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•TKe TaLar J • Inn • Litrary • 
 
 RULES GOVERNING TABARD INN LIBRARY SERVICE 
 
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 if you should desire to discontinue the use of the Library for a time, you 
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 check may be exchanged for a book at any time at any Tabard Inn 
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 If you should lose your book, simply buy another and your membership 
 continues. 
 
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 THE TABARD INN LIBRARY, Home Office 
 
 No. _.. 1611 CHESTNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA 
 
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/,r^ 
 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 The Glenn Negley Collection 
 of Utopian Literature 
 
 --ff 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Archive 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 Dul<e University Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/romanceislandOOgale 
 
ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 By 
 ZONA GALE 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
 
 HERMANN C. WALL 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright igo6 
 The Bobbs-Merrill Company 
 
 October 
 
Red 
 
 C\S2K 
 
 ' Who that remembers the first kind glance of her 
 whom he loves can fail to believe in magic?" 
 
 — NOVALIS 
 
 5G1C21 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 
 
 
 fagb 
 
 I 
 
 Dinner Time 
 
 
 
 X 
 
 II 
 
 A Scrap of Paper 
 
 
 
 20 
 
 III 
 
 St. George and the Lady 
 
 
 
 38 
 
 IV 
 
 The Prince of Far-Away 
 
 
 
 • 59 
 
 V 
 
 Olivia Proposes 
 
 
 
 . 78 
 
 VI 
 
 Two Little Men . 
 
 
 
 . 96 
 
 VII 
 
 Dusk, and So On . 
 
 
 
 • "7 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Porch of the Morning 
 
 
 
 . 130 
 
 IX 
 
 The Lady of Kingdoms 
 
 
 
 153 
 
 X 
 
 Tyrian Purple . 
 
 
 
 182 
 
 XI 
 
 The End of the Evening 
 
 
 
 203 
 
 XII 
 
 Between-Worlds 
 
 
 
 229 
 
 XIII 
 
 The Lines Lead Up 
 
 
 
 . 241 
 
 XIV 
 
 The Isle of Hearts 
 
 
 
 257 
 
 XV 
 
 A Vigil 
 
 
 
 280 
 
 XVI 
 
 Glamourie 
 
 
 
 294 
 
 XVII 
 
 Beneath the Surface . 
 
 
 
 309 
 
 XVIII 
 
 A Morning Visit . 
 
 
 
 . 328 
 
 XIX 
 
 In the Hall of Kings . 
 
 
 
 340 
 
 XX 
 
 Out of the Hall of Kings 
 
 
 
 360 
 
 XXI 
 
 Open Secrets 
 
 
 
 38x 
 
 5Cil321 
 
ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 DINNER TIME 
 
 As The Aloha rode gently to her buoy among the 
 crafts in the harbour, St. George longed to pro- 
 claim in the megaphone's monstrous parody upon 
 capital letters : 
 
 " Cat-boats and house-boats and yawls, look 
 here. You're bound to observe that this is my 
 steam yacht. I own her — do you see? She 
 belongs to me, St. George, who never before owned 
 so much as a piece of rope." 
 
 Instead — mindful, perhaps, that " a man should 
 not communicate his own glorie " — he stepped 
 sedately down to the trim green skiff and was 
 rowed ashore by a boy who, for aught that either 
 knew, might three months before have jostled him 
 at some ill-favoured lunch counter. For in Amer- 
 ica, dreams of gold — not, alas, golden dreams — 
 
 I 
 
2 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 do prevalently come true; and of all the butter- 
 fly happenings in this pleasant land of larvae, 
 few are so spectacular as the process by which, 
 without warning, a man is converted from a 
 toiler and bearer of loads to a taker of his bien. 
 However, to none, one must believe, is the change- 
 ling such gazing-stock as to himself. 
 
 Although countless times, waking and sleeping, 
 St. George had humoured himself in the outworn 
 pastime of dreaming what he would do if he were 
 to inherit a million dollars, his imagination had 
 never marveled its way to the situation's less 
 poignant advantages. Chief among his satisfac- 
 tions had been that with which he had lately 
 seen his mother — an exquisite woman, looking 
 like the old lace and Roman mosaic pins which 
 she had saved from the wreck of her fortune — set 
 off for Europe in the exceptional company of her 
 brother, Bishop Arthur Touchett, gentlest of dig- 
 nitaries. The bishop, only to look upon whose 
 portrait was a benediction, had at sacrifice of 
 certain of his charities seen St. George through 
 college; and it made the million worth while to 
 his nephew merely to send him to Tubingen to set 
 his soul at rest concerning the date of one of the 
 canonical gospels. Next to the rich delight of 
 planning that voyage, St. George placed the 
 buying of his yacht. 
 
 In the dusty, inky office of the New York 
 Evening Sentinel he had been wont three months 
 
DINNER TIME 
 
 before to sit at a long green table fitting words 
 about the yachts of others to the dreary music 
 of his typewriter, the while vaguely conscious of 
 a blur of eight telephone bells, and the sound of 
 voices used merely to communicate thought and 
 not to please the ear. In the last three months 
 he had sometimes remembered that black day 
 when from his high window he had looked toward 
 the harbour and glimpsed a trim craft of white and 
 brass slipping to the river's mouth; whereupon he 
 had been seized by such a passion to work hard 
 and earn a white-and-brass craft of his own 
 that the story which he was hurrying for the first 
 edition was quite ruined. 
 
 " Good heavens, St. George," Chillingworth, the 
 city editor, had gnarled, " we don't carry wooden 
 type. And nothing else would set up this wooden 
 stuff of yours. Where's some snap? Your first 
 paragraph reads like a recipe. Now put your 
 soul into it, and you've got less than fifteen min- 
 utes to do it in." 
 
 St. George recalled that his friend Amory, as 
 *' one hackneyed in the ways of life," had gravely 
 lifted an eyebrow at him, and the new men had 
 turned different colours at the thought of being 
 addressed like that before the staff ; and St. George 
 had recast the story and had received for his 
 diligence a New Jersey assignment which had 
 kept him until midnight. Haunting the homes 
 of the club-women and the common council of 
 
4 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 that little Jersey town, the trim white-and-brass 
 craft slipping down to the river's mouth had not 
 ceased to lure him. He had found himself esti- 
 mating the value — ^in money — of the bric-k-brac 
 of every house, and the self-importance of every 
 alderman, and reflecting that these people, if they 
 liked, might own yachts of white and brass; yet 
 they preferred to crouch among the bric-k-brac 
 and to discourse to him of one another's viola- 
 tions and interferences. By the time that he 
 had reached home that dripping night and had 
 put captions upon the backs of the unexpectant- 
 looking photographs which were his trophies, he 
 was in that state of comparative anarchy to be 
 effected only by imaginative youth and a dis- 
 agreeable task. 
 
 Next day, suddenly as its sun, had come the 
 news which had transformed him from a discon- 
 tented grappler with social problems to the owner 
 of stocks and bonds and shares in a busy mine and 
 other things soothing to enumerate. The first 
 thing which he had added unto these, after the 
 departure of his mother and the bishop, had been 
 The Aloha, which only that day had slipped to the 
 river's mouth in the view from his old window at 
 the Sentinel office. St. George had the grace to 
 be ashamed to remember how smoothly the social 
 ills had adjusted themselves. 
 
 Now they were past, those days of feverish 
 work and unexpected triumph and unaccountable 
 
DINNER TIME? 5" 
 
 failure; and in the dreariest of them St. George, 
 dreaming wildly, had not dreamed all the tlnob- 
 vious joys which his fortune had brought to him. 
 For although he had accurately painted, for 
 example, the delight of a cruise in a sea-going 
 yacht of his own, yet to step into his dory in 
 the sunset, to watch The Aloha's sides shine in 
 the late light as he was rowed ashore past the 
 lesser crafts in the harbour; to see the man touch 
 his cap and put back to make the yacht trim for 
 the night, and then to turn his own face to his 
 apartment where virtually the entire day-staff 
 of the Evening Sentinel was that night to dine — 
 these were among the pastimes of the lesser 
 angels which his fancy had never compassed. 
 
 A glow of firelight greeted St, George as he 
 entered his apartment, and the rooms wore a 
 pleasant air of festivity. A table, with covers for 
 twelve, was spread in the living-room, a fire of 
 cones was tossing on the hearth, the curtains were 
 drawn, and the sideboard was a thing of intima- 
 tion. RoUo, his man — St. George had easily fallen 
 in all the habits which he had longed to assume — 
 was just closing the little ice-box sunk behind a 
 panel of the wall, and he came forward with 
 dignified deference. 
 
 " Everything is ready, RoUo? " St. George 
 asked. " No one has telephoned to beg off? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," answered Rollo, " and no, sir." 
 
 St. George had sometimes told himself that the 
 
6 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 man looked like an oval grey stone with a face 
 cut upon it. 
 
 " Is the claret warmed? " St. George demanded, 
 handing his hat. " Did the big glasses come for 
 the liqueur — and the little ones will set inside with- 
 out tipping? Then take the cigars to the den — 
 you'll have to get some cigarettes for Mr. Provin. 
 Keep up the fire. Light the candles in ten min- 
 utes. I say, how jolly the table looks." 
 
 " Yes, sir," returned Rollo, "an' the candles '11 
 make a great difference, sir. Candles do give out 
 an air, sir." 
 
 One month of service had accustomed St. George 
 to his valet's gift of the Articulate Simplicity. 
 Rollo 's thoughts were doubtless contrived in the 
 cuticle and knew no deeper operance; but he 
 always uttered his impressions with, under his 
 mask, an air of keen and seasoned personal obser- 
 vation. In his first interview with St. George, 
 Rollo had said: "I always enjoy being kep' busy, 
 sir. To me, the busy man is a grand sight," 
 and St. George had at once appreciated his 
 possibilities. Rollo was like the fine print in an 
 almanac. 
 
 When the candles were burning and the lights 
 had been turned on in the little ochre den where 
 the billiard-table stood, St. George emerged — a 
 well-made figure, his buoyant, clear-cut face accu- 
 rately bespeaking both health and cleverness. 
 Of a family represented by the gentle old bishop 
 
DINNER TIME 7 
 
 and his own exquisite mother, himself university- 
 bred and fresh from two years' hard, hand-to- 
 hand fighting to earn an honourable livelihood, 
 St. George, of soimd body and fine intelligence, had 
 that temper of stability within vast range which 
 goes pleasantly mto the mind that meets it. A 
 symbol of this was his prodigious popularity 
 with those who had been his fellow-workers — 
 a test beside which old-world traditions of the 
 urban touchstones are of secondary advantage. 
 It was deeply significant that in spite of the gulf 
 which Chance had digged the day-staff of the 
 Sentinel, all save two or three of which were not 
 of his estate, had with flattering alacrity obeyed 
 his summons to dine. But, as he heard in the 
 hall the voice of Chillingworth, the difficulty of 
 his task for the first time swept over him. It was 
 Chillingworth who had advocated to him the need 
 of wooden type to suit his literary style and who 
 had long ordered and bullied him about; and 
 how was he to play the host to Chillingworth, 
 not to speak of the others, with the news between 
 them of that million? 
 
 When the bell rang, St. George somewhat 
 gruffly superseded Rollo. 
 
 " I'll go," he said briefly, " and keep out of 
 sight for a few minutes. Get in the bath-room 
 or somewhere, will you? " he added nerv^ously, 
 and opened the door. 
 
 At one stroke Chillingworth settled his own 
 
8 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 position by dominating the situation as he domi- 
 nated the city room. He chose the best chair 
 and told a good story and found fault with the 
 way the fire burned, all with immediate ease and 
 abandon. Chillingworth's men loved to remem- 
 ber that he had once carried copy. They also 
 understood all the legitimate devices by which he 
 persuaded from them their best effort, yet these 
 devices never failed, and the city room agreed 
 that Chillingworth's fashion of giving an assign- 
 ment to a new man would force him to write a 
 readable account of his own entertainment in 
 the dark meadows. Largely by personal magne- 
 tism he had fought his way upward, and this 
 quality was not less a social gift. 
 
 Mr. Toby Amory, who had been on the Eleven 
 with St. George at Harvard, looked along his 
 pipe at his host and smiled, with flattering content, 
 his slow smile. Amory's father had lately had a 
 conspicuous quarter of an hour in Wall Street, as 
 a result of which Amory, instead of taking 
 St. George to the cemetery at Clusium as he had 
 talked, himself drifted to Park Row; and although 
 he now knew considerably less than he had hoped 
 about certain inscriptions, he was supporting him- 
 self and two sisters by really brilliant work, so 
 that the balance of his power was creditably 
 maintained. Surely the inscriptions did not suf- 
 fer, and what then was Amory that he should 
 object? Presently Holt, the middle-aged marine 
 
DINNER TIME 9 
 
 man, and Harding who, since he had lost a light- 
 weight sparring championship, was sporting 
 editor, solemnly entered together and sat down 
 with the social caution of their class. So did 
 Provin, the " elder giant," who gathered news 
 as he breathed and could not intelligibly put 
 six words together. Horace, who would listen to 
 four lines over the telephone and therefrom make 
 a half-column of American newspaper humour or 
 American newspaper tears, came in roaring pacif- 
 ically and marshaling little Bud, that day in 
 the seventh heaven of his first " beat." Then 
 followed Crass, the feature man, whose interviews 
 were known to the new men as literature, although 
 he was not above publicly admitting that he was 
 not a reporter, but a special writer. Mr. Crass 
 read nothing in the paper that he had not written, 
 and St. George had once prophesied that in old 
 age he would use his scrap-book for a manual 
 of devotions, as Klopstock used his Messiah. 
 With him arrived Carbury, the telegraph editor, 
 and later Benfy, who had a carpet in his office and 
 wrote editorials and who came in evening clothes, 
 thus moving Harding and Holt to instant private 
 conversation. The last to appear was Little 
 Cawthome who wrote the fiction page and made 
 enchanting limericks about every one on the staff 
 and went about singing one song and behaving, 
 the dramatic man flattered him, like a motif. 
 Little Cawthome entered backward, wrestling with 
 
10 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 some wiry matter which, when he had executed 
 a manoeuvre and banged the door, was thrust 
 through the passage in the form of Bennie Todd, 
 the head office boy, affectionately known as 
 Bennietod. Bennietod was in every one's secret, 
 clipped every one's space and knew every one*s 
 salary, and he had lately covered a baseball 
 game when the man whose copy he was to 
 carry had, outside the fence, become implicated 
 in allurements. He was greeted with noise, and 
 St. George told him heartily that he was glad 
 he had come. 
 
 " He made me," defensively claimed Bennietod, 
 frowning deferentially at Little Cawthorne. 
 
 " Hello, St. George," said the latter, " come on 
 back to the office. Crass sits in your place and 
 he wears cravats the colour of goblin's blood. 
 Come back." 
 
 " Not he," said Chillingworth, smoking; "the 
 Dead-and-Done-with editor is too keen for that ; 
 I won't give him a job. He's ruined. Egg sand- 
 wiches will never stimulate him now." 
 
 St. George joined in the relieved laugh that 
 followed. They were remembering his young 
 Sing Sing convict who had completed his sentence 
 in time to step in a cab and follow his mother to 
 the grave, where his stepfather refused to have 
 her coffin opened. And St. George, fresh from 
 his Alma Mater, had weighted the winged words 
 of his story with allusions to the tears celestial of 
 
DINNER TIME 11 
 
 Thetis, shed for Achilles, and Creon's grief for 
 Haemon, and the Unnatural Combat of Massing- 
 er's father and son ; so that Chillingworth had said 
 things in languages that are not dead (albeit a 
 bit Elizabethan) and the composing room had 
 shaken mailed fists. 
 
 "Hi, you!" said Little Cawthome, who was 
 bom in the South, " this is a mellow minute. 
 I could wish they came often. This shall be a 
 weekly occurrence — not so, St. George? " 
 
 " Cawthome," Chillingworth warned, " mind 
 your manners, or they'll make you city editor." 
 
 A momentary shadow was cast by the appear- 
 ance of Rollo, who was manifestly a symbol of the 
 world Philistine about which these guests knew 
 more and in which they played a smaller part than 
 any other class of men. But the tray which Rollo 
 bore was his passport. Thereafter, they all 
 trooped to the table, and Chillingworth sat at the 
 head, and from the foot St. George watched the 
 city editor break bread with the familiar nervous 
 gesture with which he was wont to strip off yards 
 of copy-paper and eat it. There was a tacit 
 assumption that he be the conversational sun of 
 the hour, and in fostering this understanding the 
 host took grateful refuge. 
 
 " This is shameful," Chillingworth began con- 
 tentedly. "Every one of you ought to be out on 
 the Boris story." 
 
 " What is the Boris story? " asked St. George 
 
12 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 with interest. But in all talk St. George had 
 a restful, host-like way of playing the rdle of 
 opposite to every one who preferred being 
 heard. 
 
 " I'll wager the boy hasn't been reading the 
 papers these three months," Amory opined in his 
 pleasant drawl. 
 
 " No," St. George confessed; " no, I haven't. 
 They make me homesick." 
 
 " Don't maunder," said Chillingworth in polite 
 criticism. "This is Amory 's story, and only about 
 a quarter of the facts yet," he added in a resent- 
 ful growl. " It's up at the Boris, in West Fifty- 
 ninth Street— you know the apartment house? 
 A Miss Holland, an heiress, living there with her 
 aunt, was attacked and nearly murdered by a 
 mulatto woman. The woman followed her to 
 the elevator and came uncomfortably near stab- 
 bing her from the back. The elevator boy was 
 too quick for her. And at the station they 
 couldn't get the woman to say a word; she 
 pretends not to understand or to speak anything 
 they've tried. She's got Amory hypnotized too — 
 he thinks she can't. And when they searched 
 her," went on Chillingworth with enjoyment, 
 * ' they found her dressed in silk and cloth of gold, 
 and loaded down with all sorts of barbarous 
 ornaments, with almost priceless jewels. Miss 
 Holland claims that she never saw or heard of 
 the woman before. Now, what do you make of 
 
DINNER TIME 13 
 
 it? " he demanded, unconcernedly draining his 
 glass. 
 
 " Splendid," cried St. George in unfeigned 
 interest. " I say, sp/lendid. Did you see the 
 woman? " he asked Amory. 
 
 Amory nodded. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " Andy fixed that for me. But 
 she never said a word. I parlez-voused her, and 
 verstehen-Sied her, and she sighed and turned her 
 head." 
 
 " Did you see the heiress? "St. George asked, 
 
 " Not I," mourned Amory, " not to talk with, 
 that is. I happened to be hanging up in the hall 
 there the afternoon it occurred;" he modestly 
 explained. 
 
 "What luck," St. George commented with 
 genuine envy. " It's a stunning story. Who is 
 Miss Holland? " 
 
 " She's lived there for a year or more with her 
 aunt," said Chillingworth. " She is a New Yorker 
 and an heiress and a great beauty — oh, all the 
 properties are there, but they're all we've got. 
 What do you make of it? " he repeated. 
 
 St. George did not answer, and every one else did. 
 
 " Mistaken identity," said Little Cawthome, 
 " Do you remember Provin's story of the woman 
 whose maid shot a masseuse whom she took to be 
 her mistress ; and the woman forgave the shooting 
 and seemed to have her arrested chiefly because 
 she had mistaken her for a masseuse? " 
 
14 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " Too easy, Cawthorne," said Chillingworth. 
 
 "The vv^oman is probably an Italian," said 
 the telegraph editor, " doing one of her Mafia 
 stunts. It's time they left the politicians alone 
 and threw bombs at the bonds that back them." 
 
 " Hey, Carbury. Stop writing heads," said 
 Chillingworth. 
 
 " Has Miss Holland lived abroad? " asked Crass, 
 the feature man. " Maybe this woman was her 
 nurse or ayah or something who got fond of her 
 charge, and when they took it away years ago, 
 she devoted her life to trying to find it in America. 
 And when she got here she wasn't able to make 
 herself known to her, and rather than let any 
 one else " 
 
 " No more space-grabbing, Crass," warned 
 Chillingworth. 
 
 " Maybe," ventured Horace, " the young lady 
 did settlement work and read to the woman's kid, 
 and the kid died, and the woman thought she'd 
 said a charm over it." 
 
 Chillingworth grinned affectionately. 
 
 "Hold up," he commanded, " or you'll recall 
 the very words of the charm." 
 
 Bennietod gasped and stared. 
 
 " Now, Bennietod? " Amory encouraged him. 
 
 " I t'ink," said the lad, " if she's a heiress, dis 
 yere dagger-plunger is her mudder dat's been 
 shut up in a mad-house to a fare-you-well," 
 
 Chillingworth nodded approvingly. 
 
DINNER TIME 15' 
 
 " Your imagination is toning down wonder- 
 fully, ' ' he flattered him. "A month ago you would 
 have guessed that the mulatto lady was an 
 Egyptian princess' messenger sent over here to 
 get the heart from an American heiress as an 
 ingredient for a complexion lotion. You're com- 
 ing on famously, Todd." 
 
 " The German poet Wieland," began Benfy, 
 clearing his throat, " has, in his epic of the 
 Oberon made admirable use of much the same 
 
 idea, Mr. Chillingworth " 
 
 Yells interrupted him. Mr. Benfy was too 
 
 " well-read " to be wholly popular with the staff. 
 
 " Oh, well, the woman was crazy. That's 
 
 about all," suggested Harding, and blushed to 
 
 the line of his hair. 
 
 " Yes, I guess so," assented Holt, who lifted and 
 lowered one shoulder as he talked, " or doped." 
 
 Chillingworth sighed and looked at them both 
 with pursed lips. 
 
 " You two," he commented, " would get out a 
 paper that everybody would know to be full of 
 reliable facts, and that nobody would buy. To 
 be bom with a riotous imagination and then 
 hardly ever to let it riot is to be a born newspaper 
 man. Provin? " 
 
 The elder giant leaned back, his eyes partly 
 closed. 
 
 " Is she engaged to be married? " he asked. 
 ** Is Miss Holland engaged? " 
 
16 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Chillingworth shook his head. 
 
 " No," he said, " not engaged. We knew that 
 by tea-time the same day, Provin. Well, St. 
 George? " 
 
 St. George drew a long breath. 
 
 " By Jove, I don't know," he said, " it's a 
 stunning story. It's the best story I ever remem- 
 ber, excepting those two or three that have hung 
 fire for so long. Next to knowing just why old 
 Knnis disinherited his son at his marriage, I would 
 like to ferret out this." 
 
 " Now, tut, St. George," Amory put in toler- 
 antly, " next to doing exactly what yoa will be 
 doing all this week you'd rather ferret out this." 
 
 " On my honour, no," St. George protested 
 eagerly, " I mean quite what I say. I might go 
 on fearfully about it. Lord knows I'm going to 
 see the day when I'll do it, too, and cut my 
 troubles for the luck of chasing down a bully 
 thing like this." 
 
 If there was anything to forgive, every one 
 forgave him. 
 
 " But give up ten minutes on The Aloha,'' 
 Amory skeptically put it, adjusting his pince-nez, 
 " for anything less than ten minutes on The 
 Aloha r' 
 
 "I'll do it now— now! " cried St. George. "If 
 Mr. Chillingworth will put me on this story in 
 your place and will give you a week off on The 
 Aloha, you may have her and welcome." 
 
DINNER TIME 17 
 
 Ijttle Cawiihorne pounded on the table. 
 
 " Where do I come in? " he wailed. " But no, 
 all I get is another wad o' woe." 
 
 " What do you say, Mr. Chillingworth? " 
 St. George asked eagerly. 
 
 " I don't know," said Chillingworth, medita- 
 tively turning his glass. "St. George is rested and 
 fresh, and he feels the story. And Amory — here, 
 touch glasses with me." 
 
 Amory obeyed. His chief's hand was steady, 
 but the two glasses jingled together until, with a 
 smile, Amory dropped his arm. 
 
 "I am about all in, I fancy," he admitted 
 apologetically. 
 
 " A week's rest on the water," said Chilling- 
 worth, " would set you on your feet for the con- 
 vention. All right, St. George," he nodded. 
 
 St. George leaped to his feet. 
 
 "Hooray!" he shouted like a boy. "Jove, 
 won't it be good to get back? " 
 
 He smiled as he set down his glass, remembering 
 the day at his desk when he had seen the white- 
 and-brass craft slip to the river's mouth. 
 
 Rollo, discreet and without wonder, footed 
 softly about the table, keeping the glasses filled 
 and betraying no other sign of life. For more 
 than four hours he was in attendance, until, last 
 of the guests, Little Cawthorne and Bennietod 
 departed together, trying to remember the dates 
 of the English kings. Finally Chillingworth and 
 
18 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Amory, having turned outdoors the dramatic 
 critic who had arrived at midnight and was 
 disposed to stay, stood for a moment by the fire 
 and talked it over. 
 
 " Remember, St. George,*' ChilHngworth said, 
 " I'll have no monkey- work. You'll report to me 
 at the old hour, you won't be late ; and you'll take 
 orders " 
 
 " As usual, sir," St. George rejoined quietly. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, "ChilHngworth said quickly, 
 " but you see this is such a deuced unnatural 
 arrangement." 
 
 " I understand," St. George assented, " and 
 I'll do my best not to get thrown down. Amory 
 has told me all he knows about it — ^by the way, 
 where is the mulatto woman now? " 
 
 " Why," said ChilHngworth, " some physician 
 got interested in the case, and he's managed to 
 hurry her up to the Bitley Reformatory in West- 
 chester for the present. She's there; and that 
 means, we need not disguise, that nobody can see 
 her. Those Bitley people are like a rabble of 
 wild eagles." 
 
 " Right," said St. George. "I'll report at eight 
 o'clock. Amory can board The Aloha when he 
 gets ready arjid take down whom he likes." 
 
 " On my life, old chap, it's a private view of 
 Kedar's tents to me," said Amory, his eyes shining 
 behind his pince-nez. "I'll probably win wide 
 disrespect by my inability to tell a mainsail from 
 
DINNER TIME 19 
 
 a cockpit, but I'm a grateful dog, in spite of 
 that." 
 
 When they were gone St. George sat by the 
 fire. He read Amory's story of the Boris affair 
 in the paper, which somewhere in the apartment 
 Rollo had unearthed, and the man took off his 
 master's shoes and brought his slippers and made 
 ready his bath. St. George glanced over his 
 shoulder at the attractively-dismantled table, with 
 its dying candles and slanted shades. 
 
 "Gad!" he said in sheer enjoyment as he 
 clipped the story and saw Rollo pass with the 
 towels. 
 
 It was so absurdly like a city room's dream of 
 Arcady. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A SCRAP OF PAPER 
 
 To be awakened by RoUo, to be served in bed 
 with an appetizing breakfast and to catch a 
 hansom to the nearest elevated station were 
 novel preparations for work in the Sentinel office. 
 The impossibility of it all delighted St. George 
 rather more than the reality, for there is no 
 pastime, as all the world knows, quite like that of 
 practising the impossible. The days when, " like 
 a man unfree, " he had fared forth from his unlovely 
 lodgings clandestinely to partake of an evil 
 omelette, seemed enchantingly far away. It was, 
 St. George reflected, the experience of having 
 been released from prison, minus the disgrace. 
 
 Yet when he opened the door of the city room 
 the odour of the printers' ink somehow fused his 
 elation in his liberty with the elation of the return. 
 This was like wearing fetters for bracelets. When 
 he had been obliged to breathe this air he had 
 scoffed at its fascination, but now he understood. 
 " A newspaper office," so a revered American of 
 letters who had begun his life there had oncQ 
 
 2Q 
 
A SCRAP OI^ PAPER 21 
 
 imparted to St. George, " is a place where a man 
 with the temperament of a savant and a recluse 
 may bring his American vice of commercialism 
 and worship of the uncommon, and let them 
 have it out. Newspapers have no other use — 
 except the one I began on." When St. George 
 entered the city room, Crass, of the goblin's 
 blood cravats, had vacated his old place, and 
 Provin was just uncovering his typewriter and 
 banging the tin cover upon everything within 
 reach, and Bennietod was writhing over a rewrite, 
 and Chillingworth was discharging an office boy 
 in a fashion that warmed St. George's heart. 
 
 But Chillingworth, the city editor, was an ital- 
 icized form of Chillingworth, the guest. He waved 
 both arms at the foreman who ventured to tell 
 him of a head that had one letter too many, and 
 he frowned a greeting at St. George. 
 
 " Get right out on the Boris story," he said. 
 " I depend on you. The chief is interested in this 
 too — telephoned to know whom I had on it." 
 
 St. George knew perfectly that " the chief " 
 was playing golf at Lenox and no doubt had read 
 no more than the head-lines of the Holland story, 
 for he was a close friend of the bishop's, and St. 
 George knew his ways ; but Chillingworth 's methods 
 always told, and St. George turned away with 
 all the old glow of his first assignment. 
 
 St. George, calling up the Bitley Reformatory, 
 knew that the Chances and the Fates were all 
 
22 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 allied against his seeing the mulatto woman; but 
 he had learned that it is the one unexpected Fate 
 and the one apostate Chance who open great 
 good luck of any sort. So, though the journey 
 to Westchester County was almost certain to 
 result in refusal, he meant to be confronted by 
 that certainty before he assumed it. To the 
 warden on the wire St. George put his inquiry. 
 
 " What are your visitors' days up there, Mr. 
 Jeffrey? " 
 
 " Thursdays," came the reply, and the warden's 
 voice suggested handcuffs by way of hospitality. 
 
 " This is St. George of the Sentinel. I want 
 very much to see one of your people — a mulatto 
 woman. Can you fix it for me? " 
 
 " Certainly not," returned the warden promptly. 
 "The Sentinel knows perfectly that newspaper 
 men can not be admitted here." 
 
 " Ah, well now, of course," St. George conceded, 
 " but if you have a mysterious boarder who 
 talks Patagonian or something, and we think 
 that perhaps we can talk with her, why 
 then " 
 
 " It doesn't matter whether you can talk every 
 language in South America," said the warden 
 bruskly. "I'm very busy now, and " 
 
 "See here, Mr. Jeffrey," said St. George, "is no 
 one allowed there but relatives of the guests? " 
 
 " Nobody," — crisply. 
 
 ** I beg your pardon, that is literal? " 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 2S 
 
 '-* Relatives, with a permit," divulged the 
 warden, who, if he had had a sceptre would have 
 used it at table, he was so fond of his little power, 
 " and the Readers' Guild." 
 
 " Ah— the Readers' Guild," said St. George. 
 " W^at days, Mr. Jeffrey? " 
 
 " To-day and Saturdays, ten o'clock. I'm 
 sorr}?-, Mr. St. George, but I'm a very busy man 
 and now " 
 
 " Good-by," St. George cried triumphantly. 
 
 In half an hour he was at the Grand Central 
 station, boarding a train for the Reformatory 
 town. It was a little after ten o'clock when he 
 rang the bell at the house presided over by 
 Chillingworth's " rabble of wild eagles." 
 
 The Reformatory^ a boastful, brick building set in 
 grounds that seemed freshly starched and ironed, 
 had a discoloured door that would have frowned 
 and threatened of its own accord, even without 
 the printed warnings pasted to its panels stating 
 that no application for admission, with or without 
 permits, would be honoured upon any day save 
 Thursday. This was Tuesday. 
 
 Presently, the chains having fallen within after 
 a feudal rattling, an old man who looked bom to 
 the business of snapping up a drawbridge in 
 lieu of a taste for any other exclusiveness peered 
 at St. George through absurd smoked glasses, 
 cracked quite across so that his eyes resembled 
 buckles. 
 
24 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 "Good morning," said St. George; "has the 
 Readers' Guild arrived yet? " 
 
 The old man grated out an assent and swung 
 open the door, which creaked in the pitch of his 
 voice. The bare hall was cut by a wall of steel 
 bars whose gate was padlocked, and outside this 
 wall the door to the warden's office stood open. 
 St. George saw that a meeting was in progress 
 there, and the sight disturbed him. Then the 
 click of a key caught his attention, and he turned 
 to find the old man quietly and surprisingly 
 swinging open the door of steel bars. 
 
 " This way, sir," he said hoarsely, fixing St. 
 George with his buckle eyes, and shambled through 
 the door after him locking it behind them. 
 
 If St. George had found awaiting him a gold 
 throne encircled by kneeling elephants he could 
 have been no more amazed. Not a word had been 
 said about the purpose of his visit, and not a 
 word to the warden; there was simply this mirac- 
 ulous opening of the barred door. St. George 
 breathlessly footed across the rotunda and down 
 the dim opposite hall. There was a mistake, 
 that was evident; but for the moment St. George 
 was going to propose no reform. Their steps 
 echoed in the empty corridor that extended 
 the entire length of the great building in an 
 odour of unspeakable soap and superior disinfec- 
 tants; and it was not until they reached a stair 
 at the far end that the old man halted. 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 25 
 
 -Top o' the steps/' he hoarsely vokmteered 
 bhnkmg his little buckle eyes, " first door to the 
 left. My back's bad. I won't go up." 
 
 St. George, inhumanely blessing the circum- 
 stance, slipped something in the old man's hand 
 and sprang up the stairs. 
 
