For an instant Benton looked at the other, hesitant.  Then realizing the unquestionable sincerity with which the King spoke, he answered with equal frankness.

“Pagratide—­over there—­I thought I could enter Paradise.  I did look into Paradise.  Then I had to set my face back again to the desert—­and in the desert one has only memory and hunger and thirst.”

“Yours is hunger and thirst—­yes!” exclaimed the King of Galavia.  “But mine is the hunger and thirst of Tantalus.”

There was a low pained exclamation from the balcony and both men wheeled in recognition of the voice and the shadow that divided the band of light in the doorway.

The Queen stood on the low sill and though her head and figure were only sketched in shade against the tempered luminance at her back her exclamation told them that she had heard.  She stood in the unbroken sweep of her Court gown.  Her slim hands gripped the ermine which fell from her shoulders to the floor and slowly crushed it between clenched fingers.  About her head the light touched her hair into a soft nimbus.

Karyl stepped impetuously forward and held out his hand to lead her into the garden.  Benton, who had involuntarily started toward the balcony at the first sight of her, caught his lip in his teeth and halted where he stood.

The girl remained for a moment, astonished at the sight of the two men, incredulous of what she had heard.

She had slipped away for a moment of respite from the fatiguing requirements of the ball-room.  She had come here because she had felt sure that here she could be alone.  She had come, driven by the prompting of her heart, to look out to the Mediterranean and wonder where, between its gates at Gibraltar and Suez, Benton might at that moment be.  And from the balcony she had seen him in the garden and had heard a part of this talk before the spell of her astounded muteness broke into exclamation.

“You heard what we were saying.”  Karyl spoke gently, deferentially.  “And it seemed to you incredible that we should be confidential on such a subject.  It would be so, except that we are both seeking the same end—­your service—­” he paused, then added miserably—­“and your happiness.”

She listened in wonderment as she held out her hand to Benton and watched trance-like his lowered head as he bent his lips to her fingers.

“Cara!” Karyl had stepped back and was leaning over, his elbows resting on the stone back of one of the low benches.  His fingers tightly grasped the carved ornaments at its top.  His words were carefully chosen and measuredly spoken.  He knew that if he permitted one expression to escape him unguardedly, with it would slip away the command by which he was curbing mutinous emotions.

“Cara, I happened to be born a Prince, who should one day develop into a King.  It chanced that Nature had a sense of humor—­so Nature paid me a droll compliment.  She gave me a futile ambition to be a man—­me, whom she had decided was to be only a King!”