Shaking, he said, "O Ruinous Face, art thou so early from the wicked bed?"
She said low, "Yea, my lord, I am so early."
"These ten long years," he said then, "I have walked here at this hour, but never yet saw I thee."
She answered, "But I have seen my lord, for at this hour my lord Alexandros is accustomed to sleep and I to wake. And so I take the air, and am by myself."
"O God!" he said, "would that I could come at thee, lady." She replied him nothing. So, after a little while of looking, he spoke to her again, saying, "Is this true which thou makest me to think, that thou walkest here in order that thou mayst be by thyself? Is it true, O thou God-begotten?"
She said, smiling a little, "Is it so wonderful a thing that I should desire to be alone?"
"By my fathers," he said, "I think it wonderful. And more wonderful is it to me that it should be allowed thee." And then he looked earnestly at her, and asked her this: "Dost thou, therefore, desire that I should leave thee?"
"Nay," said she slowly, "I said not so."
"Ask me to stay, and I stay," he said. But she made no answer to that; but looked down to the earth at her feet. "Behold," said the King presently, "ten years and more since I have known my wife. Now if I were to cast my spear at thee and rive open thy golden side, what wonder were it? Answer me that."
She looked long at him, that he saw the deep gray of her eyes. And he heard the low voice answer him, "I know that my lord would never do it." And he knew it better than she, and the reason as well as she.