They walked side by side between the high walls of cypress and palm. The path was a narrow one, and once his hand brushed lightly against hers. The touch sent a flood of fire through his young veins. He drew back with a courtesy which surprised himself. He had never been taught that courtesy toward a woman could ever be required of him. Of women he had heard little save that they were inferior, in intellect and judgment no more than slaves, and his curiosity had at once been satiated. He sought things above him--those beneath him excited no more than indifference. But this woman was neither an inferior nor a slave. Her free, erect carriage, steadfast, fearless eyes proclaimed the equal. So much his instinct taught him in those brief moments, and his eager curiosity concerning her grew and deepened. Every now and again his gaze sought her face, drinking in with an almost passionate thirst the fine detail of her profile, compared to which his dreams were poor and lifeless. Once it chanced that she also glanced at him, and that they looked at each other for less than a breathing space full in the eyes. "I fear you are angry, Your Highness," she said earnestly. "I must have offended against your laws even more than I know." "Why do you think I am angry?" he asked. "You have scarcely spoken." "Forgive me! That is no sign of anger. I am still overcome with the strangeness of it all. You are the first English person I have ever met." She stood still, with an exclamation of surprise. "Is that possible? I thought all Indian princes mixed with English people. Many, indeed, go to England to be educated--" "So I have heard," he broke in, with a faint haughtiness. "I am not one of them." "Yet you speak the language so perfectly!" she said. A gleam of naive pleasure shone out of his dark eyes. "I am glad you think so. My--one of my ministers taught me." They walked on again. Here and there she stopped to look at some curious plant--always a little in advance of him--so that he had opportunity to study the hundred things about her which confirmed his wondering, increasing admiration. Slight as she was, there was yet a gracefully controlled strength in every movement. In his own mind, poor as it necessarily was in comparisons, he compared her to a young doe he had once startled from its resting-place. There was the same fragile beauty, the same grace, the same high-strung energy. In nothing was she like the women painted for him by his father's hand--things for idle, sensuous pleasure, never for serious action. Plunged in a happy confusion of thought, he had once more relapsed into silence, from which she startled him with a question evidently connected with their previous conversation. "And so you have lived all your life in this lovely garden?" she said, looking up at him with a grave wonder in her eyes. "All my life," he answered. "You have never seen anything of the world?"