"How beautiful you are," she said simply.
Jane smiled, sadly; for she had found that beauty may be a curse.
"That is indeed a compliment," she replied quickly, "from one so
radiant as the Princess O-lo-a."
"Ah!" exclaimed the princess delightedly; "you speak my language!
I was told that you were of another race and from some far land of
which we of Pal-ul-don have never heard."
"Lu-don saw to it that the priests instructed me," explained Jane;
"but I am from a far country, Princess; one to which I long to
return--and I am very unhappy."
"But Ko-tan, my father, would make you his queen," cried the girl;
"that should make you very happy."
"But it does not," replied the prisoner; "I love another to whom I
am already wed. Ah, Princess, if you had known what it was to love
and to be forced into marriage with another you would sympathize
with me."
The Princess O-lo-a was silent for a long moment. "I know," she said
at last, "and I am very sorry for you; but if the king's daughter
cannot save herself from such a fate who may save a slave woman?
for such in fact you are."
The drinking in the great banquet hall of the palace of Ko-tan,
king of Pal-ul-don had commenced earlier this night than was usual,
for the king was celebrating the morrow's betrothal of his only
daughter to Bu-lot, son of Mo-sar, the chief, whose great-grandfather
had been king of Pal-ul-don and who thought that he should be king,
and Mo-sar was drunk and so was Bu-lot, his son.
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