 The first door at the left stood ajar. St 
 George looked in and saw a circle of bonnets and 
 white curls clouded around the edge of the room. 
 like witnesses. The Readers' Guild was about 
 leavmg; almost in the same instant, with that 
 soft lift and touch which makes a woman's gown 
 seem sewed with vowels and sibilants, they all 
 arose and came tapping across the bare floor. 
 At their head marched a woman with such a 
 bright bonnet, and such a tinkle of ornaments 
 on her gown that at first sight she quite looked 
 like a lamp. It was she whom St. George 
 approached. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, madame," he said, "is 
 this the Readers' Guild?" 
 
 There was nothing in St. George's grave face 
 and deferential stooping of shoulders to betray 
 how his heart was beating or what a bound it 
 gave at her amazing reply. 
 
 "Ah," she said, " how do you do? "—and her 
 manner had that violent absent-mindedness which 
 almost always proves that its possessor has 
 tramed a large family of children— " I am 
 so glad that you can be with us to-day 
 
26 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 I am Mrs. Manners — ^forgive me," she be- 
 sought with perfectly self-possessed distracted- 
 ness, "I'm afraid that I've forgotten your 
 name." 
 
 " My name is St. George," he answered as well 
 as he could for virtual speechlessness. 
 
 The other members of the Guild were issuing 
 from the room, and Mrs. Manners turned. She 
 had a fashion of smiling enchantingly, as if to 
 compensate her total lack of attention. 
 
 " Ladies," she said, " this is Mr. St. George, at 
 last." 
 
 Then she went through their names to him, 
 and St. George bowed and caught at the flying 
 end of the name of the woman nearest him, and 
 muttered to them all. The one nearest was a 
 Miss Bella Bliss Utter, a little brown nut of a 
 woman with bead eyes. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. St. George," said Miss Utter 
 rapidly, " it has been a wonderfid meeting. I 
 wish you might have been with us. Fortunately 
 for us you are just in time for our third floor 
 council." 
 
 It had been said of St. George that when he was 
 writing on space and was in need, buildings fell 
 down before him to give him two columns on the 
 first page ; but any architectural manoeuvre could 
 not have amazed him as did this. And too, 
 though there had been occasions when silence or 
 an evasion would have meant bread to him, the 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 27 
 
 temptation to both was never so strong as at that 
 moment. It cost St. George an effort, which he 
 was afterward glad to remember having made, to 
 tm-n to Mrs. Manners, who had that air of ap- 
 pointing committees and announcing the pro- 
 gramme by which we always recognize a leader, 
 and try to explain. 
 
 " I am afraid," St. George said as they reached 
 the stairs, " that you have mistaken me, Mrs. 
 Manners. I am not " 
 
 " Pray, pray do not mention it, " cried Mrs. 
 Manners, shaking her little lamp-shade of a hat 
 at him, " we make every allowance, and I am sure 
 that none will be necessary." 
 
 " But I am with the Evening Sentinel/* St. 
 George persisted, " I am afraid that " 
 
 "As if one's profession made any difference! " 
 cried Mrs. Manners warmly. " No, indeed, I 
 perfectly understand. We all understand," slie 
 assured him, going over some papers in one hand 
 and preparing to mount the stairs. " Indeed, we 
 appreciate it," she murmured, "do we not. 
 Miss Utter? " 
 
 The little brown nut seemed to crack in a 
 capacious smile. 
 
 '• Indeed, indeed!" she said fervently, accenting 
 her emphasis by briefly-closed eyes. 
 
 " Hymn books. Now, have we hymn books 
 enough? " plaintively broke in Mrs. Manners. " I 
 declare, those new hymn books don't seem to have 
 
28 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 the Spirit of the old ones, no matter what any one 
 says," she informed St. George earnestly as they 
 reached an open door. In the next moment he 
 stood aside and the Readers' Guild filed past him. 
 He followed them. This was pleasantly like 
 magic. 
 
 They entered a large chamber carpeted and 
 walled in the garish flowers which many boards 
 of directors suppose will joy the cheerless breast. 
 There were present a dozen women inmates, — 
 sullen, weary-looking beings who seemed to 
 have made abject resignation their latest vice. 
 They turned their lustreless eyes upon the visitors, 
 and a portly woman in a red waist with a little 
 American flag in a buttonhole issued to them a 
 nasal command to rise. They got to their feet 
 with a starched noise, like dead leaves blowing, 
 and St. George eagerly scanned their faces. 
 There were women of several nationalities, 
 though they all looked raceless in the ugly uni- 
 forms which those same boards of directors con- 
 sider de rigueur for the soul that is to be won back 
 to the normal. A little negress, with a spirit that 
 soared free of boards of directors, had tried to tie 
 her closely-clipped wool with bits of coloured 
 string; an Italian woman had a geranium over her 
 ear; and at the end of the last row of chairs, 
 towering above the others, was a creature of a 
 kind of challenging, unforgetable beauty whom, 
 with a thrill of certainty, St. George realized to be 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 29 
 
 her whom he had come to see. So strong was 
 his conviction that, as he afterward recalled, he 
 even asked no question concerning her. She 
 looked as manifestly not one of the canaille of 
 incorrigibles as, in her place, Lucrezia Borgia 
 would have looked. 
 
 The woman was powerfully built with aston- 
 ishing breadth of shoulder and length of limb, 
 but perfectly proportioned. She was young, 
 hardly more than twenty, St. George fancied, and 
 of the peculiar litheness which needs no motion to 
 be manifest. Her clear skin was of wonderful 
 brown; and her eyes, large and dark, with some- 
 thing of the oriental watchfulness, were like opaque 
 gems and not more penetrable. Her look was 
 immovably fixed upon St. George as if she divined 
 that in some way his coming affected her. 
 
 " We will have our hymn first." Mrs. Manners' 
 words were buzzing and pecking in the air. 
 "What can I have done with that list of numbers? 
 We have to select our pieces most carefully," 
 she confided to St. George, "so to be sure that 
 Soul's Prison or Hands Red as Crimson, or, Do 
 You See the Hebrew Captive Kneeling 9 or any- 
 thing personal like that doesn't occur. Now 
 what can I have done with that list? " 
 
 Her words reached St. George but vaguely. 
 He was in a fever of anticipation and enthusiasm. 
 He turned quickly to Mrs. Manners. 
 
 " During the hymn," he said simply, " I would 
 
30 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 like to speak with one of the women. Have I 
 your permission? " 
 
 Mrs. Manners looked momentarily perplexed; 
 but her eyes at that instant chancing upon her 
 lost list of hymns, she let fall an abstracted 
 assent and hurried to the waiting organist. 
 Immediately St. George stepped quietly down 
 among the women already fluttering the leaves 
 of their hymn books, and sat beside the mulatto 
 woman. 
 
 Her eyes met his in eager questioning, but she 
 had that temper of unsurprise of many of the 
 eastern peoples and of some animals. Yet she 
 was under some strong excitement, for her hands, 
 large but faultlessly modeled, were pressed 
 tensely together. And St. George saw that 
 she was by no means a mulatto, or of any race 
 that he was able to name. Her features 
 were classic and of exceeding fineness, and her 
 face was sensitive and highly-bred and filled with 
 repose, like the surprising repose of breathing 
 arrested in marble. There was that about her, 
 however, which would have made one, consti- 
 tuted to perceive only the arbitrary balance of 
 things, feel almost afraid; while one of high 
 organization would inevitably have been smitten 
 by some sense of the incalculably higher organi- 
 zation of her nature, a nature which breathed 
 forth an influence, laid a spell — did something 
 indefinable. Sometimes one stands too closely to 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 31 
 
 a Statue and is frightened by the nearness, as 
 by the nearness of one of an alien region. St. 
 George felt this directly he spoke to her. He 
 shook off the impression and set himself practically 
 to the matter in hand. He had never had greater 
 need of his faculty for directness. His low tone 
 was quite matter-of-fact, his manner deferentially 
 reassuring. 
 
 " I think," he said softly and without preface, 
 " that I can help you. Will you let me help 
 you? Will you tell me quickly your name? " 
 
 The woman's beautiful eyes were filled with 
 distress, but she shook her head. 
 
 Your name — name — name ? " St. George 
 repeated earnestly, but she had only the same 
 answer. " Can you not tell me where you live? " 
 St. George persisted, and she made no other sign. 
 " New York? " went on St. George patiently. 
 " New York? Do you live in New York? " 
 
 There was a sudden gleam in the woman's 
 eyes. She extended her hands quickly in unmis- 
 takable appeal. Then swiftly she caught up 
 a hymn book, tore at its fly-leaf, and made the 
 movement of writing. In an instant St. George 
 had thrust a pencil in her hand and she was 
 tracing something. 
 
 He waited feverishly. The organ had droned 
 through the hymn and the women broke into 
 song, with loose lips and without restraint, as 
 street boys sing. He saw them casting curious, 
 
32 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 sullen glances, and the Readers' Guild whispering 
 among themselves. Miss Bella Bliss Utter, look- 
 ing as distressed as a nut can look, nodded, and 
 Mrs. Manners shook her head and they meant 
 the same thing. Then St. George saw the attend- 
 ant in the red waist descend from the platform 
 and make her way toward him, the little American 
 flag rising and falling on her breast. He unhes- 
 itatingly stepped in the aisle to meet her, deter- 
 mined to prevent, if possible, her suspicion of the 
 message. " Is it the barbarism of a gentleman," 
 Amory had once propounded, "or is it the 
 gentleman-like manners of a barbarian which 
 makes both enjoy over-stepping a prohibition? " 
 
 " I compliment you," St. George said gravely, 
 with his deferential stooping of the shoulders. 
 " The women are perfectly trained. This, of 
 course, is due to you," 
 
 The hard face of the woman softened, but St. 
 George thought that one might call her very 
 facial expression nasal; she smiled with evident 
 pleasure, though her purpose remained unsha- 
 ken. 
 
 " They do pretty good," she admitted, " but 
 visitors ain't best for 'em. I'll have to request 
 
 you" St. George vaguely wished that she 
 
 would say " ask " " not to talk to any of 
 
 'em." 
 
 St. George bowed. 
 
 " It is a great privilege," he said warmly if a 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 33 
 
 bit incoherently, and. held her in talk about an 
 institution of the sort in Canada where the 
 women inmates wore white, the managers claim- 
 ing that the effect upon their conduct was per- 
 ceptible, that they were far more self-respecting, 
 and so on in a labyrinth of defensive detail. 
 " What do you think of the idea? " he concluded 
 anxiously, manfully holding his ground in the 
 aisle. 
 
 " I think it's mostly nonsense," returned the 
 woman tartly, " a big expense and a sight of 
 work for nothing. And now permit me to 
 say " 
 
 St. George vaguely wished that she would say 
 "let." 
 
 " I agree with you," he said earnestly, " nothing 
 could be simpler and neater than these calico 
 gowns." 
 
 The attendant looked curiously at him. 
 
 " They are gingham," she rejoined, " and you'll 
 excuse me, I hope, but visitors ain't supposed to 
 converse with the inmates." 
 
 St. George was vanquished by " converse." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," he said, " pray forgive 
 me. I will say good-by to my friend." 
 
 He turned swiftly and extended his hand to 
 the strange woman behind him. With the cun- 
 ning upon which he had counted she gave her 
 own hand, slipping in his the folded paper. Her 
 eyes, with their haunting watchfulness, held his 
 
34 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 for a moment as she mutely bent forward when 
 he left her. 
 
 The hymn was done and the women were seat- 
 ing themselves, as St. George with beating heart 
 took his way up the aisle. What the paper 
 contained he could not even conjecture; but 
 there was a paper and it did contain something 
 which he had a pleasant premonition would be 
 invaluable to him. Yet he was still utterly at 
 loss to account for his own presence there, and 
 this he coolly meant to do. 
 
 He was spared the necessity. On the platform 
 Mrs. ]Manners had risen to make an announce- 
 ment; and St. George fancied that she must 
 preside at her tea-urn and try on her bonnets 
 with just that same formal little " announcement " 
 air. 
 
 " My friends," she said, " I have now an unex- 
 pected pleasure for you and for us all. We have 
 with us to-day Mr. St. George, of New York. Mr. 
 St. George is going to sing for us." 
 
 St. George stood still for a moment, looking 
 into the expectant faces of Mrs. Manners and the 
 other women of the Readers' Guild, a spark of 
 understanding kindling the mirth in his eyes. 
 This then accounted both for his admittance to the 
 home and for his welcome by the women upon 
 their errand of mercy. He had simply been very 
 naturally mistaken for a stranger from New York 
 who had not arrived. But since he had accomp- 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 35' 
 
 lished something, though he did not know what, 
 inasmuch as the slip of paper lay crushed in his 
 hand unread, he must, he decided, pay for it. 
 Without ado he stepped to the platform. 
 
 " I have explained to Mrs. Manners and to 
 these ladies," he said gravely, " that I am not 
 the gentleman who was to sing for yoil. 
 However, since he is detained, I will do what I 
 can." 
 
 This, mistaken for a merely perfunctory speech 
 of self-depreciation, was received in polite, con- 
 tradicting silence by the Guild, St. George, 
 who had a ricli, true barytone, quickly ran over 
 his little list of possible songs, none of which he 
 had ever sung to an audience that a canoe would 
 not hold, or to other accompaniment than that 
 of a mandolin. Partly in memory of those old 
 canoe-evenings St. George broke into a low, 
 crooning plantation melody. The song, like 
 much of the Southern music, had in it a semi- 
 barbaric chord that the college men had loved, 
 something — or so one might have said who took 
 the canoe-music seriously — of the wildness and 
 fierceness of old tribal loves and plaints and 
 unremembered wooings with a desert background : 
 a gallop of hoof-beats, a quiver of noon light 
 above saffron sand — these had been, more or 
 less, in the music when St. George liad been 
 wont to lie in a boat and pick at the strings 
 while Amory paddled; and these he must havQ 
 
36 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 reechoed before the crowd of curious and sul- 
 len and commonplace, lighted by that one 
 wild, strange face. When he had finished the 
 dark woman sat with bowed head, and St. George 
 himself was more moved by his own effort than 
 was strictly professional. 
 
 " Dear Mr. St. George," said Mrs. Manners, 
 going distractedly through her hand-bag for 
 something unknown, " our secretary will thank 
 you formally. It was she who sent you our 
 request, was it not? She will so regret being 
 absent to-day." 
 
 " She did not send me a request, Mrs. Manners," 
 persisted St. George pleasantly, " but I've been 
 uncommonly glad to do what I could. I am here 
 simply on a mission for the Evening Sentinel.'" 
 
 Mrs. Manners drew something indefinite from 
 her bag and put it back again, and looked vaguely 
 at St. George. 
 
 " Your voice reminds me so much of my 
 brother, younger," she observed, her eyes already 
 straying to the literature for distribution. 
 
 With soft exclamatory twitters the Readers' 
 Guild thanked St. George, and Miss Bella Bliss 
 Utter, who was of womankind who clasp their 
 hands when they praise, stood thus beside him 
 until he took his leave. The woman in the 
 red waist summoned an attendant to show him 
 back down the long corridor. 
 
 At the grated door within the entrance St, 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER B7 
 
 George found the warden in stormy conference 
 with a pale blond youth in spectacles. 
 
 '• Impossible," the warden was saying bluntly, 
 " I know you. I know your voice. You called 
 me up this morning from the New York Sentinel 
 office, and I told you then " 
 
 " But, my dear sir," expostulated the pale 
 blond youth, waving a music roll, " I do assure 
 you '• 
 
 " What he says is quite true. Warden," St. 
 George interposed courteously, " I will vouch for 
 him. I have just been singing for the Readers' 
 Guild myself." 
 
 The warden dropped back with a grudging 
 apology and brows of tardy suspicion, and the 
 old man blinked his buckle eyes. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said St. George, " good morn- 
 ing." 
 
 Outside the door, with its panels decorated in 
 positive prohibitions, he eagerly unfolded the 
 precious paper. It bore a single name and 
 address: Tabnit, 19 McDougle Street, New York. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ST. GEORGE AND THE I^ADY 
 
 St. George lunched leisurely at his hotel. Upon 
 his return from Westchester he had gone directly 
 to McDougle Street to be assured that there was 
 a house numbered 19. Without difficulty he had 
 found the place; it was in the row of old iron- 
 balconied apartment houses a few blocks south 
 of Washington Square, and No. 19 differed in no 
 way from its neighbours even to the noisy child- 
 ren, without toys, tumbling about the sunken 
 steps and dark basement door. St. George con- 
 tented himself with walking past the house, for 
 the mere assurance that the place existed dictated 
 his next step. 
 
 This was to write a note to Mrs. Medora Hast- 
 ings, Miss Holland's aunt. The note set forth 
 that for reasons which he would, if he might, 
 explain later, he was interested in the woman 
 who had recently made an attempt upon her 
 niece's life; that he had seen the woman and 
 had obtained an address which he was confident 
 would lead to further information about her. 
 V 38 
 
ST. GRORGE AND THE LADY 39 
 
 This address, he added, he preferred not to dis- 
 close to the police, but to Mrs. Hastings or Miss 
 Holland herself, and he begged leave to call upon 
 them if possible that day. He despatched the 
 note by Rollo, whom he instructed to deliver it, 
 not at the desk, but at the door of Mrs. Hastings' 
 apartment, and to wait for an answer. He 
 watched with pleasure Rollo 's soft departure, 
 recalling the days when he had sent a messenger 
 boy to some inaccessible threshold, himself 
 stamping up and down in the cold a block or so 
 away to await the boy's return. 
 
