has the tribe maintained a Queen of Mystery, a Lady of Dreams. The time has come when we must consider the future generations. The strangers have come, and they are unmarried. This must be the wedding day decreed, if the generations to come after of the tribe are to possess a Queen to dream for them. It is well, and time and need and place are met. I have dreamed to judgment. And the judgment is that I shall marry, of these strangers, the stranger alloted to me before the foundations of the world were laid. The test is this: If no one of these will marry, then shall they die and their warm blood be offered up by you before the altar of the Sun. If one will marry me, then all shall live, and Time hereafter will register our futures."