“Then,” she gently said, pressing her sweet cheek to my temple, “it could make no difference at all what her real color is?”
Of course I shook my head. It was impossible for me to accept the absurd suggestion, and my simple lie could do no harm in her pretty play.
She straightened, drawing a deep breath. “That is a promise,” she said. “There’s something else. Now, no matter if, in showing her love and pity for the poor grown children who need her, she permits these islanders the harmless play of calling her their queen when they mean their leader, their teacher, their mother,—wouldn’t she still be only Beela, and none the worse for accepting that love and trust and duty?”
My nod was reverential.
“But, Joseph, she would know her utter inability to discharge that task. She would stumble; she would fall many a time. There would come dark hours when she yearned in bitter loneliness for the help of a wise head and sure hand; for there is a people to civilize as well as govern. Joseph, the heart of a woman is a woman-heart under either a toy crown or a real one.”
I gave no sign. There came a long pause, a deep breath, and a sudden change of tone.
“Joseph, suppose that some day a big, fine cavalier, with a tender heart and a strong hand, should drift to the poor little kingdom and find its queen torturing her soul over problems that would look so large to her and so small to him. It seems to me that he would be moved to offer her his services. She might make him her Prime Minister.”
I tore myself loose, rose, and confronted her. Gazing at me was a beautiful young white woman, frightened and blushing, a thousand startled imps dancing in her eyes as she backed away. I was profoundly shocked.
“Forgive me, Joseph.” It came tenderly, wistfully, from the perfect lips of Beela and in her dear voice. And those were her eyes; that was her delicate, high-bred nose, and that her light hair. And she was as daintily dressed as ever Annabel had been.
“Choseph!” she cried, stamping in a passion as I gazed in silence.