rco Polo. I don't quite understand."

"I don't quite understand myself, Golden Bells. But that is all I can
tell you. But you will understand more," he said. "My mission is
finished now, and I will go back. I will stop at the court of Prester
John, and he will send a bishop surely or some great cardinal to
baptize you and to teach you the rest."

"You will go back?" A great pain stabbed her. "I never thought, some
how, of you as going back."

"I have come on a mission, Golden Bells, and I must go back."

"There is a woman, maybe, in Venice--" And she turned her head away
from him and from the moon.

"I would not have you thinking that, Golden Bells. There is none in
Venice has duty from me. And if the queen of the world were there, and
she pledged me, I could never look at her, and I after knowing you,
Golden Bells!"

"Is it money, Marco Polo?" she whispered in the dusk. "It is maybe
your uncle and your father are pressing you to return. Let you not
worry then, for my father the great Khan will settle with them, too.
There is not a horse in all Tartary that your uncle cannot have, nor a
woman, either. And your father can have all the jewels of the
treasury, and all the swords, too, even the sword with which my father
conquered China. My father will give him that if I ask. Only let you
not be leaving this moonlit garden."

"Dear Golden Bells, it isn't that; but I came here for converts--"

"Oh, Marco Polo, listen! There is a folk at Kai-fung-fu, and they are
an evil folk and a cowardly folk, and my father abhors them. I shall
ask my father to send captains of war and fighting men to convert them
to your faith, Marco Polo, or lop off their heads. And we can send a
few hundreds to the Pope at Rome, and he will never know how they were
converted, and he will be satisfied. Only let you not be going away
from me in my moonlit garden. You will only be turning to trade, Marco
Polo, and marrying a woman. Let you stay here in the moonlit garden!"

"Ah, little Golden Bells, there is no place in the world like your
moonlit garden. There is no place I'd be liefer than in the moonlit
garden. But little Golden Bells, I set out in life to preach the Lord
Jesus crucified. It was for that I came China."

"Let you not be fooling yourself, young Marco Polo. Let you not always
be ascribing to God the things that are mine. You did not come to
preach to China, you came to see me, and your mind stirred up with t