"You speak boldly," she said, still smiling, "and yet you can
turn a pretty compliment. Faugh! Deucalion, the way these people
fawn on me gives me a nausea. I am not of the same clay as they
are, I know; but just because I am the daughter of Gods they must
needs feed me on the pap of insincerity."

So Tatho was right, and the swineherd was forgotten. Well, if
she chose to keep up the fiction she had made, it was not my part
to contradict her. Rightly or wrongly I was her servant.

"I have been pining this long enough for a stronger meat than
they can give," she went on, "and at last I have sent for you. I
have been at some pains to procure my tongue-pictures of you,
Deucalion, and though you do not know me yet, I may say I knew you
with all thoroughness even before we met. I can admire a man with
a mind great enough to forego the silly gauds of clothes, or the
excesses of feasts, or the pamperings of women." She looked down
at her own silks and her glittering jewels. "We women like to
carry colours upon our persons, but that is a different matter.
And so I sent for you here to be my minister, and bear with me
the burden of ruling."

"There should be better men in broad Atlantis."

"There are not, my lord, and I who know them all by heart tell
you so. They are all enamoured of my poor person; they weary me
with their empty phrases and their importunities; and, though they
are always brimming with their cries of service, their own
advancement and the filling of their own treasuries ever comes