Nations.
The Prince answers that they are these: That the Sons of Wisdom shall
teach all their wisdom to the wise men among the Nations. That they
shall give them to drink of the Life-water, so that their length of days
also may be increased. That they shall cease to destroy them by sickness
and their mastery of the forces which are hid in the womb of the world.
If they will do these things, then the Nations on their part will cease
from war, will rebuild the cities they have destroyed by means of their
flying ships that rain down death, and will agree that the Lord Oro and
his seed shall rule them for ever as the King of kings.

"The Lord Oro asks if that be all. The Prince answers that it is not
all. He says that when he dwelt a hostage at the court of the Sons of
Wisdom he and the divine Lady, the daughter of the Lord Oro, and his
only living child, learned to love each other. He demands, and the
Nations demand, that she shall be given to him to wife, that in a day to
come he may rule with her and their children after them.

"See!" went on Yva in her chanting, dreamy voice, "the Lord Oro asks his
daughter if this be true. She says," here the real Yva at my side turned
and looked me straight in the eyes, "that it is true; that she loves the
Prince of the Nations and that if she lives a million years she will wed
no other man, since she who is her father's slave in all else is
still the mistress of herself, as has ever been the right of her royal
mothers.

"See again! The Lord Oro, the divine King, the Ancient, grows wroth. He
says that it is enough and more than enough that the Barbarians
should ask to eat of the bread of hidden learning and to drink of the
Life-water of the Sons of Wisdom, gifts that were given to them of old
by Heaven whence they sprang in the beginning. But that one of them,
however highly placed, should dare to ask to mix his blood with that of
the divine Lady, the Heiress, the Queen of the Earth to be, and claim to
share her imperial throne that had been held by her pure race from age
to age, was an insult that could only be purged by death. Sooner would
he give his daughter in marriage to an ape than to a child of the
Barbarians who had worked on them so many woes and striven to break the
golden fetters of their rule.

"Look again!" continued Yva. "The Lord Oro, the divine, grows angrier
still" (which in truth he did, for never did I see such dreadful rage
as that which the picture revealed