 Rollo was back almost immediately. Mrs. 
 Hastings and Miss Holland were not at home. 
 St. George eyed his servant severely. 
 
 " Rollo," he said, " did you go to the door of 
 their apartment? " 
 
 " No, sir," said Rollo stiffly, " the elevator 
 boy told me they was out, sir." 
 
 " Showing," thought St, George, "that a valet 
 and a gentleman is a very poor newspaper man." 
 
 " Now go back," he said pleasantly, " go up in 
 the elevator to their door. If they are not in, 
 wait in the lower hallway until they return. Do 
 you get that? Until they return." 
 
 " You'll want me back by tea-time, sir? " ven- 
 tured Rollo, 
 
 " Wait," St. George repeated, "until they return. 
 At three. Or six. Or nine o'clock. Or midnight." 
 
 " Very good, sir," said Rollo impassively, " it 
 
40 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 ain't always wise, sir, for a man to trust to his 
 own judgment, sir, asking your pardon. His 
 judgment," he added, " may be a bit of the ape 
 left in him, sir." 
 
 St. George smiled at this evolutionary pearl 
 and settled himself comfortably by the open fire 
 to await Rollo's return. It was after three 
 o'clock when he reappeared. He brought a note 
 and St. George feverishly tore it open. 
 
 ' ' Whom did you see ? Were they civil to you ? ' ' 
 he demanded. 
 
 " I saw a old lady, sir," said Rollo irrever- 
 ently. "She didn't say a word to me, sir, but 
 what she didn't say was civiler than many people's 
 language. There's a great deal in manner, sir," 
 declaimed Rollo, brushing his hat with his sleeve, 
 and his sleeve with his handkerchief, and shak- 
 ing the handkerchief meditatively over the coals. 
 
 St. George read the note at a glance and with 
 unspeakable relief. They would see him. A 
 refusal would have delayed and annoyed him 
 just then, in the flood-tide of his hope. 
 
 " My Dear Mr. St. George," the note ran. ** My 
 niece is not at home, and I can not tell how your 
 suggestion will be received by her, though it is 
 most kind. I may, however, answer for myself 
 that I shall be glad to see you at four o'clock this 
 afternoon. 
 
 " Very truly yours, 
 
 * ' Medora Hastings. ' ' 
 
ST. GEORGE AND THE LADY 41 
 
 Grateful for her evident intention to waste 
 no time, St. George dressed and drove to the Boris, 
 punctually sending up his card at four o'clock. At 
 once he was ushered to Mrs. Hastings' apartment. 
 
 St. George entered her drawing-room incu- 
 riously. Three years of entering drawing- 
 rooms which he never thereafter was to see 
 had robbed him of that sensation of indefinable 
 charm which for many a strange room never 
 ceases to yield. He had found far too many 
 tables upholding nothing which one could remem- 
 ber, far too many pictures that returned his 
 look, and rugs that seemed to have been selected 
 arbitrarily and because there was none in stock 
 that the owner really liked. He was there- 
 fore pleasantly surprised and puzzled by the 
 room which welcomed him. The floor was tiled 
 in curious blocks, strangely hieroglyphed, as 
 if they had been taken from old tombs. Over 
 the fireplace was set a panel of the same stone, 
 which, by the thickness of the tiles, formed a 
 low shelf. On this shelf and on tables and in a 
 high window was the strangest array of objects 
 that St. George had ever seen. There were small 
 busts of soft rose stone, like blocks of coral. There 
 was a statue or two of some indefinable white 
 material, glistening like marble and yet so soft 
 that it had been indented in several places by 
 accidental pressure. There were fans of strangely- 
 woven silk, with sticks of carven rock-crystal, 
 
42 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 and hand mirrors of polished copper set in frames 
 of gems that he did not recognize. Upon the wall 
 were mended bits of purple tapestry, embroidered 
 or painted or woven in singular patterns of flora 
 and birds that St. George could not name. There 
 were rolls of parchment, and vases of rock-crystal, 
 and a little apparatus, most delicately poised, 
 for weighing unknown, delicate things; and jars 
 and cups without handles, all baked of a soft 
 pottery having a nap like the down of a peach. 
 Over the windows hung curtains of lace, woven 
 by hands which St. George could not gaess, in 
 patterns of such freedom and beauty as western 
 looms never may know. On the floor and on the 
 divans were spread strange skins, some marked 
 like peacocks, some patterned like feathers and 
 like seaweed, all in a soft fur that was like silk. 
 
 Mingled with these curios were the ordinary 
 articles of a cultivated household. There were 
 many books, good pictures, furniture with simple 
 lines, a tea-table that almost ministered of itself, 
 a work-basket filled with " violet-weaving " 
 needle- work, and a gossipy clock with well-bred 
 chimes. St. George was enormously attracted 
 by the room which could harbour so many pagan 
 delights without itself falling their victim. The 
 air was fresh and cool and smelled of the window 
 primroses. 
 
 In a few moments Mrs. Hastings entered, and 
 if St. George had been bewildered by the room he 
 
ST. GEORGE AND THE LADY 43 
 
 was still more amazed by the appearance of his 
 hostess. She was utterly unlike the atmosphere 
 of her drawing-room. She was a bustling, com- 
 monplace little creature, with an expressionless 
 face, indented rather than molded in features. 
 Her plump hands were covered with jewels, but 
 for all the richness of her gown she gave the 
 impression of being very badly dressed; things 
 of jet and metal bobbed and ticked upon her, 
 and her side-combs were continually falling about. 
 She sat on the sofa and looked at the seat which 
 St. George was to have and began to talk — all 
 without taking the slightest heed of him or 
 permitting him to mention the Eventing Sentinel 
 or his errand. If St. George had been painted 
 purple he felt sure that she would have acted 
 quite the same. Personality meant nothing to 
 her. 
 
 " Now this distressing matter, Mr. St. George," 
 began Mrs. Hastings, " of this frightful mulatto 
 woman. I didn't see her myself — no, I had 
 stopped in on the first floor to visit my lawyer's 
 wife who was ill with neuralgia, and I didn't see 
 the creature. If I had been with my niece I 
 dare say it wouldn't have occurred. That's what 
 I always say to my niece. I always say, ' Olivia, 
 nothing need occur to vex one. It always happens 
 because of pure heedlessness.' Not that I accuse 
 my own niece of heedlessness in this particular. 
 It was the elevator boy who was heedless. That 
 
.44 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 is the trouble with life in a great city. Every 
 breath you draw is always dependent on 
 somebody else's doing his duty, and when you 
 consider how many people habitually neglect 
 their duty it is a wonder — I always say that to 
 Olivia — it is a wonder that anybody is alive to 
 do a duty when it presents itself. ' Olivia,' I 
 always say, ' nobody needs to die.' And I really 
 believe that they nearly all do die out of pure 
 heedlessness. Well, and so this frightful mulatto 
 creature: you know her, I understand? " 
 
 Mrs. Hastings leaned back and consulted 
 St. George through her tortoise-shell glasses, 
 tilting her head high to keep them on her nose and 
 perpetually putting their gold chain over her 
 ear, which perpetually pulled out her side-combs. 
 • " I saw her this morning," St. George said. 
 ** I went up to the Reformatory in Westchester, 
 and I spoke with her." 
 
 " Mercy! " ejaculated Mrs. Hastings, " I won- 
 der she didn't tear your eyes out. Did they have 
 her in a cage or in a cell ? What was the creature 
 about? " 
 
 " She was in a missionary meeting at the 
 moment," St. George explained, smiling. 
 
 " Mercy! " said Mrs. Hastings in exactly the 
 same tone. " Some trick, I expect. That's what 
 I warn Olivia : ' So few things nowadays are 
 done through necessity or design.' Nearly every- 
 thing is a trick. Every invention is a trick — 
 
ST. GEORGE AND THE LADY 45 
 
 a cultured trick, one might say. Murder is a 
 trick, I suppose, to a murderer. That's why 
 civilization is bad for morals, don't you think? 
 Well, and so she talked with you? " 
 
 " No, Mrs. Hastings," said St. George, " she 
 did not say one word. But she wrote something, 
 and that is what I have come to bring you." 
 
 " What was it — some charm? " cried Mrs. 
 Hastings. "Oh, nobody knows what that kind of 
 people may do. I'll meet any one face to face, 
 but these juggling, incantation individuals appal 
 me. I have a brother who travels in the Orient, 
 and he tells me about hideous things they do — 
 raising wheat and things," she vaguely concluded. 
 
 " Ah! " said St. George quickly, " you have a 
 brother — in the Orient? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. My brother Otho' has traveled 
 abroad I don't know how many years. We have 
 a great many stamps. I can't begin to pronotmce 
 all the names," the lady assured him. 
 
 " And this brother — is he your niece, Miss 
 Holland's father? " St. George asked eagerly. 
 
 " Certainly," said Mrs. Hastings severely; 
 " I have only one brother, and it has been three 
 years since I have seen him." 
 
 " Pardon me, Mrs. Hastings," said St. George, 
 " this may be most important. Will you tell me 
 when you last heard from him and where he was ? ' ' 
 
 " I should have to look up the place," she 
 answered, '* I couldn't begin to pronounce th^ 
 
46 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 name, I dare say. It was somewhere in the South 
 Atlantic, ten months or more ago." 
 
 " Ah," St. George quietly commented. 
 
 " Well, and now this frightful creature," 
 resumed Mrs. Hastings, " do, pray, tell me what 
 it was she wrote." 
 
 St. George produced the paper. 
 
 "That is it," he said. "I fancy you will not 
 know the street. It is 19 McDougle Street, and 
 the name is simply Tabnit." 
 
 " Yes. And is it a letter? " his hostess 
 demanded, " and whatever does it say? " 
 
 "It is not a letter," St. George explained 
 patiently, " and this is all that it says. The name 
 is, I suppose, the name of a person. I have made 
 sure that there is such a number in the street. 
 I have seen the house. But I have waited to 
 consult you before going there." 
 
 "Why, what is it you think?" Mrs. Hastings 
 besought him. " Do you think this person, whoever 
 it is, can do something? And whatever can he 
 do? Oh dear," she ended, " I do want to act the 
 way poor dear Mr. Hastings would have acted. 
 Only I know that he would have gone straight 
 to Bitley, or wherever she is, and held a revolver 
 at that mulatto creature's head, and commanded 
 her to talk English. Mr. Hastings was a very- 
 determined character. If you could have seen 
 the poor dear man's chin! But of course I can't 
 do that, can I ? And that's what I say to Olivia ; 
 
ST. GEORGE AND THE LADY 47 
 
 * Olivia, one doesn't need a man's judgment if 
 one will only use judgment oneself.' What is it 
 you think, Mr. St. George? " 
 
 Before St. George could reply there entered the 
 room, behind a low announcement of his name, 
 a man of sixty-odd years, nervous, slightly 
 stooped, his smooth pale face unlighted by little 
 deep-set eyes. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Frothingham! " said Mrs. Hastings 
 in evident relief, " you are just in lime. Mr. St. 
 John was just telling me horrible things about 
 this frightful mulatto creature. This is Mr. St. 
 John. Mr. Frothingham is my lawyer and my 
 brother Otho's lawyer. And so I telephoned 
 him to come in and hear all about this. And 
 now do go on, Mr. St. John, about this hideous 
 woman. What is it you think?" 
 
 •' How do you do, Mr. St. John? " said the 
 lawyer portentously. His greeting was almost a 
 warning, and reminded St. George of the way in 
 which certain brakemen call out stations. St. 
 George responded as blithely to this name as to 
 his own and did not correct it. "And what," went 
 on the lawyer, sitting down with long unclosed 
 hands laid trimly along his knees, " have you to 
 contribute to this most remarkable occurrence, 
 Mr. St. John? " 
 
 St. George briefly narrated the events of the 
 morning and placed the slip of paper in the law- 
 yer's hands. 
 
48 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " Ah! We have here a communication in the 
 nature of a confession," the lawyer observed, 
 adjusting his gold pince-nez, head thrown back, 
 eyebrows lifted. 
 
 " Only the address, sir," said St. George, " and 
 I was just saying to Mrs. Hastings that some one 
 ought to go to this address at once and find out 
 whatever is to be got there. Whoever goes 
 I will very gladly accompany." 
 
 Mr. Frothingham had a fashion of making 
 ready to speak and soliciting attention by the 
 act, and then collapsing suddenly with no explo- 
 sion, like a bad Roman candle. He did this now, 
 and whatever he meant to say was lost to the 
 race; but he looked very wise the while. It was 
 rather as if he discarded you as a fit listener, 
 than that he discarded his own comment. 
 
 " I don't know but I ought to go myself," 
 rambled Mrs. Hastings, " perhaps Mr. Hastings 
 would think I ought. Suppose, Mr. Frothing- 
 ham, that we both go. Dear, dear! Olivia always 
 sees to my shopping and flowers and everything 
 executive, but I can't let her go into these fright- 
 ful places, can I? " 
 
 There was a rustling at the far end of the room, 
 and some one entered. St. George did not turn, 
 but as her soft skirts touched and lifted along 
 the floor he was tinglingly aware of her presence. 
 Even before Mrs. Hastings heard her light foot- 
 fall, even before the clear voice spoke, St. George 
 
ST. GEORGE AND THE LADY 49 
 
 knew that he was at last in the presence of the 
 arbiter of his enterprise, and of how much else 
 he did not know. He was silent, breathlessly 
 waiting for her to speak, 
 
 "May I come in, Aunt Dora?" she said. "I 
 want to know to what place it is impossible for 
 me to go? " 
 
 She came from the long room's boundary 
 shadow. There was about her a sense of white 
 and gray w4th a knot of pale colour in her hat 
 and an orchid on her white coat. Mrs. Hastings, 
 taking no more account of her presence than 
 she had of St. George's, tilted back her head 
 and looked at the primroses in the window as 
 closely as at anything, and absently presented 
 him. 
 
 " Olivia," she said, " this is Mr. St. John, 
 who knows about that frightful mulatto creature. 
 Mr. St. George," she went on, correcting the name 
 entirely unintentionally, " my niece. Miss Hol- 
 land. And I'm sure I wish I knew what the 
 necessary thing to be done is. That is what I 
 always tell you, you know, Olivia. ' Find out 
 the necessary thing and do it, and let the rest 
 go.' " 
 
 " It reminds me very much," said the lawyer, 
 clearing his throat, " of a case that I had on the 
 April calendar " 
 
 Miss Holland had turned swiftly to St. George : 
 
 " You know the mulatto woman? " she asked, 
 
50 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 and the lawyer passed by the April calendar and 
 listened. 
 
 " I went to the Bitley Reformatory this morn- 
 ing to see her," St. George replied. "She gave 
 me this name and address. We have been 
 saying that some one ought to go there to learn 
 what is to be learned." 
 
 Mr. Frothingham in a silence of pursed lips 
 offered the paper. Miss Holland glanced at it 
 and returned it. 
 
 " Will you tell us what your interest is in this 
 woman? " she asked evenly. " Why you went 
 to see her? " 
 
 "Yes, Miss Holland," St. George replied, "you 
 know of course that the police have done their 
 best to run this matter down. You know it 
 because you have courteously given them every 
 assistance in your power. But the police have also 
 been very ably assisted by every newspaper in 
 town. I am fortunate to be acting in the interests 
 of one of these — the Sentinel. This clue was 
 put in my hands. I came to you confident of 
 your cooperation." 
 
 Mrs. Hastings threw up her hands with a gesture 
 that caught away the chain of her eye-glass and 
 sent it dangling in her lap, and her side-combs 
 tinkling to the tiled floor. 
 
 " Mercy! " she said, " a reporter! " 
 
 St. George bowed. 
 
 " But I never receive reporters! " she cried, 
 
ST. (GEORGE AND THE LADY 51 
 
 " Olivia — don't you know? A newspaper reporter 
 like that fearful man at Palm Beach, who put me 
 in the Courtney's ball list in a blue silk when I never 
 wear colours." 
 
 " Now really, really, this intrusion " began 
 
 Mr. Frothingham, his long, unclosed hands work- 
 ing forward on his knees in undulations, as a worm 
 travels. 
 
 Miss Holland turned to St. George, the colour 
 dyeing her face and throat, her manner a bewild- 
 ering mingling of graciousness and hauteur. 
 
