He helps her down, and she turns the horse's head back to the right in the direction from which they came.
King Nasrulla. I shall take you, Nourmahal, and make you queen.
Nourmahal. Take me! Take the others and let them be queens. They will be happy enough, after the way of their mothers, but you cannot take the wind.
King Nasrulla. Being your lover is not ceasing to be king. May not the king ask of his subjects what he will? What is it to be king?
Nourmahal (turning as she is passing toward the gate). Sometimes it is making a fresher and happier world for those who come to kneel before the throne. Kings are not often so wise.
King Nasrulla. And when they are not so wise they think of their own happiness. They let love come into the palace, and the favorite queen has the riches of the earth heaped in jewels before her. The tenderness of the moon shines in the clasp of her girdle, and the splendor of the sun glitters in a circlet for her forehead.
Nourmahal. And sometimes, seeking their own pleasure, kings make the killing of those who are not kings their joy. They teach all men to be soldiers and all soldiers to be ruthless. Their women learn to delight in the echoes of battle, and the man who is not scarred by the marks of many fights they pity and despise. So women forget to be gentle, and the lords and masters of earth no longer watch over them and care for them, no longer shelter the weak and the defenseless, no longer think of right and justice, because they carry in their hands the javelins of might and they have learned to fling them far.
King Nasrulla. But I shall watch over you as the cloud watches over the garden where the roses are waiting for the rain.
Nourmahal. No, I shall not have a king to watch over me. Somewhere they have no kings. A queen dies daily with loneliness, or lives hourly in the burning hate of all her sister queens. To breathe the air where there are no queens would be an ecstasy. I will not be a king's first queen or his last queen or his concubine or any other creature whom he may cast aside for a new fancy whenever the fancy comes.
A messenger enters from the right, preceded by two attendants carrying each one of the long, melon-shaped lanterns that accompany royalty. The messenger bows before Nasrulla, dropping on one knee.