Her words were like a sword in his breast, and kneeling before her, he
cried: "Come with me to my Kingdom. Thou art my only Love."

"Thou mayst force me to wed thee," she replied, "but the sword which can
slay, can never wake love to life. Thou hast come to the end of thy
conquests."

Then King Theophile tasted the bitterness of death as the men who slept
from the stroke of his sword could never taste it. And because he was not
a man to put his soul into the keeping of his tongue, he made no answer,
but in his secret heart he resolved to win her love, though the adventure
cost him years of pain.

So while he lingered in her kingdom, building costly monuments to the
dead, and showering gold on the wounded, and sending into fine houses the
homeless whose hearts ached for vanished humble hearths; while he worked
to draw life out of death, he spared no effort to bring a smile to the
lips of the Princess Elene.

But she never smiled, and though her heart was breaking, she could not
weep. Often she said to her women, "Pray that I may have the gift of
tears," but always her eyes remained dry, like the vision of those who
have gazed too long on fire.

To King Theophile she seemed the very Beauty of the World, as in her
black robes she sat in her garden at her tapestry frame, or listened with
veiled eyes to the singing of his minstrels. And in his heart was a
battle greater than any he had ever waged in desolated lands, for his
nobler self told him he had no right to wed her. But his wild love drove