 "My aunt is right," she said tranquilly, "we 
 never have received any newspaper representa- 
 tive. Therefore, we are unfortunate never to 
 have met one. You were saying that we should 
 send some one to McDougle Street? " 
 
 St. George was aware of his heart-beats. It was 
 all so unexpected and so dangerous, and she was 
 so perfectly equal to the circumstance. 
 
 " I was asking to be allowed to go myself, Miss 
 Holland," he said simply, "with whoever makes 
 the investigation." 
 
 Mrs. Hastings was looking mutely from one to 
 another, her forehead in horizons of wrinkles. 
 
 "I'm sure, Olivia, I think you ought to be 
 careful what you say," she plaintively began. 
 " Mr. Hastings never allowed his name to go in 
 any printed lists even, he was so particular. Our 
 telephone had a private number, and all the 
 papers had instructions never to mention him, 
 
52 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 even if he was murdered, unless he took down the 
 notice himself. Then if anything important did 
 happen, he often did take it down, nicely type- 
 written, and sometimes even then they didn't use 
 it, because they knew how very particular he was. 
 And of course we don't know how " 
 
 St. George's eyes blazed, but he did not lift 
 them. The affront was unstudied and, indeed, 
 unconscious. But Miss Holland understood how 
 grave it was, for there are women whose intuition 
 would tell them the etiquette due upon meeting 
 the First Syndic of Andorra or a noble from 
 Gambodia. 
 
 " We want the truth about this as much as Mr. 
 St. George does," she said quickly, smiling for the 
 first time. St. George liked her smile. It was 
 as if she were amused, not absent-minded nor yet 
 a prey to the feminine immorality of ingratiation. 
 " Besides," she continued, " I wish to know a 
 great many things. How did the mulatto woman 
 impress you, Mr. St. George? " 
 
 Miss Holland loosened her coat, revealing a little ' 
 flowery waist, and leaned forward with parted lips. 
 She was very beautiful, with the beauty of perfect, 
 blooming, colourful youth, without line or shadow. 
 She was in the very noon of youth, but her eyes 
 did not wander after the habit of youth ; they were 
 direct and steady and a bit critical, and she spoke 
 slowly and with graceful sanity in a voice that 
 was without nationality. She might have been 
 
ST. GEORGE AND THE LADY 63 
 
 the cultivated English-speaking daughter of 
 almost any land of high civilization, or she might 
 have been its princess. Her face showed her 
 imaginative ; her serene manner reassured one that 
 she had not, in consequence, to pay the usury of 
 lack of judgment; she seemed reflective, tender, 
 and of a fine independence, tempered, however, by 
 tradition and unerring taste. Above all, she 
 seemed alive, receptive, like a woman with ten 
 senses. And — above all again — she had charm. 
 Finally, St. George could talk with her; he 
 did not analyze why; 'he only knew that this 
 woman understood what he said in precisely the 
 way that he said it, which is, perhaps, the fifth 
 essence in nature. 
 
 "May I tell you?" asked St. George eagerly. 
 " She seemed to me a very wonderful woman. 
 Miss Holland; almost a woman of another world. 
 She is not mulatto — her features are quite classic; 
 and she is not a fanatic or a mad-woman. She is, 
 of her race, a strangely superior creature, and I 
 fancy, of high cultivation; and I am convinced 
 that at the foundation of her attempt to take your 
 Hfe there is some tremendous secret. I think we 
 must find out what that is, first, for your own 
 sake; next, because this is the sort of thing that 
 is worth while." 
 
 "Ah," cried Miss Holland, "delightful. I 
 begin to be glad that it happened. The police 
 said that she was a great brutal negress, and I 
 
54 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 thought she must be insane. The cloth-of-gold 
 and the jewels did make me wonder, but I hardly 
 believed that." 
 
 " The newspapers,^' Mr. Frothingham said 
 acidly, " became very much involved in their 
 statements concerning this matter." 
 
 " This ' Tabnit,' " said Miss Holland, and 
 flashed a smile of pretty deference at the lawyer to 
 console him for her total neglect of his comment, 
 " in McDougle Street. Who can he be? — he is a 
 man, I suppose. And where is McDougle Street?" 
 
 St. George explained the location, and Mrs. 
 Hastings fretfully commented. 
 
 "I'm sure, Olivia," she said, " I think it is 
 frightfully unwomanly in you " 
 
 " To take so much interest in my own murder? " 
 Miss Holland asked in amusement. " Aunt Dora, 
 I'm going to do more: I suggest that you and 
 Mr. Frothingham and I go with Mr. St. George to 
 this address in McDougle Street " 
 
 " My dear Olivia! " shrilled Mrs. Hastings, " it's 
 in the very heart of the Bowery — isn't it, Mr. 
 St. John? And only think " 
 
 It was as if Mrs. Hastings' frustrate words 
 emerged in the fantastic guise of her facial changes. 
 
 " No, it isn't quite the Bowery, Mrs. Hast- 
 ings," St. George explained, " though it won't look 
 unlike." 
 
 " I wish I knew what Mr. Hastings would have 
 done," his widow mourned, " he always said 
 
ST GEORGE AND THE LADY 55 
 
 to me: ' Medora, do only the necessary thing.' 
 Do you think this is the necessary thing — with all 
 the frightful smells?" 
 
 •' It is perfectly safe," ventured St. George, 
 " is it not, Mr. Frothingham? " 
 
 Mr. Frothingham bowed and tried to make non- 
 partisanship seem a tasteful resignation of his 
 own will. 
 
 " I am at Mrs. Hastings' command," he said, 
 waving both hands, once, from the wrist. 
 
 " You know the place is really only a few blocks 
 from Washington Square," St. George submitted. 
 
 Mrs. Hastings brightened. 
 
 " Well, I have some friends in Washington 
 Square," she said, " people whom I think a great 
 deal of, and always have. If you really feel, 
 Olivia " 
 
 "I do," said Miss Holland simply, " and 
 let us go now. Aunt Dora. The brougham has 
 been at the door since I came in. We may as 
 well drive there as anywhere, if Mr. St. George 
 is willing." 
 
 " I shall be happy," said St. George sedately, 
 longing to cry: "Willing! Willing! Oh, Mrs. 
 Hastings and Miss Holland — ■willing !" 
 
 Miss Holland and St. George and the lawyer 
 were alone for a few minutes while Mrs. Hastings 
 rustled away for her bonnet. Miss Holland sat 
 where the afternoon light, falling through the 
 comer window, smote her hair to a glory of pale 
 
56 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 colour, and St. George's eyes wandered to the glass 
 through which the sun fell. It was a thin pane 
 of irregular pieces set in a design of quaint, 
 meaningless characters, in the centre of which 
 was the figure of a sphinx, crucified upon an 
 upright cross and surrounded by a border of 
 coiled asps with winged heads. The window 
 glittered like a sheet of gems. 
 
 "What wonderful glass," involuntarily said 
 St. George. 
 
 "Is it not? " Miss Holland said enthusiastic- 
 ally. " My father sent it. He sent nearly all 
 these things from abroad." 
 
 " I wonder where such glass is made," observed 
 St. George; "it is like lace and precious stones — 
 hardly more painted than carved." 
 
 She bent upon him such a sudden, searching 
 look that St. George felt his eyes held by her own. 
 
 " Do you know anything of my father? " she 
 demanded suddenly. 
 
 " Only that Mrs. Hastings has just told me 
 that he is abroad — in the South Atlantic," 
 St. George wonderingly replied. 
 
 " Why, I am very foolish," said Miss Holland 
 quickly, " we have not heard from him in ten 
 months now, and I am frightfully worried. Ah 
 yes, the glass is beautiful. It was made in one 
 of the South Atlantic islands, I believe — so were 
 all these things," she added; "the same figure 
 of the crucified sphinx is on many of them." 
 
ST. GEORGE AND THE LADY 57 
 
 " Do you know what it means? " he asked. 
 
 "It is the symbol used by the people in one 
 of the islands, my father said," she answered. 
 
 " These symbols usually, I believe," volunteered 
 Mr. Frothingham, frowning at the glass, " have 
 little significance, standing merely for the loose 
 barbaric ideas of a loose barbaric nation." 
 
 St. George thought of the ladies of Doctor John- 
 son's Amicable Society who walked from the town 
 hall to the Cathedral in Lichfield, "in linen gowns, 
 and each has a stick with an acorn; but for the 
 acorn they could give no reason." 
 
 He looked long at the glass. 
 
 " She," he said finally, " our false mulatto, 
 ought to stand before just such glass." 
 
 Miss Holland laughed. She nodded her head 
 a little, once, every time she laughed, and St. 
 George was learning to watch for that. 
 
 " The glass would suit any style of beauty 
 better than steel bars," she said lightly as Mrs. 
 Hastings came fluttering back. Mrs. Hastings 
 fluttered ponderously, as humblebees fly. Indeed, 
 when one considered, there was really a " blunt- 
 faced bee " look about the woman. 
 
 The brougham had on the box two men in 
 smart livery; the footman, closing the door, 
 received St. George's reply to Mrs. Hastings' 
 appeal to " tell the man the nmnber of this 
 frightful place." 
 
 " I dare say I haven't been careful," Mrs. 
 
58 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Hastings kept anxiously observing, " I have been 
 heedless, I dare say. And I always think that 
 what one must avoid is heedlessness, don't you 
 think ? Didn't Napoleon say that if only 
 Caesar had been first in killing the men who 
 wanted to kill him — something about Pompey's 
 statue being kept clean. What was it — why 
 should they blame Caesar for the condition of 
 the public statues? " 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Hastings," Mr. Frothingham 
 reminded her, his long gloved hands laid trimly 
 along his knees as before, " you are in my care." 
 
 The statue problem faded from the lady's eyes. 
 
 " Poor, dear Mr. Hastings always said you 
 were so admirable at cross-questioning," she 
 recalled, partly reassured. 
 
 " Ah," cried Miss Holland protestingly, " Aunt 
 Dora, this is an adventure. We are going to see 
 'Tabnit.' " 
 
 St. George was silent, ecstatically reviewing the 
 events of the last six hours and thinking unen- 
 viously of Amory, rocking somewhere with The 
 Aloha on a mere stretch of green water. 
 
 " If Chillingworth could see me now," he 
 thought victoriously, as the carriage turned 
 smartly into McDougle Street. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PRINCE OF FAR-AWAY 
 
 No. 19 McDougle Street had been chosen as a 
 likely market by a " hokey-pokey " man, who 
 had wheeled his cart to the curb before the 
 entrance. There, despite Mrs. Hastings' coach- 
 man's peremptory appeal, he continued to dis- 
 pense stained ice-cream to the little denizens 
 of No. 19 and the other houses in the row. The 
 brougham, however, at once proved a coun- 
 ter-attraction and immediately an opposition 
 group formed about the carriage step and 
 exchanged penetrating comments upon the 
 livery. 
 
 " Mrs. Hastings, you and Miss Holland would 
 better sit here, perhaps," suggested St. George, 
 alighting hurriedly, " until I see if this man is to 
 be found." 
 
 " Please," said Miss Holland, " I've always 
 been longing to go into one of these houses, and 
 now I'm going. Aren't we. Aunt Dora?" 
 
 " If you think — " ventured Mr. Frothingham in 
 perplexity; but Mr. Frothingham's perplexity 
 
 59 
 
60 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 always impressed one as duty-born rather than 
 judicious, and Miss Holland had already 
 risen. 
 
 "Olivia!" protested Mrs. Hastings faintly, 
 accepting St. George's hand, " do look at those 
 children's aprons. I'm afraid we'll all contract 
 fever after fever, just coming this far." 
 
 Unkempt women were occupying the doorstep 
 of No. 19. St. George accosted them and asked 
 the way to the rooms of a Mr. Tabnit. They 
 smiled, displaying their wonderful teeth, con- 
 sulted together, and finally with many labials and 
 uncouth pointings of shapely hands they indi- 
 cated the door of the "first floor front," whose 
 wooden shutters were closely barred. St. George 
 led the way and entered the bare, unclean 
 passage where discordant voices and the odours 
 of cooking wrought together to poison the air. 
 He tapped smartly at the door. 
 
 Immediately it was opened by a graceful boy, 
 dressed in a long, belted coat of dun-colour. He 
 had straight black hair, and eyes which one saw 
 before one saw his face, and he gravely bowed 
 to each of the party in turn before answering 
 St. George's question. 
 
 " Assuredly," said the youth in perfect Eng- 
 lish, " enter." 
 
 They found themselves in an ample room 
 extending the full depth of the house; and 
 partly because the light was dim and partly in 
 
 I 
 
THE PRINCE OF FAR-AWAY 61 
 
 sheer amazement they involmitarily paused as the 
 door clicked behmd them. The room's contrast 
 to the squalid neighbourhood was complete. 
 The apartment was carpeted in soft rugs laid 
 one upon another so that footfalls were silenced. 
 The walls and ceiling were smoothly covered with 
 a neutral-tinted silk, patterned in dim figures; 
 and from a fluted pillar of exceeding lightness an 
 enormous candelabrum shed clear radiance upon 
 the objects in the room. The couches and divans 
 were woven of some light reed, made with high 
 fantastic backs, in perfect purity of line however, 
 and laid with white mattresses. A little reed 
 table showed slender pipes above its surface and 
 these, at a touch from the boy, sent to a great 
 height tiny columns of water that tinkled back to 
 the square of metal upon which the table was set. 
 A huge fan of blanched grasses automatically 
 swayed from above. On a side-table were decan- 
 ters and cups and platters of a material frail and 
 transparent. Before the shuttered window stood 
 an observable plant with coloured leaves. On a 
 great table in the room's centre were scattered 
 objects which confused the eye. A light curtain 
 stirring in the fan's faint breeze hung at the far 
 end of the room. 
 
 In a career which had held many surprises, 
 some of which St. George would never be at 
 liberty to reveal to the paper in whose service 
 he had come upon them, this was one of the most 
 
62 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 alluring. The mere existence of this strange and 
 luxurious habitation in the heart of such a 
 neighbourhood would, past expression, delight Mr. 
 Crass, the feature man, and no doubt move even 
 Chillingworth to approval. Chilling worth and 
 Crass ! Already they seemed strangers. St. George 
 glanced at Miss Holland; she was looking from 
 side to side, like a bird alighted among strange 
 flowers; she met his eyes and dimpled in frank 
 delight. Mrs. Hastings sat erectly beside her, 
 her tortoise-rimmed glasses expressing bland 
 approval. The improbability of her surroundings 
 had quite escaped her in her satisfied discovery 
 that the place was habitable. The lawyer, his 
 thin lips parted, his head thrown back so that 
 his hair rested upon his coat collar, remained 
 standing, one long hand upon a coat lapel. 
 
 " Ah," said Miss Holland softly, " it is an 
 adventure, Aunt Dora." 
 
 St. George liked that. It irritated him, he had 
 once admitted, to see a woman live as if living 
 were a matter of life and death. He wished her 
 to be alive to everything, but without suspiciously 
 scrutinizing details, like a census-taker. To appre- 
 ciate did not seem to him properly to mean to 
 assess. Miss Holland, he would have said, 
 seemed to live by the beats of her heart and not 
 by the waves of her hair — but another proof, 
 perhaps, of "if thou likest her opinions thou wilt 
 praise her virtues." 
 
THE PRINCE OF FAR-AWAY 63 
 
 It was but a moment before the curtain was 
 lifted, and there approached a youth, appar- 
 ently in the twenties, slender and delicately 
 formed as a woman, his dark face surmounted 
 by a great deal of snow-white hair. He was wear- 
 ing garments of grey, cut in unusual and graceful 
 lines, and his throat was closely wound in folds 
 of soft white, fastened by a rectangular green 
 jewel of notable size and brilliance. His eyes, 
 large and of exceeding beauty and gentleness, 
 were fixed upon St. George. 
 
 " Sir," said St. George, " we have been given 
 this address as one where we may be assisted in 
 some inquiries of the utmost importance. The 
 name which we have is simply ' Tabnit.' Have I 
 the honour — " 
 
 Their host bowed. 
 
 " I am Prince Tabnit," he said quietly. 
 
 St. George, filled with fresh amazement, gravely 
 named himself and, making presentation of the 
 others, purposely omitted the name of Miss 
 Holland. However, hardly had he finished before 
 their host bowed before Miss Holland herself. 
 
 " And you," he said, " you to whom I owe an 
 expiation which I can never make, — do you know 
 it is my servant who would have taken your life? " 
 
 In the brief interval following this naive asser- 
 tion, his guests were not unnaturally speechless. 
 Miss Holland, bending slightly forward, looked at 
 tlie prince breathlessly. 
 
64 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " I have suffered," he went on, " I have suffered 
 indescribably since that terrible morning when I 
 missed her and understood her mission. I fol- 
 lowed quickly — I was without when you entered, 
 but I came too late. Since then I have waited, 
 unwilling to go to you, certain that the gods 
 would permit the possible. And now — ^what shall 
 I say? " 
 
 He hesitated, his eyes meeting Miss Holland's. 
 And in that moment Mrs. Hastings found her 
 voice. She curved the chain of her eye-glasses 
 over her ear, threw back her head until the 
 tortoise-rims included her host, and spoke her 
 mind. 
 
