"That will never be, Gordon King," she replied sadly; "yet it will do no harm if in our hearts we nurse a hopeless hope. Kiss me again. It is Fou-tan's last kiss of love."
An eternity of love and passion were encompassed in that brief instant of their farewell embrace, and then Fou-tan tore herself from his arms and was gone.
She was gone! King stood for a long time gazing at the hanging that had moved for a moment to the passage of her lithe figure. It did not seem possible that she had gone out of his life for ever. "Fou-tan!" he whispered. "Come back to me. You will come back!" But the dull pain in his breast was his own best answer to the anguished cry of his stricken soul.
Again the hanging moved and bulged, and his heart leaped to his throat; but it was only Hamar, the slave.
"Come, master!" cried the man. "There is no time to be lost."
King nodded. With leaden steps he followed Hamar to an opening in the wall behind the hanging, and there he found Indra Sen in the mouth of a corridor, a flickering torch in his hand.
"In the service of the Princess," said the officer.
"May the gods protect her and give her every happiness," replied King.
"Come!" said Indra Sen, and turning he led the way along the corridor and down a long flight of stone steps that King knew must lead far beneath the palace. They passed the mouths of branching corridors, attesting the labyrinthine maze that honeycombed the earth beneath the palace of Beng Kher, and then the tunnel led straight and level out beneath the city of Pnom Dhek to the jungle beyond.
"That way lies the great river, Gordon King," said Indra Sen, pointing toward the east. "I should like to go with you farther, but I dare not; if Hamar and I are suspected of aiding in your escape, the blame may be placed upon the Princess, since Hamar is her slave and I an officer of her guard."