"
"I should like to hear it very much indeed," answered Alan, when he had
mastered her meaning, "though it is strange that none of the rest of us
remember such things. Meanwhile, O Asika, I will tell you that I desire
to return to my own land, taking with me that gift of gold that you have
given me. When will it please you to allow me to return?"
"Not yet a while, I think," she said, smiling at him weirdly, for no
other word will describe that smile. "My spirit remembers that it was
always thus. Those wanderers who came hither always wished to return
again to their own country, like the birds in spring. Once there was a
white man among them, that was more than twenty hundred years ago; he
was a native of a country called Roma, and wore a helmet. He wished to
return, but my mother of that day, she kept him and by and by I will
show him to you if you like. Before that there was a brown man who came
from a land where a great river overflows its banks every year. He was
a prince of his own country, who had fled from his king and the desert
folk made a slave of him, and so he drifted hither. He wished to return
also, for my mother of that day, or my spirit that dwelt in her, showed
to him that if he could but be there they would make him king in his own
land.
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