He looked at her for a moment in silence. As she stood devouring Pnom Dhek with her eyes there was a rapturous exaltation in her gaze that suggested the fervour of religious passion, and the thought gave him pause.
"Perhaps, Fou-tan," he suggested, "you have mistaken gratitude for love."
She looked up at him quickly. "You do not understand, Gordon King," she said. "For two thousand years love for Pnom Dhek has been bred into the blood that animates me. It is a part of me that can die only when I die; yet I could never see Pnom Dhek again and yet be happy; though should I never see you again, I might never be happy again even in Pnom Dhek. Now do you understand?"
"That I was jealous of stone and wood shows how much I love you, Fou-tan," he said.
A soldier, lightened of his cuirass and weapons, had run swiftly ahead to the city gates, which they were approaching, to announce their coming; and presently there was a blare of trumpets at the gate, and this was answered by the sound of other trumpets within the city and the deep booming of gongs and the ringing of bells until the whole city was alive with noise. Then once again was King mystified; but there was more to come.
As they moved slowly now along the avenue toward the city gates, a company of soldiers emerged and behind them a file of elephants, gaudily trapped, and surging forward upon either side of these were people—men, women and children—shouting and singing, until from hundreds their numbers grew to thousands. So quickly had they gathered that it seemed as much a miracle to King as did the occasion for their rejoicing, and now he became convinced that Fou-tan must be a priestess at least, if all this rejoicing and pandemonium were in honour of her return.
The populace, outstripping the soldiers, were the first to reach them. Quickly the warriors that composed their escort formed a ring about Fou-tan and King, but the people held their distance respectfully, and now out of the babel of voices King caught some of the words of their greeting—words that filled him with surprise.
"Fou-tan! Fou-tan!" they cried. "Welcome to our beloved Princess that was lost and is found again!"
King turned to the girl. "Princess!" he exclaimed. "You did not tell me, Fou-tan."
"Many men have courted me because I am a princess," she said. "You loved me for myself alone, and I wanted to cling to that as long as I might."