wisely did and so avoided rough handling and force. Her face was
pale, but showed neither fear nor defiance, and her eyes were calm
and natural. She was remembering what was due to Atlantis, and I was
thrilled with love and pride as I watched her.

But outwardly I, too, was impassive as a man of stone, and though I knew
that Phorenice's eye was on my face, there was never anything on it from
first to last that I would not have had her see.

"Nais," said the Empress, "you have eaten from my platter when you were
fan-girl, and drunk from my cup, and what was yours I gave you. You
should have had more than gratitude, you should have had knowledge also
that the arm of the Empress was long and her hand consummately heavy.
But it seems that you have neither of these things. And, moreover, you
have tried to take a certain matter that the Empress has set apart for
herself. You were offered pardon, on terms, and you rejected it. You
were foolish. But it is a day now when I am inclined to clemency.
Presently, seated on that carved throne of granite which he has built me
yonder, I shall take my Lord Deucalion to husband. Give me a plain word
that you are sorry, girl, and name a man whom you would choose, and I
will remember the brightness of the occasion, you shall be pardoned and
wed before we rise from these cushions."

"I will not wed," she said quietly.

"Think for the last time, Nais, of what is the other choice. You will
be taken, warm, and quick, and beautiful as you stand there this minute,
and laid in the hollow place that is made beneath the throne-stone.
Deucalion, that is to be my husband, will lay you in that awful bed, as
a symbol that so shall perish all Phorenice's enemies, and then he will
release the rams and lower the upper stone into place, and the world
shall see your face no more. Look at the bright sky, Nais, fill your
chest with the sweet warm air, and then think of what this death will
mean. Believe me, girl, I do not want to make you an example unless you
force me."

"I will not wed," said the prisoner quietly.

The Empress loosed her fingers from my arm, and lay back against the
cushions. "If the girl presumes on our old familiarity, or thinks that I
jest, show her now, Deucalion, that I do not."

"The Empress is far from jesting," I said. "I will do this thing because
it is the wish of the Empress that it should be done, and because it is
the command of the Empress that a symbol of it shall rem