“No, not exactly forgotten,” he said uneasily. “It’s all in my head, a lot of things jumbled together—like the haze in there. I have no wish to straighten it out, either. There is such a thing as knowing too much sometimes. We are happier this way—don’t let’s run any risks changing what we already have. Soon there will be that feast, you said—and then, if you are queen, perhaps you will want me to be king. How proud I shall be! You are very beautiful, Sajipona; noble and great, like the daughter of real kings of the earth. You are my dream-queen, you know, the first love to touch my soul with a knowledge of beauty. Such a woman men die for! Sometimes, when you sing to me, or tease old Narva; or when I would hold you and you kind of ripple away laughing, like the little brook at the bottom of the garden—yes, that is the woman men die loving.”
“I wonder if you will always think that!”
“You mean, I may forget?”
“No, you will remember.”
“‘Remember!’ You mean, those other things wrapped in the haze—the things that we wait to see come out in the pool of light. That’s just it! No, I don’t want them; they spoil the first picture. To worship beauty like yours, to live forever in the spell of your eyes, the fragrance of your whole perfect being—that is happiness. I want nothing else. Why lose our dream-loves; why snatch from us, even before it is ours, the first pure flower that touches the lips of youth? Don’t rob me of mine, my queen!”
His appeal thrilled with a dreamy earnestness that would have moved a sterner woman than Sajipona. Nor could there be doubt that the joy he thus kindled in her revived a hope that Una’s coming had almost destroyed. Nevertheless, in spite of this response of her own deep passion to his, her purpose remained unaltered. The very eagerness with which she drank in David’s words—feeling the temptation to let things keep the happy course they had already taken—strengthened her resolve to lose no time, to risk everything now. That such a change as she had feared could be wrought in David after all this, seemed inconceivable. The witchcraft, if witchcraft it was, that drew him to her was something real, real as life, that exorcism could not dissolve. Sure of her triumph, she sought to put him to the test herself.
“David, before you came to me, was there no other woman that you knew?”
“Oh, yes, I think so, surely!” he laughed. “There might have been any number of them. But—why bother about them? Just who they were, or where I knew them, I have forgotten. I hope you don’t think it necessary to remember every woman I have known! Anyway, I can’t. Why, I don’t even remember their names.”
“I mean, one woman only. Perhaps there was one you loved, you know, among all those you have forgotten. Some one who was beautiful—is still beautiful—and who loves you. It might be the woman you saw here a short time ago. She is called Una. Surely, you remember.”
He wrung her hands, kissed them, listened eagerly to what she was saying, at the same time that he longed to seal his ears from hearing. Under his breath he muttered Una’s name, its iteration, apparently, increasing his agitation. Distressed by Sajipona’s questions, he tried to parry them, without revealing too much of his own mental confusion. He did remember Una, he said, but the memory was vague. She might be one of those dream-women, for all he knew, who get mixed up with one’s ideas of reality. He would like to have it straightened out, to know who she was and why the thought of her troubled him. But, after all, it was not particularly important—not important, that is, compared with his love for Sajipona, his certainty that in their union lay a future happiness, not for them only, but for all this wonderful kingdom she ruled over.