King Nasrulla. You will be my first queen.
Nourmahal. I must be your only queen.
King Nasrulla. Always my first queen, and in your garden the fountains shall murmur day and night with a fuller flow of water than any others. The flowers there shall be more beautiful than anywhere else in all the world, and a hundred maidens shall serve you.
Nourmahal. And I shall not be your only queen?
King Nasrulla. It is not the way of the world.
Nourmahal. I have heard stories of places where the king has only one queen.
King Nasrulla. It has never been so in Saranazett.
Nourmahal. It has not been so in Saranazett, but does nothing change?
King Nasrulla. I must be king in the way of my ancestors.
Nourmahal (dropping down by the railing again). And we must live in the way of our ancestors, over and over again, sunrise and noon-glare and star-shine, as it was before our stars rose in the heavens, as it always will be?