"The King will live. He will find happiness with someone fairer than you. That is well. Your life for his. It is the price." "The price is nothing. Have I not looked on my heart's beloved one for five years--looked on his face--heard his voice--trembled with joy at his footsteps? Have I not waited and watched? Have I not gazed on my sons and seen their royal bearing, and known their touch?" "You are, then, content?" "You are a Wizard--you can read that I am." "It is not I that am a Wizard--it is Love. That is the only Wizard this world knows." CURTAIN SCENE V _The bed-chamber of the King_--_vast and shadowy_. _On heaped-up cushions and covers of yellow and blue_, _under a pearl-sewn creamy velvet baldaquin_, _embroidered with peacocks_, _lies_ MENG BENG, _mortally stricken_; _his face bears the ashen pallor that only dark skins know_. _The ministers_, _the servants_, _the courtiers_, _the countless motley gathering of an Eastern Court are scattered in anxious groups_, _watching_, _waiting_, _murmuring_. _Only the space near the couch is clear_. _Without_, _the dawn breaks over the sea_, _and_, _stealing through the opening_, _makes the great chamber flush till it looks like porphyry_. _The tolling of a deep gong and the voices of a myriad birds invade the throbbing silence of the Palace_. "He passes," _murmur the physicians_. _Everyone's gaze turns to the dying man_. "Yet his star is in the ascendant," _say the astrologers_. _The risen sun touches him with its light like a caress_. _He opens his eyes_. _His sons advance_. _They raise him high on his cushions and give a restorative_. _The end has come_. _Suddenly he rallies slightly_. _The doors at the far end are rudely opened_. _A woman_, _young and lovely_, _advances_, _thrusting roughly aside the many hands stretched out to bar her path_. _She reaches the King_. "I bring you life, Star of my Soul," _she cries_, "I bring you life," _and so saying_, _falls dead at his feet_. _The Courtiers rush forward_. _The King rises_. _He stands erect_. _The sun lies like a golden benediction over all_. _Jewels glitter_. _The whole world of birds sing_. THE CURTAIN FALLS Footnotes: {4} One of the greatest feasts of the Buddhist year. {6} Spire. {32} Fairy.