"Maharaj, you divert yourself. But how if, while we feast and
play, the Far Away Princess glided past and was gone, unknown and
unwelcomed?"

And the King replied:

"Fool, content yourself. I shall know my Princess, but she delays
so long that I weary.

Now in a far away country was a Princess, daughter of the
Greatest, and her Father hesitated to give her in marriage to
such a King for all reported that he was faithless of heart, but
having seen his portrait she loved him and fled in disguise from
the palaces of her Father, and being captured she was brought
before the King in Ranipur.

He sat upon a cloth of gold and about him was the game he had
killed in hunting, in great masses of ruffled fur and plumage,
and he turned the beauty of his face carelessly upon her, and as
the Princess looked upon him, her heart yearned to him, and he
said in his voice that was like the male string of the sitar:

"Little slave, what is your desire?"

Then she saw that the long journey had scarred her feet and
dimmed her hair with dust, and that the King's eyes, worn with
days and nights of pleasure did not pierce her disguise. Now in
her land it is a custom that the blood royal must not proclaim
itself, so she folded her hands and said gently: