strength.

As he left the Hall of Audience with Rei, the Queen Meriamun lifted her
eyes again, and looked on him long, and her ivory face flushed rosy,
like the ivory that the Sidonians dye red for the trappings of the
horses of kings. But the Wanderer marked both the sudden fear and the
blush of Meriamun, and, beautiful as she was, he liked it ill, and his
heart foreboded evil. When he was alone with Rei, therefore, he spoke to
him of this, and prayed the old man to tell him if he could guess at all
the meaning of the Queen.

"For to me," he said, "it was as if the Lady knew my face, and even
as if she feared it; but I never saw her like in all my wanderings.
Beautiful she is, and yet--but it is ill speaking in their own land of
kings and queens!"

At first, when the Wanderer spoke thus, Rei put it by, smiling. But the
Wanderer, seeing that he was troubled, and remembering how he had prayed
him to pluck the spear-point from his helmet, pressed him hard with
questions. Thus, partly out of weariness, and partly for love of him,
and also because a secret had long been burning in his heart, the old
man took the Wanderer into his own room in the Palace, and there he told
him all the story of Meriamun the Queen.



VI

THE STORY OF MERIAMUN