She looked meditative.
“I am not sure I like that title so well!” she said surveying him archly under the shadow of her long lashes; “Indeed—if you were not Crown Prince,—I should not like it at all!”
Prince Humphry smiled, and tenderly touched the scarlet passion-flowers in her hair.
“But as I am Crown Prince, you will try to put up with it, my Gloria!” and he kissed her again. “We must return home, Sweetheart!—and as speedily as possible,—though I am sorry our restful honey-time is over!”
Gloria looked wistfully around her,—over the long smooth undulating lawns, the thickets of myrtle and orange, the lovely deep groves of trees, and away to the peaks of the distant dark blue hills, over which a great golden moon was slowly rising.
“I am sorry too!” she said; “I could live always like this, in peace with you, far, far away from all the world! Hark!”
She held up her hand to invite attention, as the delicious warble of a nightingale, or ‘bul-bul’ broke the heated silence into liquid melody. Her lover-husband took that little uplifted hand, and drawing it in his own, kissed it fondly,—and so for a moment they were very quiet, while the little brown bird of music poured from its palpitating throat a cadence of heart-moving song. Gradually, the golden splendour of the Indian moonlight widened through the trees, enveloping them in its clear luminous radiance; and the two beautiful human creatures, gazing into each other’s eyes with all the unspeakable rapture of a perfect love, touched that wondrous height of pure mutual passion which makes things temporal seem very far off, and things eternal very near.
“If life could always be like this,” murmured Gloria; “We should surely understand God better! We should feel that He truly loved us, and wished us to love each other! Ah, if only all the world were as happy as I am!”
“You will help to make a great part of it so, my beloved!” said the Prince; “You will bring with you into our kingdom, comfort for the sorrowful, aid to the poor, sympathy for the lonely, thought for all! You will forget nothing that calls for your remembrance, my Sweet! And one nation at least, will know what it is to have a true woman’s love to light up the darkness of a Throne!”
That night a cable message was sent by the Prince to his father, stating his intention to return home immediately. The Oriental potentate who had generously placed his palace at the Royal lovers’ disposal, and had religiously preserved the secret of their identity and whereabouts, being himself much fascinated and interested by the romance of their story, now commanded festivals and illuminations for their entertainment before their departure, and within a fortnight of the despatch of his message, the Prince’s yacht had left the mystic shores of the East, and started on its homeward journey.