“Don’t you understand?” she continued breathlessly. “Don’t you see how horrible it is? They mean to arrest you for the murder of Hamilton Fynes and Dicky Vanderpole!”
“If this must be so,” the Prince answered, “why do they not come? I am here.”
“But you must not stay here!” she exclaimed. “You must escape! It is too terrible to think that you should—oh, I can’t say it!—that you should have to face these charges. If you are guilty, well, Heaven help you!—If you are guilty, I want you to escape all the same!”
He looked at her with the puzzled air of one who tries to reason with a child.
“Dear Miss Penelope,” he said, “this is kind of you, but, after all, remember that I am a man, and I must not run away.”
“But you cannot meet these charges!” she interrupted. “You cannot meet them! You know it! Oh, don’t think I can’t appreciate your point of view! If you killed those men, you killed them to obtain papers which you believed were necessary for the welfare of your country. Oh, it is not I who judge you! You did not do it, I know, for your own gain. You did it because you are, heart and soul, a patriot. But here, alas! they do not understand. Their whole standpoint is different. They will judge you as they would a common criminal. You must fly,—you must, indeed!”
“Dear Miss Penelope,” he said, “I cannot do that! I cannot run away like a thief in the dark. If this thing is to come, it must come.”
“But you don’t understand!” she continued, wringing her hands. “You think because you are a great prince and a prince of a friendly nation that the law will treat you differently. It will not! They have talked of it downstairs. You are not formally attached to any one in this country. You are not even upon the staff of the Embassy. You are here on a private mission as a private person, and there is no way in which the Government can intervene, even if it would. You are subject to its laws and you have broken them. For Heaven’s sake, fly! You have your motor car here. Let your man drive you to Southampton and get on board the Japanese cruiser. You mustn’t wait a single moment. I believe that tomorrow morning will be too late!”
He took her hands in his very tenderly and yet with something of reverence in his gesture. He looked into her eyes and he spoke very earnestly. Every word seemed to come from his heart.
“Dear Miss Penelope,” he said, “it is very, very kind of you to have come here and warned me. Only you cannot quite understand what this thing means to me. Remember what I told you once. Life and death to your people in this country seem to be the greatest things which the mind of man can hold. It is not so with us. We are brought up differently. In a worthy cause a true Japanese is ready to take death by the hand at any moment. So it is with me now. I have no regret. Even if I had, even if life were a garden of roses for me, what is ordained must come. A little sooner or a little later, it makes no matter.”