“Treason!” she cried lightly. “The Emperor’s law reaches everywhere and touches everything.”
He looked at her with a smile. “Do you think,” he said, “that the Emperor wishes us two to be married?”
Her eyes dwelt fondly on his face, and she answered bravely:
“He wishes the old barriers to be utterly thrown down and all his people to be one.”
The picture of that day at his father’s school when he had asserted his manhood came back to him with a rush.
“Ah, yes,” he said soberly, “that is true. Perhaps it might have been, but I spoiled it.”
“Thou?” she said, using again that fond expression that sent the blood surging through him.
“I struck your brother,” he answered. “Perhaps but for that——”
“No, no!” she cried. “I know about that. It was right. There would have been no hope if you had not done it. You do not know Kokan, how proud and hard he is, how he despises fear. He thought you were afraid of him, and he hated you for it. If you had not shown him you were not, and—and this had come, he would have killed you.”
“Perhaps,” he said coolly.