id, hanging her head like a flower surcharged with dew and swaying
gracefully as a wind-bell, and knelt on the lowest step of the Seat of
State.

"Loveliest One," said the Emperor, "I have read your composition.
I would know the truth. Did any aid you as you spoke it? Was it the
thought of your own heart?"

"None aided, Divine," said she, almost fainting with fear. "It
was indeed the thought of this illiterate slave, consumed with an
unwarranted but uncontrollable passion."

"And have you in truth desired to see your Lord?"

"As a prisoner in a dungeon desires the light, so was it with this low
person."

"And having seen?"

"Augustness, the dull eyes of this slave are blinded with beauty."

She laid her head before his feet.

"Yet you have depicted, not the Ideal Man, but the Ideal Woman. This was
not the Celestial command. How was this?"

"Because, O versatile and auspicious Emperor, the blind cannot behold
the sunlight, and it is only the Ideal Woman who is worthy to comprehend
and worship the Ideal Man. For this alone is she created."

A smile began to illuminate the Imperial Countenance. "And how, O
Round-Faced Beauty, did you evade the vigilance of the August Aunt?"

She hung her head lower, speaking almost in a whisper. "With her one
pearl did this person buy the secrecy of the writer; and when the August
Aunt slept, did I conceal the paper in her sleeve with the rest, and her
own Imperial hand gave it to the engraver of ivory."

She veiled her face with two jade-white hands that trembled excessively.
On hearing this statement the Celestial Emperor broke at once into a
very great laughter, and he laughed loud and long as a tiller of wheat.
The Round-Faced Beauty heard it demurely until, catching the Imperial
eye, decorum was forgotten and she too laughed uncontrollably. So they
continued, and finally the Emperor leaned back, drying the tears in his
eyes with his august sleeve, and the lady, resuming her gravity, hid her
face in her hands, yet regarded him through her fingers.

When the August Aunt returned at the end of an hour with the ladies,
surrounded by the attendants with their instruments of music, the
Round-Faced Beauty was seated in the chair that she herself had
occupied, and on the whiteness of her brow was hung the chain of pearls,
which had formed the frontal of the Cap of the Emperor.

It is recorded that, advancing from honour to honour, the Round-Faced
Beauty was eventually chosen