her voice was half caught in a sudden sob.

"So goes the world--our world," said the king, knitting his brows and
seeming to fall for a moment into a sad reverie.

"I am frightened," she whispered. "Should I be frightened if I loved
him?"

"I have been told so," said the king, smiling again. "But the fear has
a way of being mastered then." And he drew her to him, and gave her a
hearty brother's kiss, telling her to take heart. "You'll thaw the
fellow yet," said the king, "though I grant you he is icy enough." For
the king himself had been by no means what he called an icy man.

But Osra was not satisfied, and sought to assuage the pain of her
heart by adorning herself most carefully for the prince's coming,
hoping to fire him to love. For she thought that if he loved she
might, although since he did not she could not. And surely he did not,
or all the tales of love were false! Thus she came to receive him very
magnificently arrayed. There was a flush on her cheek, and an
uncertain, expectant, fearful look in her eyes; and thus she stood
before him, as he fell on his knee and kissed her hand. Then he rose,
and declared his thanks, and promised his devotion; but as he spoke
the flush faded, and the light died from her eyes; and when at last he
drew near to her, and offered to kiss her cheek, her eyes were dead,
and her face pale and cold as she suffered him to touch it. He was
content to touch it but once, and seemed not to know how cold it was;
and so, after more talk of his father's pleasure and his pride, he
took his leave, promising to come again the next day. She ran to the
window when the door was closed on him, and thence watched him mount