Maia

by a surge of adoration and fervor, such as he might have felt in watching some sacred dance performed by the Thlela. If he could have found words, he might perhaps have declared that despite all its folly and vice, there must be something to be said for the human race if it could produce a girl like this.

Such feelings must find expression or else tear him to pieces. Leaping down from the plinth, he ran across the market-place towards the Street of the Armorers where it curved uphill to the Peacock Gate. Here, just at the foot of the hill, a flower-seller was seated, surrounded by her summer wares-tall, maculate lilies in tubs of water; roses and scarlet trepsis, sharp-scented planella, pale gendo

"Give me those-and those-and those!" he said, pointing here and there and in his impatience tugging out the bunches with his own hands and piling them into her astonished arms. "Ay, that'll do!"-for the jekzha was fast approaching.

"Wait, sir! Oh, can't ye just wait a minute, now!" cried the old soul, flustered, and torn between a

"Oh, never mind!" cried Selperron. Dragging out his purse, he thrust five twenty-meld pieces into her hand, gathered up the flowers in one great scented, dripping mass and turned about fust as the soldiers reached the foot of the hill. Stumbling forward, he gripped the jekzha's nearside shaft and looked up into the girl's face. At this moment there was nothing in the world but himself and her.

"Saiyett, honor me by accepting these!" he said, lifting up the flowers. "They're nowhere near so beautiful as you, but take them all the same, so that I may never forget you till the day I die."

For a long and terrible instant he waited, standing at the shaft, seeing her initial, startled look and the surprise and uncertainty momentarily crossing her face. Then she smiled full in his eyes, bent forward and took the flowers from him in a single embrace of her open arms. Her neck and shoulders were covered with drops of water and the upper part of her dress was soaked; but of this she took not the least notice. For an instant only she looked away from him to lay the huge, tumbling bouquet beside her on

the seat. Then, once more stooping, she took his face between her two hands and kissed him.

"Happen I shan't forget you, either," she said.

Then the wheel went over his foot. But it was not very heavy, and even though he stifled a quick cry and doubled up his leg, he was hardly aware of the pain, for as the jekzha rolled away up the hill, the girl turned her head, looked back at him and waved.

Selperron was as good as his word. He never saw the Serrelinda again; and he never forgot her for the rest of his life. N'Kasit's present, perforce, was not quite so lavish as he had originally intended, but what matter? He could always give him another next year.

54: HIGH LIFE

The soldiers always began by declining the money which Maia offered them, and always she insisted that they should accept it-a fraction of what she herself could have come by in far less time and without exertion. Among the many privileges conferred upon her together with her beautiful little house beside the ndrthern shore of the Barb, was that of calling upon soldiers to draw her jekzha whenever she had occasion to fare abroad. Otherwise she could certainly never have visited the lower city at all, to go on foot being out of the question, while no jekzha-man or attendant slave could possibly have protected her from the adulation of the common people.

It was seldom that she passed the Peacock Gate, however. The crowds and their devotion half-frightened her, and although she always responded as she knew they wished, yet upon coming home she would find herself exhausted, consumed with a sense of the precarious and u

For three weeks and more after the Terekenalt army had been thrown back across the Valderra she had lain gravely ill, scarcely able to tell night from morning, let alone to understand the full import of what she had achieved or of the news which had been proclaimed throughout the army and the city. A frailer girl would have bled to death,

they had told her, or else died from shock and exhaustion. As it was, she had often been in worse pain than she had imagined possible, at times being afraid even to stir, for every least movement seemed to bring agony spurting from an injured limb. What had really carried her througli-as on the river bank with the soldiers-had been the knowledge that she had succeeded-had not Sendekar himself told her so?-had prevented the bloodshed and saved the lives of the Tonildans stationed down the river. Their commander had come on tiptoe to visit her, a gruff, taciturn man standing almost inarticulate beside her bed, trying as best he could to convey their thanks: but she no less than he had found few words, slipping back into half-oblivion even before he was gone. The clamps with which they had fastened her gashed thigh caused her continual discomfort, and she had had to be scolded for worrying at them like an animal.

Her litter-borne return to the city had been secret and nocturnal, for although she was sufficiently recovered to leave fortified Rallur-no place for a convalescent-Sendekar had been advised that she must at all costs be spared the crowding and ovations inseparable from a daylight entry into Bekla. Also, as he-a Yeldashay professional soldier, not on close personal ternis with the foremost members of the Leopard regime-had come to realize, there were those in the upper city who would in any case have sought to prevent it.

Arriving tired out after the trying, five-day journey, Maia had been touched and comforted to find Ogma already installed as her housekeeper, together with old Jarvil, the porter from Sencho's former household, with whom she had always got on well. Ogma-who had, of course, been expecting to be sold on the open market, like the rest of Sencho's slaves-had been even more startled and delighted than Maia by this caprice of fortune (the idea had originated with Elvair-ka-Virrion) and at once set about looking after her devotedly. Thanks largely to her attentions, it was not long before Maia felt well enough to begin the exciting business of ordering her life in Bekla for herself.

She had been surprised-despite her incomparable celebrity, happily and unexpectedly surprised-by the genuine warmth and kindness shown to her by Ne

when she had been a slave at Sencho's she had always assumed (as she had, for example, at Sarget's party) that Ne

One beautiful evening, about ten days after her arrival, as she was sitting at the open window of her parlor overlooking the Barb, watching the cranes feeding in the shallows and listening to one of Fordil's hi