thing else beside its desire, and you care nothing for me."

After a little while of looking she sighed, and said uneasily: "It is
the foolish deed of a true lover. And, really, I do like you, rather.
But, Manuel, I do not know what to do next! Never at any time has this
thing happened before, so that all my garnered wisdom is of no use
whatever. Nobody anywhere has ever dared to snap his fingers at the fell
power of Freydis as you are doing, far less has anybody ever dared to be
making eyes at her. Besides, I do not wish to consume you with
lightnings, and to smite you with insanity appears so unnecessary."

"I love you," Manuel said, "and your heart is hard, and your beauty is
beyond the thinking of man, and your will is neither to loose nor to
bind. In a predicament so unexampled, how can it at all matter to me
whatever you may elect to do?"

"Then certainly I shall not waste any of my fine terrors on you!" said
Freydis, with a vexed tossing of her head. "Nor have I any more time to
waste upon you either, for presently the Moon-Children will be coming
back to their places: and before the hour is out wherein the moon stays
void and powerless I must return to my own kingdom, whither you may not
follow, to provoke me with any more of your nonsense. And then you will
be properly sorry, I dare say, for you will De remembering me always,
and there will be only human women to divert you, and they are poor
creatures."

Freydis went again to the mirror, and she meditated there. "Yes, you
will be remembering me with my hair in these awful plaits, and that is a
pity, but still you will remember me always. And when you make images
they will be images of me. No, but I cannot have you making any more
outrageous parodies like astonished corpses, and people everywhere
laughing at Queen Freydis!"

She took up the magical pen, laid ready as Helmas had directed, and she
wrote with this gryphon's feather. "So here is the recipe for the Tuyla
incantation with which to give life to your images. It may comfort you a
little to perform that silly magic. It, anyhow, will prevent such
good-for-nothing minxes as may have no more intelligence than to take
you seriously, from putting on too many airs and graces around the
images which you will make of me with my hair done so very
unbecomingly."

"Nothing can ever comfort me, fair enemy, when you have gone away," said
Manuel.

But he took the parchment.

XV

Bandages for the Vi