Note (return) — Chapter VIII
Reading edition
"Speak not so. If the sacrifice is unusual, my love also is unusual. Command me to give my life a thousand times, and I will throw it down like a copper poull.8 I will cast my soul into hell for you—not only my life. You remind me that you are the daughter of the Khan; remember, too, that my grandfather wore, that my uncle wears, the crown of a Shamkhál! But it is not by this dignity, but by my heart, that I feel I am worthy of you; and if there be shame in being happy despite of the malice of mankind and the caprice of fate, that shame will fall on my head and not on yours."