erve you."

Manuel said, "That is well"

"It is not so well as you think, for when you have this Niafer I shall
return to you in the appearance of a light formless cloud, and I shall
rise about you, not suddenly but a little by a little. So shall you see
through me the woman for love of whom your living was once made
high-hearted and fearless, and for whose sake death was derided, and
paradise was ransacked: and you will ask forlornly, 'Was it for this?'
Throughout the orderly, busied, unimportant hours that stretch between
your dressing for the day and your undressing for the night, you will be
asking this question secretly in your heart, while I pass everywhither
with you in the appearance of a light formless cloud, and whisper to you
secretly."

"And what will you whisper to me?"

"Not anything which you will care to repeat to anybody anywhere. Oh, you
will be able to endure it, and you will be content, as human contentment
goes, and my triumph will not be public. But, none the less, I shall
have overthrown my present conqueror, and I shall have brought low the
love which terror and death did not affright, and which the laws of
earth could not control; and I, whom some call Beda, and others
Kruchina, will very terribly attest that the ghost of outlived and
conquered misery is common-sense."

"That is to-morrow's affair," replied Dom Manuel "To-day there is an
obligation upon me, and my dealings are with to-day."

Then Manuel bound the clay head of Misery in the two handkerchiefs which
were wet with the tears of Alianora and of Freydis. When the cock had
crowed three times, Dom Manuel unbound the head, and it was only a
shapeless mass of white clay, because of the tears of Freydis and
Alianora.

Manuel modeled in this clay, to the best of his ability, the head of
Niafer, as he remembered her when they had loved each other upon
Vraidex: and after the white head was finished he fitted it to the body
which he had made from the other kinds of white earth. Dom Manuel robed
this body in brown drugget such as Niafer had been used to wear in and
about the kitchen at Arnaye, and he did the other things that were
requisite, for this was the day of All Saints when nothing sacred ought
to be neglected.

[Illustration]

XXII

Return of Niafer

Now the tale tells how Dom Manuel sat at the feet of the image and
played upon a flageolet. There was wizardry in the music, Dom Manuel
said afterward, for he declare