makes for every sedentary virtue. I have learned only too well what comes of permitting any female person to trust you and to give you all. Then, too, I am called to duties of more honor and responsibility in my appointed kingdom. And for the rest, I prefer to disappoint these ladies by failing in ardor at such a distance as will not provoke my blushes. No, Horvendile: no, I am still haunted by that patriotic phrase E pluribus unum; and I shall not just now presume to render a man’s homage to Koleos Koleros, among quite so many flute-players. Moreover, you assert that a princess is waiting for me, to whom I prefer to present the member of another royal house in the full possession of all faculties. So I do not elect, just now, to share in these—if you will permit the criticism,—somewhat un-American methods of religious exercise. I ask, instead, that you conduct me to the impatient princess about whom you keep talking so obstinately that, I perceive, there is no least hope of my stopping you.” E pluribus unum It was in this way that Gerald began his journey by putting an affront upon Koleos Koleros. PART THREE PART THREE THE BOOK OF DOONHAM THE BOOK OF DOONHAM “Though a Woman’s Tongue be but Three Inches Long, It can kill a Six-foot Man.” 7. Evasherah of the First Water-Gap Evasherah of the First Water-Gap “A GOOD-MORNING to you, ma’am,” Gerald had begun. His horse was tethered to a palm-tree, and Horvendile was gone, so that there now was only the Princess to be considered. “And in what way can I be of any service?” “A “A Yet his voice shook, as he stood there beside the alabaster couch.... For Gerald was enraptured. The Princess Evasherah was, in the dawn of this superb May morning, so surpassingly lovely that she excelled all the other women his gaze had ever beheld.
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