“He will wake,” said the Queen to my mute question, “in an hour, and you will once more have your friend.”
“I thank you,” I answered.
“And is that all?” she asked, still tenderly, but with a warning note of passion in her voice. “Is that all, when men have died, and joyfully, that they might but kiss the hem of my garment, the print of my sandal in the dust?”
“No,” said I, boldly, “that is not all; but, Lah, in my country, men’s hearts beat not to the ordering of aught save their own will. Neither do they love as slaves, but as masters. Beautiful above all women as you are, O my Queen, think not I will stoop before you. I am not cold. I could love, strongly, faithfully, to the uttermost, with a passion far outweighing that of these servants who you have said have died content but to kiss the hem of your robe, the print of your sandal. But not, O my Queen, as they, not as the subject to the ruler, not as vassal to his mistress. You can rend my soul from my body if you will. You cannot make me bend my heart to your ordering. Not fear, not even love, shall sway me. For I love, O most proud, most beautiful of women, even as I have said, not as the slave, but as the master.”
Lah turned quickly as if stung. I waited breathless in silence for her answer. Then at last she spoke, and there was new majesty in her bearing, and though she bent her head with a strange humility, I knew not the secret of her inmost thought. Yet the words came. “Be it so,” she answered, and in obedience to a secret signal, the door of the cell slowly opened, Lah passed through beyond, and I, save for the presence of my sleeping comrade, was again alone.
Chapter VII
The High Priest’s Council
Heavy still with the fumes of the Queen’s sleeping-potion that the black had brought me, I sat with my head in my hands after Lah’s departure, thinking yet but lamely, on all that had just now passed, while Lestrade slumbered in peace in the corner of our prison.
It might have been an hour or mayhap two, when my friend stirred, stretched himself, and at last sat up, his usual happy-go-lucky air giving way to a look of surprise when he saw our new abiding-place.
“How feel you, Gaston?” I asked anxiously, for I still distrusted the Queen’s medicine, and the enduring nature of this sudden cure.
“Never better,” Lestrade answered brightly; “but what means this sudden change of quarters? As for thyself, man, no popinjay of the tropics ever pricked it more blithely, no strolling mountebank bright with gold and scarlet and jingling bells, no, nor Solomon himself, of a verity, so much as touched the height of thy magnificence. Why, comrade! thy raiment shineth like the sun, and thou in the midst of grandeur, solemn as any owl.”