Hedger gave her a quick straight look from under his black eyebrows, and something went over her that was like a chill, except that it was warm and feathery.  She drank most of the wine; her companion was indifferent to it.  He was talking more to her tonight than he had ever done before.  She asked him about a new picture she had seen in his room; a queer thing full of stiff, supplicating female figures.  “It’s Indian, isn’t it?”

“Yes.  I call it Rain Spirits, or maybe, Indian Rain.  In the Southwest, where I’ve been a good deal, the Indian traditions make women have to do with the rain-fall.  They were supposed to control it, somehow, and to be able to find springs, and make moisture come out of the earth.  You see I’m trying to learn to paint what people think and feel; to get away from all that photographic stuff.  When I look at you, I don’t see what a camera would see, do I?”

“How can I tell?”

“Well, if I should paint you, I could make you understand what I see.”  For the second time that day Hedger crimsoned unexpectedly, and his eyes fell and steadily contemplated a dish of little radishes.  “That particular picture I got from a story a Mexican priest told me; he said he found it in an old manuscript book in a monastery down there, written by some Spanish Missionary, who got his stories from the Aztecs.  This one he called ‘The Forty Lovers of the Queen,’ and it was more or less about rain-making.”

“Aren’t you going to tell it to me?” Eden asked.

Hedger fumbled among the radishes.  “I don’t know if it’s the proper kind of story to tell a girl.”

She smiled; “Oh, forget about that!  I’ve been balloon riding today.  I like to hear you talk.”

Her low voice was flattering.  She had seemed like clay in his hands ever since they got on the boat to come home.  He leaned back in his chair, forgot his food, and, looking at her intently, began to tell his story, the theme of which he somehow felt was dangerous tonight.

The tale began, he said, somewhere in Ancient Mexico, and concerned the daughter of a king.  The birth of this Princess was preceded by unusual portents.  Three times her mother dreamed that she was delivered of serpents, which betokened that the child she carried would have power with the rain gods.  The serpent was the symbol of water.  The Princess grew up dedicated to the gods, and wise men taught her the rain-making mysteries.  She was with difficulty restrained from men and was guarded at all times, for it was the law of the Thunder that she be maiden until her marriage.  In the years of her adolescence, rain was abundant with her people.  The oldest man could not remember such fertility.  When the Princess had counted eighteen summers, her father went to drive out a war party that harried his borders on the north and troubled his prosperity.  The King destroyed the invaders and brought home many prisoners.  Among the prisoners was a young chief, taller than