own red heart held it with one hand aloft while with the other she
gathered close her robe and poised herself.

The king of Yonder Kingdom looked upward quickly, curiously, still
fingering the earth, and saw the offer of her bleeding heart.

"It's a Negro!" he growled darkly; "it may not be."

The woman quivered.

"It's a nigger!" he repeated fiercely. "It's neither God nor man, but a
nigger!"

The princess stepped forward.

The king grasped his sword and looked north and east; he raised his
sword and looked south and west.

"I seek the sun," the princess sang, and started into the west.

"Never!" cried the king of Yonder Kingdom, "for such were blasphemy and
defilement and the making of all evil."

So, raising his great sword he struck with all his might, and more. Down
hissed the blow and it bit that little, white, heart-holding hand until
it flew armless and disbodied up through the sunlit air. Down hissed the
blow and it clove the whimpering hound until his last shriek shook the
stars. Down hissed the blow and it rent the earth. It trembled, fell
apart, and yawned to a chasm wide as earth from heaven, deep as hell,
and empty, cold, and silent.