"Even so--of such naturalness that one could guess only by the hue of
the stone that they did not breathe."

The lady shrugged her shoulders and laughed a little.

"But they do not carve that way," she protested. "It is not sculpture.
Thou wouldst fill the land with frozen creatures--ai!" with another
little shrug. "It would be haunted and spectral. Nay, give me the old
forms. They are best."

Kenkenes fairly gasped with his sudden descent from earnest hope to
disappointment. A flood of half-angry shame dyed his face and the
wound to his sensibilities showed its effect so plainly that the beauty
noted it with a sudden burst of compunction.

"Of a truth," she added, her voice grown wondrous soft, "I am full of
sympathy for thee, Kenkenes. Nay, look up. I can not be happy if thou
art not."

"That suffices. I am cheered," he began, but the note of sarcasm in
his voice was too apparent for him to permit himself to proceed. He
caught up the lyre, and drawing up a diphros--a double seat of fine
woods--rested against it and began to improvise with an assumption of
carelessness. Ta-meri sank back in her chair and regarded him from
under dreamy lids--her senses charmed, her light heart won by his
comeliness and talent. Kenkenes became conscious of her inspection, at
last, and looked up at her. His eyes were still bright with his recent
feeling and the hue in his cheeks a little deeper. The admiration in
her face became so speaking that he smiled and ran without pausing into