"She is not going to play with liberty," declared Benton categorically.
"She is going to have it. She is going to have for the rest of her life
just what she wants." He lifted his hand in protest against anticipated
interruption. "I know that you have got to line up with your royal
relatives. I know the utter impossibility of what I want--but I'm going
to win. If you regard me as a burglar, you may turn me out, but you
can't stop me."
"I sha'n't turn you out," mused Van quietly. "I wish you could win. But
you are not merely fighting people. You are fighting an idea. It is only
for an idea that men and women martyr themselves. With Cara this idea
has become morbid--an obsession. She has inherited it together with an
abnormally developed courage, and her conception of courage is to face
what she most hates and fears."
"But if I can show her that it is a mistaken courage--that instead of
loyalty it is desertion?" The man spoke with quick eagerness.
Van shook his head, and his eyes clouded with the gravity of sympathy
for a futile resolve.
"That you can't do. I am an American myself. I'm not policing thrones.
To me it seems a monstrous thing that a girl superbly American in
everything but the accident of birth should have no chance--no
opportunity to escape life-imprisonment. It doesn't altogether
compensate that the prison happens to be a palace."
For a time neither spoke, then Bristow went on.
"At the age of five, Cara stood before a mirror and critically surveyed
herself. At the end of the scrutiny she turned away with a satisfied
sigh. 'I finks I'm lovely,' she announced. At five one is frank. Her
verdict has since then been duly and reliably confirmed by everyone who
has known her--yet she might as well have been born into unbeautiful,
hopeless slavery."
Benton went to the window and stood moodily looking out. Finally he
wheeled to demand: "How did the crown of Maritzburg come to your uncle?"
"When he married my aunt," said Bristow, "he fancied himself
safe-guarded from the ducal throne by two older brothers. That's why he
was able to choose his own wife. He was dedicated with passionate
loyalty to his brushes and paint tubes. He saw before him achievement of
that sort. Assassination claimed his father and brothers, and, facing
the same peril, he took up the distasteful duties of government. My
aunt's life was intolerably shadowed by the terror of violence for him.
She died at Cara's birth and the child inherited all the protest and
acceptance so paradoxically bequeathed by her heart-broken mother."
"Realizing that Cara could not hope to escape a royal marriage, her
father looked toward Galavia. There at least the strain was clean ...
untouched by degeneracy and untainted with libertinism. Karyl is as
decent a chap as yourself. He loves her, and though he knows she accepts
him only from compulsion, he believes he can eventually win her love as
well as her mere acquiescence. It's all as final as the laws of the
Medes and Persians."