 " Well, Prince Tabnit," she said sharply — 
 quite as if, St. George thought, she had been 
 nursery governess to princes all her life — ** I 
 must say that I think your regret comes some- 
 what late in the day. It's all very well to suffer 
 as you say over what your servant has tried to 
 do. But what kind of man must you be to 
 have such a servant, in the first place? Didn't 
 you know that she was dangerous and blood- 
 thirsty, and very likely a maniac-born? " 
 
 Her voice, never modulated in her excitements, 
 was so full that no one heard at that instant a 
 quick, indrawn breath from St. George, having 
 something of triumph and something of terror. 
 Even as he listened he had been running swiftly 
 over the objects in the room to fasten every one 
 
THE PRINCE OF FAR-AWAY 65 
 
 in his memory, and his eyes had rested upon the 
 table at his side. A disc of bronze, supported 
 upon a carven tripod, caught the light and 
 challenged attention to its delicate traceries; and 
 within its border of asps and goat's horns he saw 
 cut in the dull metal a sphinx crucified upon an 
 upright cross — an exact facsimile of the device 
 upon that strange opalized glass from some 
 far-away island which he had lately noted in 
 the window in Mrs. Hastings' drawing-room. 
 Instantly his mind was besieged by a volley of 
 suppositions and imaginings, but even in his 
 intense excitement as to what this simple dis- 
 covery might bode, he heard the prince's soft 
 reply to Mrs. Hastings: 
 
 " Madame," said the prince, " she is a loyal 
 creature. Wliatever she does, she believes herself 
 to be doing in my service. I trusted her. I 
 believed that such error was impossible to her." 
 
 " Error! " shrilled Mrs. Hastings, looking about 
 her for support and finding little in the aspect of 
 Mr. Augustus Frothingham, who appeared to be 
 regarding the whole proceeding as one from v/hich 
 he was to extract data to be thought out at some 
 future infinitely removed. 
 
 As for St. George, he had never had great 
 traffic with a future infinitely removed; he 
 had a youthful and somewhat imaginative fash- 
 ion of striking before the iron was well in the 
 fire. 
 
66 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 "Your servant believed, then, your Highness," 
 he said clearly, "that in taking Miss Holland's 
 life she was serving you? " 
 
 " I must regretfully conclude so." 
 
 St. George rose, holding the little brazen disc 
 which he had taken from the table, and confronted 
 his host, compelling his eyes. 
 
 " Perhaps you will tell us, Prince Tabnit," he 
 said coolly, " what it is that the people who use 
 this device find against Miss Holland's father? " 
 
 St. George heard Olivia's little broken cry. 
 
 " It is the same! " she exclaimed. "Aunt Dora 
 — Mr. Frothingham — it is the crucified sphinx 
 that was on so many of the things that father 
 sent. Oh," she cried to the prince, " can it be 
 possible that you know him — that you know 
 anything of my father? " 
 
 To St. George's amazement the face of the prince 
 softened and glowed as if with peculiar delight, 
 and he looked at St. George with admiration. 
 
 " Is it possible," he murmured, half to himself, 
 " that your race has already developed intuition? 
 Are you indeed so near to the Unknown? " 
 
 He took quick steps away and back, and 
 turned again to St. George, a strange joy dawn- 
 ing in his face. 
 
 " If there be some who are ready to know! " 
 he said. "Ah," he recalled himself penitently 
 to Miss Holland, " your father — Otho Holland 
 I have seen him many times." 
 
THE PRINCE OF FAR-AWAY 67 
 
 " Seen Otho! " shrilled Mrs. Hastings, as pink 
 and trembling and expressionless as a disturbed 
 mold of jelly. " Oh, poor, dear Otho! Did he 
 live where there are people like your frightful 
 servant? Olivia, think! Maybe he is lying at 
 the bottom of a gorge, all wounded and bloody, 
 with a dagger in his back! Oh, my poor, dear 
 Otho, who used to wheel me about! " 
 
 Mrs. Hastings collapsed softly on the divan, her 
 glasses fallen in her lap, her side-combs slipping 
 silently to the rug. Olivia had risen and was 
 standing before Prince Tabnit. 
 
 "Tell me," she said trembling, "when have 
 you seen him? Is he well? " 
 
 Prince Tabnit swept the faces of the others and 
 his eyes returned to Miss Holland and dropped 
 to the floor. 
 
 " The last time that I saw him. Miss Holland," 
 he answered, " was three months ago. He was 
 then alive and well." 
 
 Something in his tone chilled St. George and 
 sent a sudden thrill of fear to his heart. 
 
 " He was then alive and well? " St. George 
 repeated slowly. "Will you tell us more, 
 your Highness? Will you tell us why the death 
 of his daughter should be considered a service 
 to the prince of a cotmtry which he had 
 visited?" 
 
 " You are very wonderful," observ^ed the prince, 
 smiling meditatively at St. George, " and your 
 
68 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 penetration gives me good news — ^news that I 
 had not hoped for, yet. I can not tell you all 
 that you ask, but I can tell you much. Will you 
 sit down? " 
 
 He turned and glanced at the curtain at the 
 far end of the room. Instantly the boy servant 
 appeared, bearing a tray on which were placed, in 
 dishes of delicate-coloured filigree, strange dainties 
 not to be classified even by a cosmopolitan, with 
 his Flemish and Finnish and all but Icelandic 
 cafes in every block. 
 
 " Pray do me the honour," the prince besought, 
 taking the dishes from the hands of the boy. 
 " It gives me pleasure, Miss Holland, to tell you 
 that your father has no doubt had these very 
 plates set before him." 
 
 Upon a little table he deftly arranged the 
 dishes with all the smiling ease of one to whom 
 afternoon tea is the only business toward, and 
 to whom an attempted murder is wholly alien. 
 He impressed St. George vaguely as one who 
 seemed to have risen from the dead of the crudities 
 of mere events and to be living in a rarer atmos- 
 phere. The lawyer's face was a study. Mr. 
 Augustus Frothingham never went to the theatre 
 because he did not believe that a man of affairs 
 should unduly stimulate the imagination. 
 
 There was set before them honey made by bees 
 fed only upon a tropical flower of rare fragrance; 
 cakes flavoured with wine that had been long 
 
THE PRINCE OF FAR-AWAY 69 
 
 buried; a paste of cream, thick with rich nuts and 
 with the preserved buds of certain flowers; and 
 little white berries, such as the Japanese call 
 "pinedews"; there was a tea distilled from the 
 roots of rare exotics, and other things savoury 
 and fantastic. So potent was the spell of the 
 prince's hospitality, and so gracious the insist- 
 ence with which he set before them the strange 
 and odourous dishes, that even Olivia, eager 
 almost to tears for news of her father, and 
 Mrs. Hastings, as critical and suspicious as some 
 beetle with long antennae, might not refuse them. 
 As for Mr. Augustus Frothingham, although this 
 might be Cagliostro's spagiric food, or " extract 
 of Saturn," for aught that his previous experience 
 equipped him to deny, yet he nibbled, and gazed, 
 and was constrained to nibble again. 
 
 When they had been served, Prince Tabnit 
 abruptly began speaking, the while turning the 
 fine stem of his glass in his delicate fingers. 
 
 " You do not know," he said simply, " where 
 the island of Yaque lies? " 
 
 Mrs. Hastings sat erect. 
 
 "Yaque ! " she exclaimed. "That was the name 
 of the place where your father was, Olivia. I 
 know I remembered it because it wasn't like the 
 man What's-his-name in As You Like It, and 
 because it didn't begin with a J." 
 
 " The island is my home," Prince Tabnit con- 
 tinued, " and now, for the first time, I find myself 
 
70 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 absent from it. I have come a long journey. 
 It is many miles to that little land in the eastern 
 seas, that exquisite bit of the world, as yet 
 unknown to any save the island-men. We have 
 guarded its existence, but I have no fear to tell 
 you, for no mariner, unaided by an islander, 
 could steer a course to its coasts. And I can tell 
 you little about the island for reasons which, if 
 you will forgive me, you would hardly under- 
 stand. I must tell you something of it, however, 
 that you may know the remarkable conditions 
 which led to the introduction of Mr. Holland to 
 Yaque. 
 
 " The island of Yaque," continued the prince, 
 " or Arqua, as the name was written by the 
 ancient Phoenicians, has been ruled by hereditary 
 monarchs since 1050 B. C, when it was settled." 
 
 " What date did I understand you to say, sir?" 
 demanded Mr. Augustus Frothingham. 
 
 The prince smiled faintl}^ 
 
 " I am well aware," he said, " that to the 
 western mind — indeed, to any modem mind save 
 our own — I shall seem to be speaking in mockery. 
 None the less, what I am saying is exact. It is 
 believed that the enterprises of the Phoenicians 
 in the early ages took them but a short distance, 
 if at all, beyond the confines of the Mediterranean. 
 It is merely known that, in the period of v/Lich I 
 speak, a more adventurous spirit began to be 
 manifested, and the Straits of Gibraltar were 
 
THE PRINCE OF FAR-AWAY 71 
 
 passed and settlements were made in Iberia. 
 But how far these adventurers actually penetrated 
 has been recorded only in those documents that 
 are in the hands of my people — descendants 
 of the boldest of these mariners who pushed 
 their galleys out into the Atlantic. At this time 
 the king of Tyre was Abibaal, soon to be suc- 
 ceeded by his son Hiram, the friend, you will 
 remember, of King David, " 
 
 Mr. Frothingham, who did not go to the 
 theatre for fear of exciting his imagination, 
 uttered the soft non-explosion which should have 
 been speech. 
 
 " King Abibaal," continued the prince, " who 
 maintained his court in great pomp, had a 
 younger and favourite son who bore his own name. 
 He was a wild youth of great daring, and upon the 
 accession of Hiram to the throne he left Tyre 
 and took command of a galley of adventuresome 
 spirits, who were among the first to pass the straits 
 and gain the open sea. The story of their wild 
 voyage I need not detail; it is enough to say that 
 their trireme was wrecked upon the coast of 
 Yaque; and Abibaal and those who joined him — 
 among them many members of the court circle 
 and even of the royal famil} — settled and devel- 
 oped the island. And there the race has 
 remained without taint of admixture, down to 
 the present day. Of what was wrought on the 
 island I can tell you little, though the time will 
 
72 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 come when the eyes of the whole world will be 
 turned upon Yaque as the forerunner of mighty 
 things. Ruled over by the descendants of Abibaal, 
 the islanders have dwelt in peace and plenty for 
 nearly three thousand years — until, in fact, 
 less than a year ago. Then the line thus 
 traceable to King Hiram himself abruptly ter- 
 minated with the death of King Chelbes, without 
 issue." 
 
 Again Mr. Frothingham attempted to speak, 
 and again he collapsed softly, without expression, 
 according to his custom. As for St. George, he 
 was remembering how, when he first went to the 
 paper, he had invariably been sent to the ante- 
 room to listen to the daily tales of invention, 
 oppression and projects for which a continual 
 procession of the more or less mentally deficient 
 wished the Sentinel to stand sponsor, St. George 
 remembered in particular one young student who 
 soberly claimed to have invented wireless teleg- 
 raphy and who molested the staff for months. 
 Was this olive prince, he wondered, going to 
 prove himself worth only a half -column on a back 
 page, after all? 
 
 " I understand you to say," said St. George, 
 with the weary self-restraint of one who deals 
 with lunatics, " that the line of King Hiram, the 
 friend of King David of Israel, became extinct 
 less than a year ago? " 
 
 The prince smiled. 
 
THE PRINCE OF FAR-AWAY 73 
 
 " Do not conceal your incredulity," he said 
 liberally, " for I forgive it. You see, then," he 
 went on serenely, " how in Yaque the question of 
 the succession became engrossing. The matter 
 was not merely one of ascendancy, for the 
 Yaquians are singularly free from ambition. But 
 their pride in their island is boundless. They see in 
 her the advance guard of civilization, the peculiar 
 people to whom have come to be intrusted many 
 of the secrets of being. For I should tell you that 
 my people live a life that is utterly beyond the 
 ken of all, save a few rare minds in each generation. 
 My people live what others dream about, what 
 scientists struggle to fathom, what the keenest 
 philosophers and economists among you can not 
 formulate. We are," said Prince Tabnit serenely, 
 " what the world will be a thousand years from 
 now." 
 
 " Well, I'm sure," Mrs. Hastings broke in 
 plaintively, " that I hope your servant, for 
 instance, is not a sample of what the world is 
 coming to! " 
 
 The prince smiled indulgently, as if a child had 
 laid a little, detaining hand upon his sleeve. 
 
 *' Be that as it may," he said evenly, " the 
 throne of Yaque was still empty. Many stood 
 near to the crown, but there seemed no reason for 
 choosing one more than another. One party 
 wished to name the head of the House of the Lit- 
 any, in Med, the King's city, who was the chief 
 
74 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 administrator of justice. Another, more demo- 
 cratic than these, wished to elevate to the throne 
 a man from whose family we had won knowledge 
 of both perpetual motion and the Fourth 
 Dimension ' ' 
 
 St. George smiled angelically, as one who 
 resignedly sees the last fragments of a shining 
 hope float away. This quite settled it. The 
 olive prince was crazy. Did not St. George 
 remember the old man in the frayed neckerchief 
 and bagging pockets who had brought to the 
 office of the Sentinel chart after chart about 
 perpetual motion, until St, George and Amory 
 had one day told him gravely that they had a 
 machine inside the office then that could make 
 more things go for ever than he had ever dreamed 
 of, though they had not said that the machine 
 was named Chillingworth. 
 
 " You have knowledge of both these things? '* 
 asked St. George indulgently. 
 
 " Yaque understood both those laws," said the 
 prince quietly, "when William the Conqueror 
 came to England." 
 
 He hesitated for a moment and then, regardless 
 of another soft explosion from Mr. Frothingham's 
 lips, he added: 
 
 " Do you not see? Will you not understand? It 
 is our knowledge of the Fourth Dimension which 
 has enabled us to keep our island a secret." 
 
 St. George suddenly thrilled from head to foot. 
 
THE PRINCE OF FAR-AWAY 75 
 
 What if he were speaking the truth? What if 
 this man were speaking the truth? 
 
 " Moreover," resumed the prince, " there were 
 those among us who had long believed that new 
 strength would come to my people by the intro- 
 duction of an inhabitant of one of the continents. 
 His coming would, however, necessitate his 
 sovereignty among us, in fulfilment of an 
 ancient Phoenician law, providing that the state, 
 and every satrapy therein, shall receive no service, 
 either of blood or of bond, nor enter into the 
 marriage contract with an alien; from which 
 law only the royal house is exempt. Thus were 
 the two needs of our land to be served by the 
 means to which we had recourse. F" ' there being 
 no way to settle the difficulty, we \-owed to leave 
 the matter to Chance, that great patient arbiter 
 of destinies of which your civilization takes no 
 account, save to reduce it to slavery. Accord- 
 ingly each inhabitant of the island took a solemn 
 oath to await, with an open mind free from choice 
 or prejudice, the settlement of the event, certain 
 that the gods would permit the possible. Five 
 days after this decision our watchers upon the 
 hills sighted a South African transport bound for 
 the Azores to coal. A hundred miles from our 
 coast she was wrecked, and it was thought that 
 all on board had been lost. A submarine was 
 ordered to the spot " 
 
 " Do you mean," interrupted St. George, 
 
76 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " that you were able to see the wreck at th.at 
 distance? " 
 
 " Certainly," said the prince. '* Pray forgive 
 me," he added winningly, " if I seem to boast. 
 It is difficult for me to believe that yoiu* appliances 
 are so immature. We were using steamship 
 navigation and limiting our vision at the time of 
 Pericles, but the futility of these was among our 
 first discoveries." 
 
 Involuntarily St. George turned to Miss Holland. 
 What would she think, he found himself wonder- 
 ing. Her eyes were luminous and her breath was 
 coming quickly; he was relieved to find that she 
 had not the infectious vulgarity to doubt the 
 possibility of what seemed impossible. This was 
 one of the qualities of Mr. Augustus Frothingham, 
 who had assumed an air of polite interest and an 
 accurately cynical smile, and the manner of 
 generously lending his professional attention to 
 any of the vagaries of the client. Mrs. Hastings 
 stirred uneasily. 
 
 "I'm sure," she said fretfully, " that I must be 
 very stupid, but I simply can not follow you. 
 Why, you talk about things that don't exist! 
 My husband, who was a very practical and 
 advanced man, would have shown you at once 
 that what you say is impossible." 
 
