nd though till to-day I knew you only from pictures drawn with
tongues, I have seen you now, and have judged for myself. And so I make
this decree: Deucalion is above all other men in Atlantis, and if there
is one who does not render him obedience, that man is enemy also of
Phorenice, and shall feel her anger."

She made a sign, and a stair was brought, and then she called to me, and
I mounted and sat beside her in the golden half-castle under the canopy
of royal snakes. The girl who stood behind in attendance fanned us both
with perfumed feathers, and at a word from Phorenice the mammoth was
turned, bearing us back towards the royal pyramid by the way through
which it had come. At the same time also all the other machinery of
splendour was put in motion. The soldiers and the gaudily bedecked civil
traders fell into procession before and behind, and I noted that a body
of troops, heavily armed, marched on each of the mammoth's flanks.

Phorenice turned to me with a smile. "You piqued me," she said, "at
first."

"Your Majesty overwhelms me with so much notice."

"You looked at my steed before you looked at me. A woman finds it hard
to forgive a slight like that."

"I envied you the greatest of your conquests, and do still. I have
fought mammoths myself, and at times have killed, but I never dared even
to think of taking one alive and bringing it into tameness."

"You speak boldly," she said, still smiling, "and yet you can turn a
pretty compliment. Faugh! Deucalion, the way these people fawn on me
gives me a nausea. I am not of the same clay as they are, I know; but
just because I am the daughter of Gods they must needs feed me on the
pap of insincerity."

So Tatho was right, and the swineherd was forgotten. Well, if she chose
to keep up the fiction she had made, it was not my part to contradict
her. Rightly or wrongly I was her servant.

"I have been pining this long enough for a stronger meat than they can
give," she went on, "and at last I have sent for you. I have been at
some pains to procure my tongue-pictures of you, Deucalion, and though
you do not know me yet, I may say I knew you with all thoroughness even
before we met. I can admire a man with a mind great enough to forego the
silly gauds of clothes, or the excesses of feasts, or the pamperings of
women." She looked down at her own silks and her glittering jewels. "We
women like to carry colours upon our persons, but that is a different
matter. And so