That was only the first of many days on which Georgia ensconced herself in the litter with her maid Rahah, and with the curtains closely drawn was borne off to the Palace. A very short preliminary examination convinced her that the Queen was suffering from cataract in both eyes, and that an operation was absolutely necessary. But the matter did not appear by any means of so simple a character to the dwellers in the harem. Even when, with the aid of the Khemistani girl, Georgia had succeeded in getting things explained, in highly colloquial Ethiopian, to the Queen and her attendants, she found that they all shrank with horror from the idea of the operation. It was not merely that they distrusted herself, as an alien both in race and religion, but they were strongly of the opinion that whereas the use of any amount of medicine, the nastier the better, was lawful in cases of disease, the employment of the knife to give relief was a blasphemous interference with the designs of Providence. In vain Georgia told of the wonderful instances of recovery, following on operations such as she intended to perform, which had come within her own experience; it was Rahah who at last placed the question before the Queen in a way that appealed to her. Whatever happened was incontrovertibly due to the decrees of fate: if it was fated that the Queen should be blind, blind she would continue to be; but if the operation proved successful, it would be clear evidence that she was not fated to be blind. Influenced by Rahah’s logic, the Queen consented, with great reluctance, to allow the matter to be referred to her husband; and the next day Georgia, with Rahah as interpreter, held a colloquy on the subject with the King, through a grating which effectually precluded either party from gaining a glimpse of the other. The King was not so easily moved by Rahah’s eloquence as his wife had been, but eventually a compromise was agreed upon. It was evident to Georgia that, owing both to fright and to the sorrows of the past few months, the Queen was in no state for the operation to be performed at present. Some delay was therefore inevitable, and the King was at last brought to consent to the trial of the plan, if a week or two of careful diet and nursing, together with cheerful society and the blessing of hopefulness, should prove to have a beneficial effect on the patient’s general health.