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Sad melancholy sat with him for his companion,
by night, a blackness more black than night herself.
truth masketh in many a strange disguise when she rideth rumour's broomstick through kings' palaces.
but who sleepeth safe in the favour of kings?
The women sat on the cross-bench, and midmost of them the Lady Prezmyra, who outwent the rest in beauty and queenliness as Venus the lesser planets of the night.
"A bubble of the air, madam: all fine colours without and empty wind within.
nought was heard save the waves talking beneath the bows of the ship,
he came a-slinking at Corund's heel as the jackal slinks behind the lion.
"This," he said, "shall be a keepsake for me of thee, my Lord Corund. Reminding me," and here his eyes grew terrible, "so long as there surviveth a soul of you in Witchland, that I am still to teach the world throughly what that man must abide that durst affront me with such an offer."
"Such words are worse than sword-thrusts betwixt us twain,"
The turf was like a cushion, a place for elves to dance in.
The sun went down, like blood, in a cloudless sky.
On either hand and before them, the snows stretched blue and silent.
The edge of that shadow was as the division betwixt the living and the dead.
She stopped and faced him with dark eyes that were like a child'sfor innocence and like a God's for splendour.
Question me no more till I have made trial thereof, lest it prove but a false dawn.
dearly he desired his home, though it were sacked and burnt, and the men of his own blood, though they should prove his foes.
every man raketh the embers to his own cake."
She smiled, and it seemed as if all the sultry night freshened and sweetened
"Thy talk, wife," said Corsus, "showeth long hair and a short wit. In brief, thou art a fool."
And to mine ears great deeds have their own trumpets."
Day goeth up against the tyrant night.
"Bare were my back without thee,"
"Time gallopeth: somust we."
It were perilous even so, but never have you known me leave a fruit unplucked at for fear of thorns.
"Thou stutterest forth nothings by fits and girds, as an ague taketh a goose.
I had liever be silent. Silence was never written down."
she stayed him with a look, and the lines of her body hardened again and the lioness looked forth anew in her peerless eyes.
Shall the blackening frost, when it hath blasted and starved all the sweet garden flowers, say to the rose, Abide with us; and shall she harken to such a wolfish suit?"
And in due time the moon set and the clouds departed and the quiet stars pursued their eternal way until night's decline;
Morning laughed on their high ridges and kissed the woods that clung about their lower limbs:
we, that fought but for fighting's sake, have in the end fought so well we never may fight more;
"We," said Juss, "have flown beyond the rainbow. And there we found no fabled land of heart's desire, but wet rain and wind only and the cold mountain-side.
Dawn came golden-fingered,
