"I could be happy here forever—with you, Duare," I said.
"One may not think of happiness alone," she replied; "there is duty also."
"But what if circumstances make us helpless to perform our duties? Aren't we warranted in making the best of our fate and making the most of the chance for happiness where we find it?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I mean that there is practically no possibility that we can ever reach Vepaja. We do not know where it is, and if we did it seems to me that there is not even the remotest chance that we should survive the dangers that must lie along that unknown trail that leads back to the house of Mintep, your father."
"I know that you are right," she replied a little wearily, "but it is my duty to try; and I may never cease to seek to return, to the end of my life, no matter how remote I may know the chance of success may be."
"Isn't that being a little unreasonable, Duare?"
"You do not understand, Carson Napier. If I had a brother or sister it might make a difference; but I have neither, and my father and I are the last of our line. It is not for myself nor for my father that I must return but for my country—the royal line of the jongs of Vepaja must not be broken, and there is none to perpetuate it but myself."
"And if we do return—what then?"
"When I am twenty I shall marry a noble selected by my father, and after my father dies I shall be vadjong, or queen, until my oldest son is twenty; then he will be jong."