"You ask me why I have done this," she cried, "but you already know. It is because you have taken this woman with the blue eyes into your heart."
"If that were true," he answered, "of what concern is it to others? I am Prince Shan."
"You sent me here to breathe this cursed western atmosphere," she moaned, "to drink in their thoughts and see with their eyes. I see and know the folly of it all, but who can escape? Jealousy with us is a disease. Over there one creeps away like a hurt animal because there is nothing else. Here it is different. The Frenchwoman, the Englishwoman, who loses her lover—she does not fold her hands. She strikes, she is a wronged creature. I too have felt that."
Her master sat for long in silence.
"You are right," he pronounced. "I shall try to be just. You are a person of small understanding. You have never made any effort to live with your head in the clouds. Let that be so. The fault was mine."
"I do not wish to live," she cried.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Live or die—what does it matter?" he answered indifferently. "With life there is pain, and with death there is none, but if you choose life, remember this. The woman with the blue eyes, as you call her, has become the star of my life. If harm should come to her, not only you, but every one of your family and race, in whatsoever part of the world they may be, will leave this life in agony."
The girl stood and wondered.
"My lord thinks so much of a plaything?" she murmured.