'You are false!' he groaned; 'you have said it of yourself!'
'False to others, Tom; never to you!'
'False to one is false to all.'
'Listen to him!' she cried again. 'What an exalted standard! But, my young king, let me tell you that you are ungrateful and unjust. If I could only save you by being false to others; if every subterfuge, from the beginning, was planned for this—that I might have you; that I might hold your life in my hands—what then?'
'Is it so?' he said hoarsely.
'You see!' she cried; 'you were cold because you did not understand!'
At this moment, when his will was passing away from him, and his heart was as wax in the midst of his body, there came a strange and sudden disturbance. Subdul Khan had been crouching behind them; his ear was to the ground, and all his senses were on the alert, for he feared treachery. Whether he did actually hear in the distance the rumble of gun-carriages and the sound of armed men on the march, or whether he merely professed to hear them to arouse his master, cannot be certainly known; but the effect was the same. Suddenly, with a cry of, 'The rebels are upon us!' he sprang to his feet.
Snow-queen was saddled, and so was the horse of Subdul Khan. They mounted them together, and while Vivien, with a ringing cry, to which none of the besotted men about her paid any heed, ran frantically through the camp, Snow-queen and her master, going like the wind, disappeared in the distance.