usy with us is a
disease. Over there one creeps away like a hurt animal because there is
nothing else. Here it is different. The Frenchwoman, the Englishwoman,
who loses her lover--she does not fold her hands. She strikes, she is a
wronged creature. I too have felt that."

Her master sat for long in silence.

"You are right," he pronounced. "I shall try to be just. You are a
person of small understanding. You have never made any effort to live
with your head in the clouds. Let that be so. The fault was mine."

"I do not wish to live," she cried.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Live or die--what does it matter?" he answered indifferently. "With
life there is pain, and with death there is none, but if you choose
life, remember this. The woman with the blue eyes, as you call her, has
become the star of my life. If harm should come to her, not only you,
but every one of your family and race, in whatsoever part of the world
they may be, will leave this life in agony."

The girl stood and wondered.

"My lord thinks so much of a plaything?" she murmured.

Prince Shan frowned. His finely shaped, silky eyebrows almost met. She
covered her eyes and drooped her head.

"We of the East," he said, "although we are the mightier race, progress
slowly, because the love of new things is not with us. Something of
western ways I have learned, and the love of woman. It is not for a
plaything I desire her whom we will not name. She shall sit by my side
and rule. I shall wed her with my brain as with my body. Our minds will
move together. We shall feel the same shivering pleasure when we rule
the world with great thoughts as when our bodies touch. I shall teach
her to know her soul, even as my own has been revealed to me."

"No woman is worthy of this, my lord," the girl faltered.

He waved his hand and she stole away. At the door he stopped her.

"Do you go to life or death, Nita?" he asked.

She looked at him with a great sorrow.

"I am a worthless thing," she replied. "I go where my lord's words have
sent me."

Li Wen reappeared presently for an appointed audience. He brought
messages.

"Highness," he announced, "there is a code dispatch here from Ki-Chou.
An American gained entrance to the City last week. Yesterday he left by
aeroplane for India. He was overtaken and captured. It is feared,
however, that he has agents over the frontier, for no papers were found
upon him."

"It was a great achievement," Prince Shan said