"It is thy beauty that makes me fear, oh Queen," I answered humbly,
scarcely knowing what to say, and I thought that as I did so I heard old
Billali, who was still lying prostrate on the floor, mutter, "Good, my
Baboon, good."
"I see that men still know how to beguile us women with false words. Ah,
stranger," she answered, with a laugh that sounded like distant silver
bells, "thou wast afraid because mine eyes were searching out thine
heart, therefore wast thou afraid. Yet being but a woman, I forgive thee
for the lie, for it was courteously said. And now tell me how came ye
hither to this land of the dwellers among the caves--a land of swamps
and evil things and dead old shadows of the dead? What came ye for to
see? How is it that ye hold your lives so cheap as to place
them in the hollow of the hand of _Hiya_, into the hand of
'_She-who-must-be-obeyed_'? Tell me also how come ye to know the tongue
I talk. It is an ancient tongue, that sweet child of the old Syriac.
Liveth it yet in the world? Thou seest I dwell among the caves and the
dead, and naught know I of the affairs of men, nor have I cared to know.
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