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One thing that shows how wholly the gods kept me to my two labours, the day's and the night's, is that all this time I hardly gave Bardia a thought, save to grumble at his absence because it meant that I was more hindered in my writing. While the rage of it lasted nothing seemed to matter a straw except finishing my book. Of Bardia I only said (once and again), "Does he mean to slug abed for the rest of his life?" or, "It's that wife of his."

Then there came a day when that last line of the book (they have no answer) was still wet, and I found myself listening to Arnom and understanding, as if for the first time, what his looks and voice meant. "Do you mean," I cried, "that the Lord Bardia is in danger?"

"He's very weak, Queen," said the priest. "I wish the Fox were with us. We are bunglers, we of Glome. It seems to me that Bardia has no strength or spirit to fight the sickness."

"Good gods," said I, "why did you not make me understand this before? Ho! Slave! My horse. I will go and see him."

Arnom was an old and trusted counsellor now. He laid his hand on my arm. "Queen," he said gently and very gravely, "it would make him the less likely to recover if you now went to him."

"Do I carry such an infection about me?" said I. "Is there death in my aspect, even through a veil?"

"Bardia is your most loyal and most loving subject," said Arnom. "To see you would call up all his powers — perhaps crack them. He'd rouse himself to his duty and courtesy. A hundred affairs of state on which he meant to speak to you would crowd into his mind. He'd rack his brains to remember things he has forgotten for these last nine days. It might kill him. Leave him to drowse and dream. It's his best chance now."

It was as bitter a truth as I'd ever tasted, but I drank it. Would I not have crouched silent in my own dungeons as long as Arnom bade me if it would add one featherweight to Bardia's chance of life? Three days I bore it (I, the old fool, with hanging dugs and shrivelled flanks). On the fourth I said, "I can bear it no longer." On the fifth Arnom came to me, himself weeping, and I knew his tidings without words. And this is a strange folly, that what seemed to me worst of all was that Bardia had died without ever hearing what it would have shamed him to hear. It seemed to me that all would be bearable if, once only, I could have gone to him and whispered in his ear, "Bardia, I loved you."

When they laid him on the pyre I could only stand by to honour him. Because I was neither his wife nor kin, I might not wail nor beat the breast for him. Ah, if I could have beaten the breast, I would have put on steel gloves or hedgehog skins to do it.

I waited three days, as the custom is, and then went to comfort (so they call it) his widow. It was not only duty and usage that drove me. Because he had loved her she was, in a way, surely enough the enemy; yet who else in the whole world could now talk to me?

They brought me into the upper room in her house where she sat at her spinning — very pale, but very calm. Calmer than I. Once I had been surprised that she was so much less beautiful than report had made her. Now, in her later years, she had won a new kind of beauty; it was a proud, still sort of face.

"Lady — Ansit," I said, taking both her hands (she had not time to get them away from me), "what shall I say to you? How can I speak of him and not say that your loss is indeed without measure? And that's no comfort. Unless you can think even now that it is better to have had and lost such a husband than to enjoy any man else in the world forever."

"The Queen does me great honour," said Ansit, pulling her hands out of mine so as to stand with them crossed on her breast, her eyes cast down, in the court fashion.

"Oh, dear Lady, un-queen me a little, I beseech you. Is it as if you and I had never met till yesterday? After yours (never think I'd compare them) my loss is greatest. I pray you, your seat again. And your distaff. We shall talk better to that movement.