For a single moment I meant that you should realise the danger of
the path you were treading. I think that I did make you realise it."
Her eyes fell. He seemed to have established some compelling power over
her. He had met her thoughts before they were uttered, and answered even
her unspoken question.
"I wish you didn't make life so much like a kindergarten," she
complained, with an almost pathetic smile at the corners of her lips.
"It is a very different place," he rejoined fervently, "that I desire to
make of life for you. Listen, please. I have spoken to you first the
formal words which make all things possible between us, and now, if I
may, I let my heart speak. Somewhere not far from Pekin I have a palace,
where my lands slope to the river. For five months in the year my
gardens are starred with blue and yellow flowers, sweet-smelling as the
almond blossom, and there are little pagodas which look down on the blue
water, pagodas hung with creepers, not like your English evergreens, but
with blossoms, pink and waxen, which open as one looks at them and send
out sweet perfumes. When you are there with me, dear one, then I shall
speak to you in the language of my ancestors, which some day you will
understand, and you shall know that love has its cradle in the East, you
shall feel the flame of its birth, the furnace of its accomplishment.
Here my tongue moves slowly, yet I stoop my knee to you, I show you my
heart, and my lips tell you that I love.
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