 Here was the attitude of the Common- 
 place the world over, thought St. George: to 
 believe in wireless telegraphy simply because it 
 
THE PRINCE OF FAR-AWAY 77 
 
 has been found out, and to disbelieve in the 
 Fourth Dimension because it has not been. 
 
 " I can not explain these things," admitted the 
 prince gravely, " and I dare say that you could 
 prove that they do not exist, just as a man from 
 another planet could show us to his own satisfac- 
 tion that there are no such things as music or 
 colour/' 
 
 " Go on, please," said Olivia eagerly. 
 
 ** Olivia, I'm sure," protested Mrs. Hastings, 
 '* I think it's very unwomanly of you to show 
 such an interest in these things." 
 
 " Will you bear with me for one moment, 
 Mrs. Hastings? " begged the prince, ** and perhaps 
 I shall be able to interest you. The submarine 
 returned, bringing the sole survivor of the wreck 
 of the African transport." 
 
 " Ah, now," Mrs. Hastings assured him blandlv, 
 " you are dealing with things that can happen. 
 My brother Otho, my niece's father, was just this 
 last year the sole survivor of the wreck of a very 
 important vessel." 
 
 " I have the honour, Mrs. Hastings, to be 
 narrating to you the circumstances attending the 
 discovery of your brother and Miss Holland's 
 father, after the wreck of that vessel." 
 
 " My father? " cried Olivia. 
 
 The prince bowed. 
 
 " After this manner. Chance had rewarded 
 us. We crowned your father King of Yaque." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 OLIVIA PROPOSES 
 
 Prince Tabnit's announcement was received 
 by his guests in the silence of amazement. If 
 they had been told that Miss Holland's father 
 was secretly acting as King of England they 
 could have been no more profoundly startled 
 than to hear stated soberly that he had been for 
 nearly a year the king of a cannibal island. For 
 the cannibal phase of his experience seemed a 
 foregone conclusion. To St. George, profoundly 
 startled and most incredulous, the possible humour 
 of the situation made first appeal. The picture 
 of an American gentleman seated upon a 
 gold throne in a leopard-skin coat, ordering 
 " oysters and foes " for breakfast, was irre- 
 sistible. 
 
 " But he shaved with a shell when he chose, 
 'Twas the manner of Primitive Man " 
 
 floated through his mind, and he brought himself 
 up sharply. Clearly, somebody was out of his 
 head, but it must not be he. 
 
 78 
 
OLIVIA PROPOSES 79 
 
 " What? " cried Mrs. Hastings in two inelegant 
 syllables, on the second of which her uncon- 
 trollable voice rose, "My brother Otho, a vestry- 
 man at St. Mark's " 
 
 " Aunt Dora! " pleaded Olivia. " Tell us," she 
 besought the prince. 
 
 " King Otho I of Yaque," the prince was begin- 
 ing, but the title was not to be calmly received by 
 Mrs. Hastings. 
 
 " King Otho \" she articulated. " Then— am 
 I royalty? " 
 
 "All who may possibly succeed to the throne 
 Blackstone holds to be royalty," said the lawyer 
 in an edictal voice, and St. George looked away 
 from Olivia. 
 
 The Princess Olivia I 
 
 " King Otho," continued the prince, " ruled 
 wisely and well for seven months, and it was at 
 the beginning of that time that the imperial 
 submarine was sent to the Azores with letters 
 and a packet to you. The enterprise, however, 
 was attended by so great danger of discovery that 
 it was never repeated. This is why, for so long, 
 you have had no word from the king. And now 
 I come," said the prince with hesitation, " to the 
 difficult part of my narrr.tive." 
 
 He paused and Mr. Frothingham rushed to his 
 assistance. 
 
 " As the family solicitor," said the lawyer, 
 pursing his lips, and waving his hands, once, from 
 
80 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 the wrists, " would you not better divulge to 
 my ear alone, the — a ** 
 
 "No— no!" flashed Olivia. "No, Mr. Froth, 
 ingham — please. ' ' 
 
 The prince inclined his head. 
 
 " Will it surprise you, Miss Holland," he said, 
 *' to learn that I made my voyage to this country 
 expressly to seek you out? " 
 
 " To seek me? " exclaimed Olivia. " But — ^has 
 anything happened to my father? " 
 
 " We hope not," replied the prince, " but what 
 I have to tell will none the less occasion you 
 anxiety. Briefly, Miss Holland, it is more than 
 three months since your father suddenly and 
 mysteriously disappeared from Yaque, leaving 
 absolutely no clue to his whereabouts." 
 
 A little cry broke from Olivia's lips that went to 
 St. George's heart. Mrs. Hastings, with a gesture 
 that was quite wild and sent her bonnet hope- 
 lessly to one side, burst into a volley of exclama- 
 tions and demands. 
 
 "Who did it?" she wailed. "Who did it? 
 Otho is a gentleman. He would never have the 
 bad taste to disappear, like all those dreadful 
 people's wives, if somebody hadn't " 
 
 " My dear Madame," interposed Mr. Frothing- 
 ham, " calm — calm yourself. There are families 
 of undisputed position which record disappear- 
 ances in several generations." 
 
 " Please," pleaded Olivia. "Ah, tell us," she 
 begged the prince again. 
 
OLIVIA PROPOSES 81 
 
 "There is, unfortunately, but little to tell, 
 Miss Holland," said the prince with sympathetic 
 regret. " I had the honour, three months ago, to 
 entertain the king, your father, at dinner. We 
 parted at midnight. His Majesty seemed " 
 
 " His Majesty! " repeated Mrs. Hastings, smil- 
 ing up at the opposite wall as if her thought 
 saw glories. 
 
 in the best of health and spirits," con- 
 tinued the prince. "A meeting of the High 
 Council was to be held at noon on the following 
 day. The king did not appear. From that 
 moment no eye in Yaque has fallen upon him." 
 
 " One moment, your Highness," said St. George 
 quickly; "in the absence of the king, who pre- 
 sides over the High Council? " 
 
 " As the head of the House of the Litany, the 
 chief administrator of justice, it is I," said the 
 prince with humility. 
 
 " Ah, yes," St. George said evenly. 
 ^^ " But what have you done? " cried Olivia. 
 
 " Have you had search made? Have you " 
 
 "Everything," the prince assured her. "The 
 island is not large. Not a corner of it remams 
 unvisited. The people, who were devoted to the 
 kmg, your father, have sought night and day. 
 There is, it is hardly right to conceal from you," 
 the prince hesitated, "a circumstance whidi 
 makes the disappearance the more alarming." 
 
 " Tell us. Keep nothing from us, I beg, Prince 
 Tabnit." besought Olivia. 
 
82 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " For centr.ries," said the prince slowly, " there 
 has been in the keeping of the High Council of 
 the island a casket, containing what is known as 
 the Hereditary Treasure. This casket, with some 
 of the finest of its jewels, was left by King Abibaal 
 himself. Since his time every king of the island 
 has upon his death bequeathed to the casket 
 the finest jewel in his possession; and its contents 
 are now therefore of inestimable value. The cir- 
 cumstance to which I refer is that two days after 
 the disappearance of the king, your father, which 
 spread grief and alarm through all Yaque, it was 
 discovered that the Hereditary Treasure was 
 gone." 
 
 " Ck)ne! " burst from the lips of the prince's 
 auditors. 
 
 "As utterly as if the Fifth Dimension had 
 received it," the prince gravely assured them. 
 " The loss, as you may imagine, is a grievous one. 
 The High Council immediately issued a procla- 
 mation that if the treasure be not restored by a 
 certain date — now barely two weeks away — a 
 heavy tax will be levied upon the people to make 
 good, in the coin of the realm, this incalculable 
 loss. Against this the people, though they are 
 a people of peace, are murmurous." 
 
 "Indeed!" cried Mrs. Hastings. "Great loy- 
 alty it is that sets up the loss of their trumpery 
 treasure over and above the loss of their king, my 
 brother Otho! If," she shrilled indignantly, 
 
OLIVIA PROPOSES 83 
 
 ' ' we are not unwise to listen to this at all. What 
 is it you think? What is it your people think?" 
 
 She raised her head until she had framed the 
 prince in tortoise-shell. Mrs. Hastings never held 
 her head quite still. It continually waved about 
 a little, so that usually, even in peace, it intimated 
 indignation; and when actual indignation set in, 
 the jet on her bonnet tinkled and ticked like so 
 many angry sparrows. 
 
 " Madame," said the prince, " there are those 
 among his Majesty's subjects who would willingly 
 lay down their lives for him. But he is a stranger 
 to us — come of an alien race ; and the double dis- 
 appearance is a most tragic occurrence, which the 
 burden of the tax has emphasized. To be frank, 
 were his Majesty to reappear in Yaque without 
 the treasure having been found " 
 
 " Oh! " breathed Mrs. Hastings, "they would 
 kill him!" 
 
 The prince shuddered and set his white teeth 
 in his nether lip, 
 
 "The gods forbid," he said. "Such primeval 
 punishment is as unknown among us as is war 
 itself. How little you know my people; how 
 pitifully your instincts have become — forgive 
 me — corrupted by living in this barbarous age of 
 yours, fumbling as you do at civilization. W^ith 
 us death is a sacred rite, the highest tribute and 
 the last sacrifice to the Absolute. Our dying are 
 carried to the Temple of the Worshipers of Dis- 
 
84 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 tance, and are there consecrated. The limit of 
 our punishment would be aerial exposure " 
 
 " You mean?" cried St. George. 
 
 " I mean that in extreme cases we have, with 
 due rite and ceremonial, given a victim to an air- 
 ship, without ballast or rudder, and abundantly 
 provisioned. Then with solemn ritual we have 
 set him adrift — an offering to the great spirits of 
 space — so that he may come to know. This," 
 the prince paused in emotion, " this is the worst 
 that could befall your father." 
 
 " How horrible! " cried Olivia. " Oh, how 
 horrible." 
 
 " Oh," Mrs. Hastings moaned, " he was born 
 to it. He was bom to it. When he was six he 
 tied kites to his arms and jumped out the window 
 of the cupola and broke his collar bone — oh, 
 Otho, — oh Heaven, — and I made him eat oatmeal 
 gruel three times a day when he was getting well. ' ' 
 
 " Prince Tabnit," said St. George, " I beg you 
 not to jest with us. Have consideration for the 
 two to whom this man is dear." 
 
 " I am speaking truth to you," said the prince 
 earnestly. " I do not wish to alarm these ladies, 
 but I am bound in honour to tell you what I 
 know." 
 
 " Ah then," said St. George, his narrowed eyes 
 meeting those of the prince, " since the taking 
 of life is imknown to you in Yaque, will you 
 explain how it was that your servant adopted 
 
OLIVIA PROPOSES 85 
 
 such unerring means to take the life of Miss 
 Holland? And why?" 
 
 ** My servant," said the prince readily, " belongs 
 to the lahnas or former serfs of the island. Upon 
 her people, now the owners of rich lands, the tax 
 will fall heavily. Crazed by what she considers 
 her people's wrongs following upon the coming of 
 the stranger sovereign, the poor creature must 
 have developed the primitive instincts of your 
 race. Before coming to this country my servant 
 had never heard of murder save as a superseded 
 custom of antiquity, like the crucifying of lions. 
 Her discovery of your daily practice of murder, 
 and of murder practised as a cure for crime " 
 
 " Sir,** began the lawyer imposingly. 
 
 '* wakened in her the primitive instincts of 
 
 humanity, and her instinct took the deplorable 
 and fanatic form of your own courts," finished 
 the prince. " Her bitterness toward his Majesty 
 she sought to visit upon his daughter." 
 
 Olivia sprang to her feet. 
 
 " I must go to my father. I must go to Yaque," 
 she cried ringingly. " Prince Tabnit, will you take 
 me to him? " 
 
 Into the prince's face leaped a fire of admiration 
 for her beauty and her daring. He bowed 
 before her, his lowered lashes making thick 
 shadows on his dark cheeks. 
 
 *' I insist upon this," cried little Olivia firmly, 
 and if you do not permit it, Prince Tabnit, we 
 
86 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 must publish what you have told us from one end 
 of the city to the other." 
 
 "Yes, by Jove," thought St. George, "and 
 one's country will have a Yaque exhibit in its 
 own department at the next world's fair." 
 
 "Olivia ! My child ! Miss Holland , ' ' began 
 
 the lawyer. 
 
 The prince spoke tranquilly. 
 
 "It is precisely this errand," he said, " that 
 has brought me to America. Do you not see 
 that, in the event of your father's failure to 
 return to his people, you will eventually be Queen 
 of Yaque?" 
 
 St. George found himself looking fixedly at Mrs. 
 Hastings' false front as the only reality in the 
 room. If in a minute Rollo was going to waken 
 him by bringing in his coffee, he was going to 
 throttle Rollo — ^that was all. Olivia Holland, an 
 American heiress, the hereditary princess of a 
 cannibal island! St. George still insisted upon 
 the cannibal; it somehow gave him a foothold 
 among the actualities. 
 
 "I!" cried Olivia. 
 
 Mrs. Hastings, brows lifted, lips parted, winked 
 with lightning rapidity in an effort to understand. 
 
 St. George pulled himself together. 
 
 "Your Highness," he said sternly, "there are 
 several things upon which I must ask you to 
 enlighten us. And the first, which I hope you 
 will forgive, is whether you have any direct proof 
 
OLIVIA PROPOSES 87 
 
 that what you tell us of Miss Holland's father is 
 true." 
 
 _" That's it! That's it!" Mr. Frothingham 
 joined him with all the importance of having made 
 the suggestion. " We can hardly proceed m due 
 order without proofs, sir." 
 
 The prince turned toward the curtain at the 
 room's end and the youth appeared once more, 
 this time bearing a light oval casket of delicate " 
 workmanship. It was of a substance resemb- 
 ling both glass and metal of changing, rainbow 
 tints, and it passed through St. George's mind as 
 he observed it that there must be, to give such 
 a dazzling and unreal effect, more than seven 
 colours in the spectrum. 
 
 "A spectrum of seven colours," said the prince 
 at the same moment, "could not, of course, produce 
 this surface. I confess that until I came to 
 this country I did not know that you had so few 
 colours. Our spectrum already consists of twelve 
 colours visible to the naked eye, and at least five 
 more are distinguishable through our powerful 
 magnifying glasses." 
 
 St. George was silent. It was as if he had sud- 
 denly been permitted to look past the door that 
 bars and threatens all knowledge. 
 ^ The prince unlocked the casket. He drew out 
 first a quantity of paper of extreme thinness and 
 lightness on which, embossed and em.blazoned, 
 was the coat of arms of the Hollands— a sheaf 
 
88 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 of wheat and an ilnicom's head — and this was 
 surmounted by a crown. 
 
 " This," said the prince, " is now the device 
 upon the signet ring of the King of Yaque, the 
 arms of your own family. And here chances to 
 be a letter from your father containing some 
 instructions to me. It is true that writing has 
 with us been superseded by wireless commimi- 
 cation, excepting where there is need of great 
 secrecy. Then we employ the alphabet of any 
 language we choose, these being almost disused, 
 as are the Cuneiform and Coptic to you." 
 
 " And how is it," St. George could not resist 
 asking, " that you know and speak the English? " 
 
 The prince smiled swiftly. 
 
 " To you," he said, " who delve for knowledge 
 and who do not know that it is absolute and to be 
 possessed at will, this can not now be made clear. 
 Perhaps some day ..." 
 
 Olivia had taken the paper from the prince and 
 pressed it to her lips, her eyes filling with tears. 
 There was no mistaking that evidence, for this 
 was her father's familiar hand. 
 
 " Otho always did write a fearful scrawl," 
 Mrs. Hastings commented, " his I's and his t's 
 and his vowels were all the same height. I used 
 to tell him that I didn't know whatever people 
 would think." 
 
 " I may, moreover," continued the prince, " call 
 to mind several articles which were included in the 
 
OLIVIA PROPOSES 89 
 
 packet sent from the Azores by his Majesty. You 
 have, for example, a tapestry representing an ibis 
 hunt; you have an image in pink sutro, or soft 
 marble, of an ancient Phoenician god — Melkarth. 
 And you have a length of stained glass bearing 
 the figure of the Tyrian sphinx, crucified, and 
 surrounded by coiled asps." 
 
 " Yes, it is true," said Olivia, " we have all 
 these things." 
 
 " Why, the trash must be quite expensive," 
 observed Mrs. Hastings. " I don't care much for 
 so many colours myself, perhaps because I always 
 wear black ; though I did wear light colours a 
 good deal when I was a girl." 
 
 " What else, Mr. St. George? " inquired the 
 prince pleasantly. 
 
 " Nothing else," cried Olivia passionately. " I 
 am satisfied. My father is in danger, and I 
 believe that he is in Yaque, for he would never 
 of his own will desert a place of trust. I must 
 go to him. And, Aunt Dora, you and Mr. 
 Frothingham must go with me." 
 
