“And therefore?” she murmured.
“And therefore,” he continued with a delightful smile, “I shall not discuss my hopes or fears with you. Or if we do discuss them,” he went on, “let us weave them into a fairy tale. Let us say that you are indeed the Daughter of All America and that I am the Son of All Japan. You know what happens in fairyland when two great nations rise up to fight?”
“Tell me,” she begged.
“Why, the Daughter of All America and the Son of All Japan stand hand in hand before their people, and as they plight their troth, all bitter feelings pass away, the shouts of anger cease, and there is no more talk of war.”
She sighed, and leaned a little towards him. Her eyes were soft and dusky, her red lips a little parted.
“But I,” she whispered, “am not the Daughter of All America.”
“Nor am I,” he answered with a sigh, “the Son of all Japan.”
There was a breathless silence. The water splashed into the basin, the music came throbbing in through the flower-hung doorways. It seemed to Penelope that she could almost hear her heart beat. The blood in her veins was dancing to the one perfect waltz. The moments passed. She drew a little breath and ventured to look at him. His face was still and white, as though, indeed, it had been carved out of marble, but the fire in his eyes was a living thing.
“We have actually been talking nonsense,” she said, “and I thought that you, Prince, were far too serious.”
“We were talking fairy tales,” he answered, “and they are not nonsense. Do not you ever read the history of your country as it was many hundreds of years ago, before this ugly thing they call civilization weakened the sinews of our race and besmirched the very face of duty? Do you not like to read of the times when life was simpler and more natural, and there was space for every man to live and grow and stretch out his hands to the skies,—every man and every woman? They call them, in your literature, the days of romance. They existed, too, in my country. It is not nonsense to imagine for a little time that the ages between have rolled away and that those days are with us?”