"You have never seen anything of the world?"
"Never." He felt the pity in her tone, and added, with a shamefacedness curiously in contrast with his former hauteur: "But I have read much."
"That is not the same thing," she returned. "No book could make you understand how wonderful and beautiful things are."
He looked at her, and for a second time their eyes met.
"You are right," he said. "Hitherto I have thought myself all-wise. I have studied hard, and I believed there was nothing I did not know. Now I see that there are wonders in the world of which I have never even dreamed."
Her glance wavered beneath the undisguised admiration in his eyes and voice. Then she asked gently:
"Now that you have seen, will you not leave your hermitage? Surely it is wrong to shut one's heart against the world in which one lives. There is so much work to be done, so much to learn, and you have been granted power and wealth, Your Highness. The call upon your help is greater than upon others."
His brows knitted.
"Do you hate us so?" she asked.
"Hate you?" he repeated wonderingly. "Why should I hate you?"