And when she was come into her
chamber she called for her nurse.
"Nurse," said the King's daughter, "thought is come upon me for the
morrow, so that I can live no more after the manner of simple men.
Tell me what I must do that I may have power upon the hour."
Then the nurse moaned like a snow wind. "Alas!" said she, "that
this thing should be; but the thought is gone into your marrow, nor
is there any cure against the thought. Be it so, then, even as you
will; though power is less than weakness, power shall you have; and
though the thought is colder than winter, yet shall you think it to
an end."
So the King's daughter sat in her vaulted chamber in the masoned
house, and she thought upon the thought. Nine years she sat; and
the sea beat upon the terrace, and the gulls cried about the
turrets, and wind crooned in the chimneys of the house. Nine years
she came not abroad, nor tasted the clean air, neither saw God's
sky. Nine years she sat and looked neither to the right nor to the
left, nor heard speech of any one, but thought upon the thought of
the morrow. And her nurse fed her in silence, and she took of the
food with her left hand, and ate it without grace.
Now when the nine years were out, it fell dusk in the autumn, and
there came a sound in the wind like a sound of piping.
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