Yes, it was a sport pleasant enough to make a man forget the ugliest things. Many times in the last two days had Kophetua set himself to it, but it brought him little comfort. The pretty phantom would no longer come at his light call. It wanted a serious effort of will to conjure it, and then when he knew it had risen, and he set himself to enjoy a quiet contemplation of it, lo! it was changed, and in its place stood a spectre, wan and pale and of delicate mould, with a robe of thick dark hair, and eyes darker still. Sometimes it was foul and ragged, and sometimes it was like a corpse, but always it had the same trusting dog-like look he knew so well, and always with a sense of strange distress he exorcised it. It was the spirit of the woman who had risked her life for his, of the woman whom he had saved from a horrible death. It was the ghost of his better self that was haunting him in the shape of that lowly child of nature. It would never do to think of it so. It must be crushed and smothered and forgotten. So each time it rose he cried his _Apagé_ against it, and fell to his trouble again. It was thus he was sitting now, when Turbo was announced for his usual audience.
"I am merely here with the Council summonses," said Turbo carelessly, after he had been admitted and had made his formal civilities. "I presume your majesty has nothing to put on the orders of the day?"
"Yes, Chancellor, I have," answered the King, as carelessly as he could. "There is a matter of importance which I have for some time wished to consider, and which cannot be deferred much longer with safety to the state."
"Indeed!" said the Chancellor, with affected surprise. "I was not aware of anything so serious and sudden."
"It is not sudden," replied the King, with some sharpness, "I have told you that. It is a matter that has been long in my mind, and in every one else's, but no one has had the courage to speak the first word. Sit down, and be at the pains of writing, while I dictate the form of my notice."
"Shall I bring my papers to this end of the room?" asked the Chancellor maliciously.
"No," cried the King in great vexation, "I will go to my usual place." He had hardly been aware of it, but now he was highly annoyed to find that instead of taking his chair before the founder's hearth, he had been sitting at the other end of the library under the picture of the King and the Beggar-Maid, and all he could do to conceal his annoyance was to dictate his notice with unusual severity as follows:--