"It would be useless," she said, "even if he would grant you an audience, which he will not."
"Then if you love me as I love you," said King, "you will come away with me."
"Do not say that, Gordon King. It is cruel," replied the girl. "I am taught to place duty above all other considerations, even love. Princesses are not born to happiness. Their exalted birth dedicates them to duty. They are more than human, and so human happiness often is denied them. And now you must go. Indra Sen and Hamar are waiting to guide you to safety. Each moment of delay lessens your chances for escape."
"I do not wish to escape," said King. "I shall remain and face whatever consequences are in store for me, for without you, Fou-tan, life means nothing to me. I would rather remain and die than go away without you."
"No, no," she cried. "Think of me. I must live on, and always, if I believe you to be alive, I shall be happier than I could be if I knew that you were dead."
"You mean that if I were alive there still would be hope?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Not in the way you mean," she replied; "but there would be happiness for me in knowing that perhaps somewhere you were happy. For my sake, you must go. If you love me you will not deny me this shred of happiness."
"If I go," he said, "you will know that wherever I am, I am unhappy."
"I am a woman as well as a princess," she replied, "and so perhaps it will give me a sad happiness to know that you are unhappy because I am denied you." She smiled ruefully.
"Then I shall go, Fou-tan, if only to make you happy in my unhappiness; but I think that I shall not go far and that always I shall nurse hope in my breast, even though you may have put it from you. Think of me, then, as being always near you, Fou-tan, awaiting the day when I may claim you."