Looking fearfully around at the shadows, she interrupted him:
"I am afraid," she whispered. "I am afraid!"
Seth left his place at the table and took her in his arms.
"Po' little gurl," he said. "Afraid, and tiahd, too. Travelin' so fah. Of cose, she's tiahd!"
And with loving hands, tender as a mother's, he helped her undress and laid her on the rough bed of straw, covered with sheets of the coarsest, wishing it might be a bed of down covered with silks, wishing they were back in the days of enchantment that he might change it into a couch fit for a Princess by the wave of a wand.
Then he left her a moment, and walking out under the wind-blown stars he looked up at them reverently and said aloud:
(For in the dreary deserts of loneliness one often learns to talk aloud very openly and confidentially to God, since people are so scarce and far away:)
"Tempah the wind to this po' shiverin' lam, deah Fathah!"
Then with a fanatic devotion, he added:
"And build the Magic City!"