t and the other gone?" he asked of us, wiping his damp brow
with his sleeve; and I saw that fear had sobered him and that for awhile
the madness had left his eyes.
I answered that they had gone.
"You think me a coward," he went on passionately, "and it is true, I am
afraid of him and her--as you, Yellow-beard, will be afraid when your
turn comes. I tell you that they sapped my strength and crazed me with
their drugged drink, making me the thing I am, for who can war against
their wizardries? Look you now. Once I was a prince, the lord of half
this land, noble of form and upright of heart, and I loved her accursed
beauty as all must love it on whom she turns her eyes. And she turned
them on me, she sought _me_ in marriage; it was that old Rat who bore
her message.
"So I stayed the great war and married the Khania and became the Khan;
but better had it been for me if I had crept into her kitchen as a
scullion, than into her chamber as a husband. For from the first she
hated me, and the more I loved, the more she hated, till at our wedding
feast she doctored me with that poison which made me loathe her, and
thus divorced us; which made me mad also, eating into my brain like
fire."
"If she hated you so sorely, Khan," I asked, "why did she not mix a
stronger draught and have done with you?"
"Why? Because of policy, for I ruled half the land. Because it suited
her also that I should live on, a thing to mock at, since while I was
alive no other husband could be forced upon her by the people. For
she is not a woman, she is a witch, who desires to live alone, or so I
thought until to-night"--and he glowered at Leo.
"She knew also that although I must shrink from her, I still love her in
my heart, and can still be jealous, and therefore that I should protect
her from all men. It was she who set me on that lord whom my dogs tore
awhile ago, because he was powerful and sought her favour and would not
be denied. But now," and again he glowered at Leo, "now I know why she
has always seemed so cold. It is because there lived a man to melt whose
ice she husbanded her fire."
Then Leo, who all this while had stood silent, stepped forward.
"Listen, Khan," he said. "Did the ice seem like melting a little while
ago?"
"No--unless you lied. But that was only because the fire is not yet hot
enough. Wait awhile until it burns up, and melt you must, for who can
match his will against Atene?"
"And what if the ice desires to
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