She had the window curtains drawn first, that the sun might not find her out; she did not care that he might miss her, even as her people did, or that his warmth might be less cruel than her own eyes in the mirror were. Nor would she listen to her doctors, that sunlight might mend her; for she heard behind their voices that they knew nothing of what was wrong with her and therefore nothing of what might heal.
She sank deeper into her pillows, and had her bed-curtains drawn as well.
The king was frantic, for after a time she refused to see him either; but she was convinced to yield to her husband in this thing after all, for he grew so wild at her denial that his ministers feared he would do himself an injury. So the queen drew a scarf over her head and a veil across her face, and gloves upon her hands, and permitted one candle only to be lit in her dim chamber; and it was held at some distance from the queen's bed, and shaded by a waiting-woman's hand.
The king threw himself across the queen's bed in a paroxysm of weeping, and tore at the bedclothes with his finger-nails, and cried aloud; and the waiting-women all trembled, and the candle flickered in the hands that held it, for they all thought the king had gone mad. But it could be seen that, through the veil, the queen smiled; and one hand, in its lacy, fragile glove, reached out and stroked his shoulder. At this he looked up at her, with a great snarl of bedclothes in his big hands, pressing them to his face like a child.