like a tempest across these whispers.

[Illustration: KING THEOPHILE AND QUEEN ELENE]

So at last he married her in the dim cathedral church of her dead
father's kingdom, with pomp of flowers and lights and nuptial music, and
she was as pale as those who live long underground.

Then the golden boats drove home across the rocking billows, and one day
the Queen Elene, as she was now titled, lifted her eyes and beheld the
gaunt castle of King Theophile cutting the sky. A mist seemed to hang all
its turrets with fog and vapor. Elene remembered the shining happy little
castle of her vanished kingdom, and her heart was bitter with tears, but
she could not shed them.

King Theophile, gazing upon her face, read her thoughts, for he had the
second-sight of lovers; and his heart was as lead in his breast. He was
jealous of the very years when he had not known her. Her beauty troubled
him like a half remembered name, and when he was in her presence he had
the trembling of illness upon him, and when away from her he was as
restless as a fallen leaf that the wind blows.

Through many days and weeks he wooed her to bring the smile to her lips,
but always she grew whiter and more desolate; so that when she walked the
terraces above the boiling surf, she seemed like a white flower torn of
its petals and tossed up by the bitter waves.

At the end of a year there came a daughter from the Kingdom of the Little
Souls, and lay like a white bud on the Queen's bosom. Then at last Elene
smiled and wept, but her strength was gone; and soon afterwards she