Again a subtile change passed over the Queen’s face, but whether of anger or no, I could not tell. She motioned me to sit beside her on the couch from which I had just now risen, and I obeyed.
Then she pointed to the marks of my fingers on her flesh.
“This is your work,” she answered, “and you yet live.”
I looked in silence on Lestrade’s cowering form, and again my heart was hot within me. The Queen followed my gaze, and once more she spoke.
“Do you not fear?” she asked. “See to what an end I can bring the gay spirit of your friend. Like a whipped hound he will come to my call. See him cringe as to the lash before my face. Take heed lest his fate be your fate, and your pride in like manner be humbled.”
“O Queen,” I answered, and my anger made me now again as cold and as calm as I had before been hot and troubled within me. “In your power we are indeed; nevertheless, think not that it can touch, as you have said, the spirit of your captives. Lestrade’s body indeed trembles before you, your cruelty has lost him his reason, but his soul has but fled to its innermost retreat. You cannot lay so much as your little finger upon Gaston’s real self. It defies you, it remains unchanged despite you. You have turned his outer being by your devilish arts into the likeness of a beast. I doubt not your will or your power to do the same to me.”
“Doubt not my power,” said Lah, gently, “but doubt my will. Think you another could have done so to me?” and she touched her bruised arm again. “Could so have used me, the Queen, and have not repaid the insult by a thousand deaths in one? But in you, my Dering,” and the name took music on her tongue, “I behold my mate. The people and the priests cry out for your blood. The one shall be appeased; the other balked.” She laid her hand, light as a snow flake upon my brawny arm, and her beautiful face was raised to mine. “What matters this broken slave, once friend to you? I do not command your fear, O my prisoner! but I do beseech your love.”
Beneath her touch all my slow nature turned to fire. Her wonderful loveliness beat upon my soul, like the unclouded vision of the noonday sun, unbearable to the eyes. I felt a wave of turbulent and searching passion flood my being, my veins throbbed with the quick pulsing of my heart, and then—then the shivering, grovelling form of my once gallant friend came between me and the sunlight, and I shut my eyes to the beauty that tempted me to disloyalty and dishonor.
Once more Lah’s spell was broken. Once more I was my own master. But with self-control came prudence coldly back. I felt that Gaston’s life and mine trembled in the balance, and life is strangely sweet. And so it was that I turned to the Queen and bent my head, and kissed in silence the bruise upon her arm, and I felt her tremble, and knew that, for the time at least, I was her master also. And I knew then what to do, and did it as readily as one possessing intimately the knowledge of an instrument plays upon its keys.
“Give back first to my friend his reason,” I said and somewhat coldly, and Lah with meekness took from her bosom a golden box, and opening it, plucked forth a strange-shaped nut. With the dagger from her girdle she scraped part of this off to a powder, and this in turn she mixed with water from a pitcher at hand, and poured the whole into a bowl. This cup she raised to Gaston’s lips, and he drank greedily and with noise, lapping up the water like a beast. Then at a word he crouched before her, and after a moment his limbs relaxed,—the vacant look passed from his face, he breathed quietly, now once more asleep.