, saying to myself: She is wrong, for
nobody looking at her ever could forget it, even for a moment, just
because, like the grace of a lily, it is forgotten by herself, and she
would still be a queen, even if she were not a queen at all. And she
looks at me, notwithstanding the biting reproof in her words, with
exactly the same intoxicating and caressing sweetness, as if I were
still a dear friend with whom she were unwilling to quarrel. And I
gazed at her, yearning towards her with every fibre of my soul, and
yet exasperated almost beyond endurance at the thought that she was
keeping me like a stranger at a distance from her heart, in order to
preserve it for another. And after a while, I said slowly: If thy
affection is not to be given to me, it shall never be given to anybody
else. And she said, as if with curiosity: Thou art surely mad. For how
canst thou prevent any other from following thy own example, and doing
just what thou hast done thyself, losing thy reason at the sight of
me, as all men always do? Dost thou not see that my power to excite
affection is far greater than thine to prevent it? And I said: It
would be very very easy for me to prevent all others from ever loving
thee again.

And she looked at me with eyes, in whose unruffled calm there was not
even the faintest shadow of any fear. And she said quietly: I
understand thee very well, and yet for all that I tell thee thou art
raving, and thou art, without knowing it, very like the very man thou
hatest most, Narasinha. For often he has said to me the very same
thing that thou art saying now: and yet, though according to thee, the
thing is very easy, he finds it so difficult as to be utterly
impossible. For he cannot endure to do without me, even in a dream,
and cannot therefore bring himself to slay me, as he is constantly
threatening to do, knowing very well that he might rather slay
himself, since once I am gone, he will never find another me, to put
in my place. And this is true, even though I cannot understand it:
just as I cannot understand what it is that makes me indispensable to
thee or to anybody else. For I know it only by its effect. And so I am
my own protection, against all his threats, or thine. And if I had
thought otherwise, what could have been easier, since thou talkest of
easy things, than to have summoned my attendants and bade them put
thee out, when it may be, thy life would have paid for thy marvellous
impertinence, in intruding