THE PRINCESS. You may well say so. I dreamed of it until I lost all sense of reality, and imagined that I was that happy girl who was going to meet her lover.
THE KING. Madness!
THE PRINCESS. It was madness—nothing else. I thought I was to become free—to throw off the restraints that had chafed me for so long at home. I thought I was going to see everything I wished to see, and do everything I wished to do—to follow every impulse, no matter where it led me—to commit every pleasant folly I chose—and be happy.
THE KING. What queer notions!
THE PRINCESS. I had queerer notions than that. I thought I loved a man that I had never seen. I thought he loved me. I pitied myself and him because we were so long apart, and I burned to go to him. So, while the slow-moving caravan was yet far from its destination, I rose secretly in the night, while the others slept, and saddled the fastest horse in the train. I rode under the stars, with only one thought—his arms about me at the journey's end, his lips on mine. So I came to the city. I scaled the walls, and entered the palace at dawn.
THE KING. But tell me—the wall around the palace is seventeen feet high—
THE PRINCESS. True enough.
THE KING. A guard of soldiers continually marches around it—
THE PRINCESS. Very true.
THE KING. And there are spikes on the top. How did you get over?