The Beauty, pale all over, and as pale as someone ill, observed that doubtless now he would have to pay no tribute after all; and after that kept silent to him. He did not go at night to her tent any more, but the new queen of the camp objected to her flamboyant presence and complained that the late junketing in the nearby tent disturbed her rest. So he cast the Beauty aside as if she had become nothing but lumber, no longer useful nor interesting, and she became one of the camp followers: a leader’s woman. She was not even allowed in the entourage; the sight of her offended Lara. Lara must have known perfectly well what had passed between her husband and the Beauty at one time, but now that she had come it was all over, so that she could be satisfied. She saw well and truly to that.

She hangs always on Zerd; he defers lovingly to her in everything and we march through the forests unmolested and without paying tribute to the new kinsman of our General.

They cannot, her father particularly, have been less than horrified at her decision to wed this particular new alien; but her father can deny her nothing she really wants, and she certainly really wanted this.

Now that I have seen how quickly he can work when he wants to, I doubt if he was ever more than mildly interested in me.

The Beauty, now utterly disgraced, unseen and hardly heard of. could have no use for a horde of maids and servants; she wanted one maid, but her new lord already had a woman-servant whom he would not get rid of because she had nursed

him. so I wondered if I would be given back to the hotages and the care of Ooldra. I thought I would have liked to see Ooldra often again, instead of every now and then, but the new wife wanted a full following to boast of and lord it over and she chose me as her personal maid, even though I had been the Beauty’s, when she found out from me that I am a high-born hostage. I was asking her if I could go back to my previous position. I took care not to mention my divinity, though; I could not have borne to be mocked by her.

So every night now, when I would have been tending the wild, thick, black flowing hair of the Beauty while she cursed me or laughed with me, I braid the thin, neatly waved, glossy, light-brown plaits of the bride. The princess, is how we must all address her. Then Zerd comes in, as a dutiful husband should, when she is ready, all daintily tucked in the pink bed, and I bob my head to him and run out while he tells her that the ancients needed a moon in the sky but he needs none, having her. Or some such thing.