“No, O Queen,” he replied. “Now all is clarity. My true heart I can master. Francis Morgan, the one who kissed your hand, is the man selected to be your husband.”

“It is true,” she said solemnly. “His was the face I saw, and knew from the first.”

Thus encouraged, Torres continued.

“I am his friend, his very good best friend. You, who know all things, know the custom of the marriage dowry. He has sent me, his best friend, to inquire into and examine the dowry of his bride. You must know that he is among the richest of men in his own country, where men are very rich.”

So suddenly did she arise on the divan that Torres cringed and half shrank down, in his panic expectance of a knife-blade between his shoulders. Instead, the Queen walked swiftly, or, rather, glided, to the doorway to an inner apartment.

“Come!” she summoned imperiously.

Once inside, at the first glance around, Torres knew the room for what it was, her sleeping chamber. But his eyes had little space for such details. Lifting the lid of a heavy chest of ironwood, brass-bound, she motioned him to look in. He obeyed, and saw the amazement of the world. The little maid had spoken true. Like so much shelled corn, the chest was filled with an incalculable treasure of gems——diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, the most precious, the purest and largest of their kinds.

“Thrust in your arms to the shoulders,” she said, “and make sure that these baubles be real and of the adamant of flint, rather than illusions and reflections of unreality dreamed real in a dream. Thus may you make certain report to your very rich friend who is to marry me.”

And Torres, the madness of the ancient drink like fire in his brain, did as he was told.

“These trifles of glass are such an astonishment?” she plagued. “Your eyes are as if they were witnessing great wonders.”

“I never dreamed in all the world there was such a treasure,” he muttered in his drunkenness.

“They are beyond price?”

“They are beyond price.”

“They are beyond the value of valor, and love, and honor?”

“They are beyond all things. They are a madness.”

“Can a woman’s or a man’s true love be purchased by them?”

“They can purchase all the world.”

“Come,” the Queen said. “You are a man. You have held women in your arms. Will they purchase women?”

“Since the beginning of time women have been bought and sold for them, and for them women have sold themselves.”

“Will they buy me the heart of your good friend Francis?”

For the first time Torres looked at her, and nodded and muttered, his eyes swimming with drink and wild-eyed with sight of such array of gems.

“Will good Francis so value them?”

Torres nodded speechlessly.

“Do all persons so value them?”

Again he nodded emphatically.

She began to laugh in silvery derision. Bending, at haphazard she clutched a priceless handful of the pretties.

“Come,” she commanded. “I will show you how I value them.”

She led him across the room and out on a platform that extended around three sides of a space of water, the fourth side being the perpendicular cliff. At the base of the cliff the water formed a whirlpool that advertised the drainage exit for the lake which Torres had heard the Morgans speculate about.

With another silvery tease of laughter, the Queen tossed the handful of priceless gems into the heart of the whirlpool.

“Thus I value them,” she said.

Torres was aghast, and, for the nonce, well-nigh sobered by such wantonness.

“And they never come back,” she laughed on. “Nothing ever comes back. Look!”

She flung in a handful of flowers that raced around and around the whirl and quickly sucked down from sight in the center of it.

“If nothing comes back, where does everything go?” Torres asked thickly.

The Queen shrugged her shoulders, although he knew that she knew the secret of the waters.

“More than one man has gone that way,” she said dreamily. “No one of them has ever returned. My mother went that way, after she was dead. I was a girl then.” She roused. “But you, helmeted one, go now. Make report to your master——your friend, I mean. Tell him what I possess for dowry. And, if he be half as mad as you about the bits of glass, swiftly will his arms surround me. I shall remain here and in dreams await his coming. The play of the water fascinates me.”

Dismissed, Torres entered the sleeping chamber, crept back to steal a glimpse of the Queen, and saw her sunk down on the platform, head on hand, and gazing into the whirlpool. Swiftly he made his way to the chest, lifted the lid, and stowed a scooping handful into his trousers’ pocket. Ere he could scoop a second handful, the mocking laughter of the Queen was at his back.

Fear and rage mastered him to such extent, that he sprang toward her, and pursuing her out upon the platform, was only prevented from seizing her by the dagger she threatened him with.

“Thief,” she said quietly. “Without honor are you. And the way of all thieves in this valley is death. I shall summon my spearmen and have you thrown into the whirling water.”

And his extremity gave Torres cunning. Glancing apprehensively at the water that threatened him, he ejaculated a cry of horror as if at what strange thing he had seen, sank down on one knee, and buried his convulsed face of simulated fear in his hands. The Queen looked sidewise to see what he had seen. Which was his moment. He rose in the air upon her like a leaping tiger, clutching her wrists and wresting the dagger from her.

He wiped the sweat from his face and trembled while he slowly recovered himself. Meanwhile she gazed upon him curiously, without fear.

“You are a woman of evil,” he snarled at her, still shaking with rage, “a witch that traffics with the powers of darkness and all devilish things. Yet are you woman, born of woman, and therefore mortal. The weakness of mortality and of woman is yours, wherefore I give you now your choice of two things. Either you shall be thrown into the whirl of water and perish, or ...”

“Or?” she prompted.

“Or....” He paused, licked his dry lips, and burst forth. “No! By the Mother of God, I am not afraid. Or marry me this day, which is the other choice.”

“You would marry me for me? Or for the treasure?”

“For the treasure,” he admitted brazenly.

“But it is written in the Book of Life that I shall marry Francis,” she objected.

“Then will we rewrite that page in the Book of Life.”

“As if it could be done!” she laughed.

“Then will I prove your mortality there in the whirl, whither I shall fling you as you flung the flowers.”