“Does she love him as a woman loves a man?” the king asked him.
“Yes, Sire.”
His audacity held me speechless.
“I can trust her—and you,” the king said to me,—“so far as blood tempered by love and loyalty may be trusted, which is farther than it may trust itself. I am old and broken. Come, you two, and stand before me.”
We obeyed, I wondering.
“I have no other men to equal you, and I need you. You must serve me. Take time now, and remember your white blood. Remember that it is stronger than your brown, for I have seen its dominance in you today. Remember that when your allegiance is tested in a choice between white blood and brown, the white will be the stronger. Only one thing can save you and me and all my people.”
“And that, Sire,——-?”
“——-is your manly pride to see and know and overcome your white blood, and serve and obey your king to the end.”
He paused, and looked from one to the other, as though expecting us to speak, but we were silent.
“The white blood,” he passionately resumed, “is the most terrible thing in the world. It is strong and shrewd; it never gives up; it pursues and fights relentlessly to the ends of the earth; without mercy or pity it hunts down, plunders, overwhelms, exterminates. Only one thing can hold it in check, and that is opposing white blood. Brown blood cannot cope with the white people in the valley, but white blood can; and for the task, the gods have sent me white blood mingled with brown seeded in my soil and grown to it with deep roots. That is my hope and trust.”