ood, which grieved
her; but she had not the less faith in his judgment for his hatred of
royalty, and at all costs she had the grace to crave for truth in the
questions she would ask of him.

"My Father," she said with winning gentleness when they were alone, "we
will speak together as father and daughter--it will be better so, for I
was not born to Majesty, and I have sent to ask of thee thy counsel, for
life is difficult. And for my hospitality--is it not offered to the
pilgrim in thy House of Priests of the Troodista? Hath not our Lord
Himself commanded the giving of the cup of water?"

He was startled at her learning: surely it was rare that women out of
holy orders had such knowledge of Christian traditions. He looked at her
reverently, still wondering, and would have spoken to excuse his rough
speech, but that he knew not how to frame a thought so strange and new.

She motioned him to a seat where a table had been spread under the deep
arches that looked toward the forest. There were wines and fruits in
tempting chalices of rainbow glass and low baskets of ivory and
chiselled silver, cooling with snow from the mountain; figs from
Lefcara; _caistas_, golden and delicious, emitting a fragrance of
glorified nectarine that rivalled the perfume of the wine itself;
pomegranates--the gift of a goddess to the thirsty Cyprian land,
planted, as was well known, by the royal hand of Aphrodite herself, each
fruit holding a fair refreshment for a torrid Cyprian day in its
sparkling, semilucent, ruby pulp: ortolans from the sea-coast, steeped
in wine.

The table was a slab of oriental alabaster, polished like a jewel,
upheld by griffins with outthrust tongues curiously contorted and
entwined. But beyond the silken curtains of the palace-windows the
forest and the hills, with a wandering breath of coolness from the
mountain-breeze, drew and welcomed him, with some faint, new perception
of the oneness of God's earth.

She had banished with a glance the maiden who stood waiting with her
lute to give the customary accompaniment to the meal, and they were
quite alone.

He crumbled his bread and swallowed his wine like a hungry man, drawing
the wild, purple figs nearer, unconscious of the dainties which she did
not press upon him, while he tasted the familiar food--the food which
his Lord Christ had blessed to man's uses. So, also, the luxury of the
service passed unnoticed, as he fixed his eyes on the distant darks of
his own