The _ki-sang_ released the cunies and shrank away giggling apprehensively.

Only the Lady Om made no sign nor motion but continued to gaze wide-eyed into my eyes which had returned to hers.
Then fell a great silence, as if all waited some word of doom.

A multitude of eyes timidly stole back and forth from the Emperor to me and from me to the Emperor.

And I had wit to keep the silence and to stand there, arms folded, haughty and remote.
"He speaks our language," quoth the Emperor at the last; and I swear there was such a relinquishment of held breaths that the whole room was one vast sigh.
"I was born with this language," I replied, my cuny wits running rashly to the first madness that prompted.

"I spoke it at my mother's breast.