e me."

Druga did not look at her more, but went in and sat at the board where
the thousand dead stared, each stony eye broodingly centered upon the
spot where he had placed Feronia. And as Druga's eye likewise centered
upon that seat that had been the scene of a thousand deaths, he felt a
wave of anger from the stony body of Feronia, and a sense of guilt came
over him. He felt remorse that he should forget her and desire Eos. If
he had known that those eyes were not dead, but seeing and remembering
all that passed before them, he would have been shivering with fear of
her anger. But Druga did not know. Yet it seemed to his senses that each
of those eyes was likewise angry with him, and he got up in haste from
that table of dead men and one dead woman, and went and drank wine by
himself until sleep came.

* * * * *

With the first rays of morning light Eos woke him, and Druga learned
that she had lowered the disk over the garden of live-oaks beside the
palace of Dionaea, and Druga looked out. No one was yet astir; they had
not yet been seen. Druga and Eos descended by the ladder of ruby glass,
and went side by side through the garden and Druga took the stairs he
knew well up to the sleeping chamber of Dionaea. For in the many-locked
cabinets of that chamber were her many acquisitions of magical
apparatus, and if anything was there that would help them, they meant to
find it.

As they entered the room, opening the door with a pick-lock, Eos cried
out in a triumphant voice:

"We are not in vain. The Queen is not dead, Druga!"

The sleepy-eyed Dionaea poked her head above the covers at the sound of
their entry. At sight of them, she hissed like a great snake, and
writhed the long hideous body of Baena free of the encumbrance of the
quilts, and Baena reared his own hideous, fanged head up beside
Dionaea's.

Druga stood astonished to see the fabled Amphis-Baena here in the bed of
Dionaea, and with the head of Dionaea! A great laugh broke from him to
see the reptilian change the grafting had wrought in Dionaea's beauty.

Dionaea did not say anything, but Baena coiled swiftly on the bed and
struck out full length, his fangs meeting in Druga's arm. Druga felt the
terrible venom, like fire in his veins, and seized the great
serpent-head in his two hands, squeezing in terrible anger. But Eos
seized him.

"No, do not kill her! Carry her into the disk, and make her captive. I
have conceive