The two men remained gazing dumbly upon each other; then the Ugly Prince broke the silence.
“We are in the most horrible position,” he said, “that two miserable men have ever been placed in. Look,” and he pointed to the now fully-developed plant, “in a few minutes one of us will have his hopes fulfilled, and one of us will be in despair. Let us suppose for a moment that I am that unhappy man and that you, in your good fortune, will grant me a favour. Let me have a little space in which to think it all over. Give me your word to hold your hand from plucking the berries while I try to face this trial and make up my mind to what is coming. Should I take the golden chance that lies here for one of us, a few moments of respite will do you no injury; and, should you profit by it, your happiness will be none the less sweet for having granted the prayer of a man into whose life no joy can ever shine again. Will you do this?”
The man looked at him narrowly. “I am in your power,” he said, “for you are the stronger.”
“Let that go for nothing,” answered the Prince, waving his hand impatiently. “I shall leave you alone. I want your word that you will do nothing till I come back.”
“I promise it,” replied the stranger.
And the Ugly Prince went, leaving the black mask lying at his feet.
He entered a grove of trees which stood near, and flung his arms round the stem of a tall ash, pressing his unmasked face against the bark; dreadful thoughts assailed him on every side. He had only to go back and drive his sword into that powerless body and the happiness which had seemed so real a short time ago would still be his. None could see the deed or tell of it. His mind was as though filled with evil mists, and, above them, rose the alluring form of his Princess, golden-haired, white-armed, beckoning. But he thrust her from him. No, such a thing could not be. Better to die a thousand times than to sink into such dishonour as that.
And if he relinquished his chance? If he were to give up to that suffering mortal the thing that he had striven and toiled for during the two years through which he had dragged his poor aching limbs to this spot, what then? Whose happiness would he destroy by so doing? Not the Princess’s, certainly. She had given him up of her free will, had shrunk from the sight of him and the thought of becoming his wife. The King, her father, would sorrow indeed, but he would still have his daughter. The little boy would welcome him back should he return as he had left him. No, it would be his loss alone.
He thought of that evening in the Palace garden, his last evening of happiness. He saw it all again, the golden sky, the roses, the far-stretching landscape, and he felt again the soft hand of his love clinging to his arm as they talked together. He groaned, and, as he thought of these things, some words came back to his memory, words he had remembered on that last happy evening, words which had once been spoken by the Princess when she threw him the Golden Heart. “If you take it, it will bring you pain and sorrow, perhaps more than you can bear. Can you really accept it? Are you willing to take the trouble that must come?” He had not realised them then. Once more they had returned to his mind when she asked him to release her, and he had then imagined that he understood them. He understood them now.
And his rival? Perhaps he adored that wife as he himself had adored, and did adore, his lost love. And the wife, to whom his own success would mean a life-long grief? He tried to put himself in the unhappy man’s place. He tried to suppose that the Princess was waiting for him, that she was sitting watching as this woman watched. What should he feel if another and a stronger hand were to grasp the prize upon which all their hopes of meeting depended? And the little children?