 " Oh, Olivia! " wailed Mrs. Hastings, a different 
 key for every syllable, " think — consider! Is it 
 the necessary thing to do? And what would 
 your poor dear uncle have done? And is there a 
 better way than his way? For I always say that 
 it is not really necessary to do as my poor dear 
 husband would have done, providing only that 
 we can find a better way. Oh," she mourned. 
 
90 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 lifting her hands, " that this frightful thing 
 should come to me at my age. Otho may be 
 married to a cannibal princess, with his sons 
 catching wild goats by the hair like Tennyson 
 and the whistling parrots " 
 
 " Madame," said the prince coldly, " forgets 
 what I have been saying of my country." 
 
 "I do not forget," declared Mrs. Hastings 
 sharply, " but being behind civilization and being 
 ahead of civilization comes to the same thing 
 more than once. In morals it does." 
 
 St. George was silent. Olivia's splendid daring 
 in her passionate decision to go to her father 
 stirred him powerfully; moreover, her words 
 outlined a possible course of his own whose magni- 
 tude startled him, and at the same time filled him 
 with a sudden, dazzling hope. 
 
 " But where is your island, Prince Tabnit? " 
 he asked. " You've naturally no consul there 
 and no cable, since you are not even on the 
 map." 
 
 " Yaque," said the prince readily, " lies almost 
 due southwest from the Azores." 
 
 Mr. Frothingham stirred skeptically. 
 
 " But such an island," he said pompously, " so 
 rich in material for the arcliseologist, the anthro- 
 pologist, the explorer in all fields of antiquity — 
 ah, it is out of the question, out of the question! " 
 
 "It is difficult," said the prince patiently, 
 *' most difficult for me to make myself intelligible 
 
OLIVIA PROPOSES 01 
 
 to you— as difficult, if you will forgive me, as if 
 you were to try to explain calculus to one of the 
 street boys outside. But directly your phase of 
 civilization has opened to you the secrets of the 
 Fourth Dimension, much will be discovered to 
 you which you do not now discern or dream, and 
 among these, Yaque. I do not jest," he added 
 wearily, " neither do I expect you to believe me. 
 But I have told you the truth. And it would be 
 impossible for you to reach Yaque save in the 
 company of one of the islanders to whom the 
 secret is known. I can not explain to you, any 
 more than I can explain harmony or colour." 
 
 " Well, I'm sure," cried Mrs. Hastings fret- 
 fully, " I don't know why you all keep wan- 
 dering from the subject so. Now, my brother 
 
 Otho " 
 
 " Prince Tabnit," — Olivia's voice never seemed 
 to interrupt, but rather to " divide evidence 
 finely " at the proper moment — " how long will 
 it take us to reach Yaque? " 
 
 St. George thrilled at that "us." 
 " My submarine," replied the prince, " is 
 plying about outside the harbour. I arrived in 
 four days." 
 
 "By the way," St. George submitted, "since 
 your wireless system is perfected, why can not 
 we have news of your island from here? " 
 
 "The curve of the earth," explained the prince 
 readily, " prevents. We have conquered only 
 
92 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 those problems with which we have had to deal. 
 The curve of the earth has of course never 
 entered our calculation. We have approached 
 the problem from another standpoint." 
 
 " We have much to do, Prince Tabnit," said 
 Olivia; "when may we leave? " 
 
 " Command me," said Prince Tabnit, bowing. 
 
 " To-morrow! " cried Olivia, " to-morrow, at 
 noon." 
 
 "Olivia! " Mrs. Hastings' voice broke over 
 the name like ice upon a warm promontory. 
 Mrs. Hastings' voice was suited to say " Keziah " 
 or " Katinka," not Olivia. 
 
 " Can you go, Mr. Frothingham? " demanded 
 Olivia. 
 
 Mr. Frothingham 's long hands hung down and 
 he looked as if she had proposed a jaunt to Mars. 
 
 " My physician has ordered a sea-change," he 
 mumbled doubtfully, ' ' my daughter Antoinette — 
 I — ^really — there is nothing in all my experience — " 
 
 " Olivia! " Mrs. Hastings in tears was super- 
 intending the search for both side-combs. 
 
 " Aunt Dora," said Olivia, " you're not going 
 to fail me now. Prince Tabnit — at noon to-mor- 
 row. Where shall we meet ? " 
 
 St. George listened, glov/ing. 
 
 " May I have the honour," suggested the 
 prince, " of waiting upon you at noon to conduct 
 you? And I need hardly say that we under- 
 take the journey under oath of secrecy? " 
 
OLIVIA PROPOSES 93 
 
 " Anything — anything! " cried Olivia. 
 
 " Oh, my dear Olivia," breathed Mrs. Hastings 
 weakly, " taking me, at my age, into this awful 
 place of Four Dimentias — or whatever it was 
 you said." 
 
 ** We will be ready to go with you at noon," 
 said Olivia steadily. 
 
 St. George held his peace as they made their 
 adieux, A great many things remained to be 
 thought out, but one was clear enough. 
 
 The boy servant ran before them to the door. 
 They made their way to the street in the early 
 dusk. A hurdy-gurdy on the curb was bubbling 
 over with merry discords, and was flanked by 
 garrulous ItaUans with push-carts, lighted by 
 flaring torches. Men were returning from work, 
 children were quarreling, women were in door- 
 ways, and a policeman was gossiping with the 
 footman in a knot of watching idlers. With a 
 sigh that was like a groan, Mrs. Hastings sank 
 back on the cushions of the brougham, 
 
 " I feel," she said, eyes closed, " as if I had been 
 in a pagan temple where they worship oracles and 
 what's-his-names. What time is it? I haven't 
 an idea. Dear, dear, I want to get home and feel 
 as if my feet were on land and water again. I 
 want some strong sleep and a good sound cup of 
 coffee, and then I shall know what's actually 
 what." 
 
 To St. George the slow drive up town was no 
 
94 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 less unreal than their visit. His head was whirling, 
 a hundred plans and speculations filled his mind, 
 and through these Mrs Hastings' chatter of fore- 
 bodings and the lawyer's patterned utterance 
 hardly found their way. At his own street he 
 was set down, with Mrs. Hastings' permission to 
 call next day. 
 
 Miss Holland gave him her hand. 
 
 " I can not thank you," she said, *' I can not 
 thank you. But try to know, won't you, what 
 this has been to me. Until to-morrow." 
 
 Until to-morrow. St. George stood in the 
 brightness of the street looking after the vanishing 
 carriage, his hand tingling from her touch. Then 
 he went up to his apartment and met Rollo — 
 sleek, deferential, the acme of the polite barbarism 
 in which the prince had made St. George feel 
 that he and his world were living. Ah, he 
 thought, as Rollo took his hat, this was no way 
 to live, with the whole world singing to be dis- 
 covered anew. 
 
 He sat down before the trim little white table 
 with its pretty china and silver and its one rose- 
 shaded candle, but the doubtful content of com- 
 fort was suddenly not enough. The spirit of 
 the road and of the chase was in his veins, and 
 he was aglow with " the taste for pilgriming." 
 He looked about on the simple luxury with which 
 he had surrounded himself, and he welcomed his 
 farewell to it. And when Rollo had gone up stairs 
 
OLIVIA PROPOSES 95 
 
 to complain in person of the shad-roe, St. George 
 spoke aloud : 
 
 " If Miss Holland sails for Yaque to-morrow on 
 the prince's submarine," he said, " The Aloha 
 and I will follow her." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 TWO I^lTTlvE MEN 
 
 Next morning St. George was early astir. He 
 had slept little and his dreams had been 
 grotesques. He threw up his blind and looked 
 across buildings to the grey park. The sky was 
 marked with rose, the still reservoir gave back 
 colour upon its breast, and the tower upon its 
 margin might have been some guttural-christened 
 castle on the Rhine. St. George drew a deep 
 breath of good, new air and smiled for the sake of 
 the things that the day was to bring him. He 
 was in the golden age when the youthful expecta- 
 tion of enjoyment is just beginning to be savoured 
 by the inevitable longing for more light, and he 
 seemed to himself to be alluringly near the verge 
 of both. 
 
 His first care the evening before had been to 
 hunt out Chillingworth. He had found him in a 
 theatre and had got him out to the foyer and kept 
 him through the third act, pouring in his ears as 
 much as he felt that it was well for him to know. 
 Chillingworth had drawn his square, brown 
 
 96 
 
TWO LITTLE MEN 97 
 
 hands through his hair and, in lieu of copy-paper, 
 had nibbled away his programme and paced the 
 corner by the cloak-room. 
 
 " It looks like a great big thing," said the city 
 editor; " don't you think it looks like a great big 
 thing? " 
 
 " Extraordinarily so," assented St. George, 
 watching him. 
 
 " Can you handle it alone, do you think? " 
 Chillingworth demanded. 
 
 " Ah, well now, that depends," replied St. 
 George. " I'll see it through, if it takes me to 
 Yaque. But I'd like you to promise, Mr. Chilling- 
 worth, that you won't turn Crass loose at it while 
 I'm gone, with his feverish head-lines. Mrs. 
 Hastings and her niece must be spared that, at 
 all events." 
 
 " Don't you be a sentimental idiot," snapped 
 Chillingworth, " and spoil the biggest city story 
 the paper ever had. Why, this may draw the 
 whole United States into a row, and mean war 
 and a new possession and maybe consulates and 
 governorships and one thing or another for the 
 whole staff. St, George, don't spoil the sport. 
 Remember, I'm dropsical and nobody can tell 
 what may happen. By the way, where did you 
 say this prince man is? " 
 
 " Ah, I didn't say," St. George had answered 
 quietly. " If you'll forgive me, I don't think I 
 shall say." 
 
98 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " Oh, you don't," ejaculated Chillingworth. 
 " Well, you please be around at eight o'clock in 
 the morning." 
 
 St. George watched him walking sidewise down 
 the aisle as he always walked when he was 
 excited. Chillingworth was a good sort at heart, 
 too; but given, as the bishop had once said of 
 some one else, to spending right royally a deal of 
 sagacity under the obvious impression that this 
 is the only wisdom. 
 
 At his desk next morning Chillingworth gave 
 to St. George a note from Amory, who had been 
 at Long Branch with The Aloha when the letter 
 was posted and was coming up that noon to put 
 ashore Bennietod. 
 
 " May Cawthorne have his day off to-morrow 
 and go with me? " the letter ended. "I'll call up 
 at noon to find out." 
 
 "Yah!" growled Chillingworth, "it's break- 
 ing up the whole staff, that's what it's doin'. 
 You'll all want cut-glass typewriters next." 
 
 "If I should sail to-day," observed St. George, 
 quite as if he were boarding a Sound steamer, 
 "I'd like to take on at least two men. And I'd 
 like Amory and Cawthorne. You could hardly 
 go yourself, could you, Mr. Chillingworth? " 
 
 " No, I couldn't," growled Chillingworth, " I've 
 got to keep my tastes down. And I've got to 
 save up to buy kid gloves for the staff. I/Ook 
 here " he added, and hesitated. 
 
TWO LITTLE MEN 99 
 
 " Yes? " St. George complied in some surprise. 
 
 " Bennietod's half sick anyway," said Chilling- 
 worth, " he's thin as water, and if you would 
 care " 
 
 " By all means then, " St. George assented heart- 
 ily, " I would care immensely. Bennietod sick is 
 like somebody else healthy. Will you mind getting 
 Amory on the wire when he calls up, and tell him 
 to show up without fail at my place at noon 
 to-day? And to wait there for me." 
 
 Little Cawthorne, with a pair of shears quite a 
 yard long, was sitting at his desk clipping jokes for 
 the fiction page. He was humming a weary little 
 tune to the effect that " Billy Enny took a penny 
 but now he hadn't many — Lookie They! " with 
 wliich he whiled away the hours of his gravest 
 toil, coming out strongly on the " Lookie They! " 
 until Benfy on the floor above pounded for quiet 
 which he never got. 
 
 " Cawthorne," said St. George, " it may be 
 that I'm leaving to-night on the yacht for an island 
 out in the southeast. And the chief says that 
 you and Amory are to go along. Can you go?" 
 
 Little Cawthorne 's blue eyes met St. George's 
 steadily for a moment, and without changing his 
 gaze he reached for his hat. 
 
 " I can get the page done in an hour," he 
 promised, "and I can pack my thirty gents in ten 
 minutes. Will that do? " 
 St. George laughed. 
 
100 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 '*Ah, well now, this goes," he said. "Ask 
 Chillingworth. Don't tell any one else." 
 
 " 'Billy Enny took a penny,' " hummed Little 
 Cawthorne in perfect tranquillity. 
 
 St. George set off at once for the McDougle 
 Street house. A thousand doubts beset him and 
 he felt that if he could once more be face to face 
 with the amazing prince these might be better 
 cleared away. Moreover, the glimpses which the 
 prince had given him of a world which seemed 
 to lie as definitely outside the bourne of present 
 knowledge as does death itself filled St. George 
 with unrest, spiced his incredulity with wonder, 
 and he found himself longing to talk more of the 
 things at which the strange man had hinted. 
 
 The squalor of the street was even less bearable 
 in the early morning. St. George wondered, as 
 he hurried across from the Grand Street station, 
 how the prince had understood that he must not 
 only avoid the great hotels, but that he must 
 actually seek out incredible surroundings like 
 these to be certain of privacy. For only the very 
 poor are sufficiently immersed in their own affairs 
 to be guiltless of curiosity, save indeed a kind of 
 surface morbid wonderment at crepe upon a door 
 or the coming of a well-dressed woman to their 
 neighbourhood. The prince might have lived in 
 McDougle Street for years without exciting more 
 than derisive comment of the denizens, derision 
 being no other than their humour gone astray. 
 
TWO LITTLE MEN 101 
 
 St. George tapped at the door which the night 
 before had admitted him to such revelation. 
 There was no answer, and a repeated summons 
 brought no sound from within. At length he 
 tentatively touched the latch. The door opened. 
 The room was quite empty. No remnant of 
 furniture remained. 
 
 He entered, involuntarily peering about as if 
 he expected to find the prince in a dusty comer. 
 The windows were still shuttered, and he threw 
 open the blinds, admitting rectangles of sunlight. 
 He could have found it in his heart, as he looked 
 blankly at the four walls, to doubt that he had 
 been there at all the night before, so emphatically 
 did the surroundings deny that they had ever 
 harboured a title. But on the floor at his feet 
 lay a scrap of paper, twisted and torn. He picked 
 it up. It was traced in indistinguishable charac- 
 ters, but it bore the Holland coat of arms and 
 crown which the prince had shown them. 
 St. George put the paper in his pocket and 
 questioned a group of boys in the passage. 
 
 " Yup," shouted one of the boys with that 
 prodigality of intonation distinguishing the child 
 of the streets, who makes every statement as if 
 his word had just been contradicted out of hand, 
 " he means de bloke wid de black block. Aw, 
 he lef early dis mornin' wid 's junk follerin.' 
 Dey's two of 'em. Wet's he t'ink? Dis ain't no 
 Nigger's Rest. Dis yere's all Eyetalian." 
 
102 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 St. George hurried to Fifty-nmth Street. It 
 was not yet ten o'clock, but the departure of 
 the prince made him vaguely uneasy and for 
 his life he could not have waited longer. Perhaps 
 it was not true at all; perhaps none of it had 
 happened. The McDougle Street part had van- 
 ished; what if the Boris too were a myth? But 
 as he sprang up the steps at the apartment 
 house St. George knew better. The night before 
 her hand had lain in his for an infinitesimal time, 
 and she had said " Until to-morrow." 
 
 On sending his name to Mrs. Hastings he 
 was immediately bidden to her apartment. He 
 found the drawing-room in confusion — the furni- 
 ture covered with linen, the bric-d-brac gone, and 
 three steamer trunks strapped and standing out- 
 side the door. All of which mattered to him less 
 than nothing, for Olivia was there alone. 
 
 She came down the dismantled room to meet 
 him, smiling a little and very pale but, St. George 
 thought, even more beautiful than she had been 
 the day before. She was dressed for walking 
 and had on a sober little hat, and straightway 
 St. George secretly wondered how he could ever 
 have approved of anything so flagrant as a 
 Gainsborough. She lifted her veil as they sat 
 down, and St. George liked that. To complete 
 his capitulation she turned to a little table set 
 before the bowing flames of juniper branches in 
 the gratf 
 
TWO LITTLE MEN 103 
 
 "This is breakfast," she told him; "won't 
 
 you have a cup of tea and a muffin? Aunt 
 
 Medora will be back presently from the chemist's." 
 
 For the first time St. George blessed Mrs. 
 
 Hastings. 
 
 " You are really leaving to-day, Miss Holland?" 
 he asked, noting the little ringless hand that 
 gave him two lumps. 
 
 " Really leaving," she assented, " at noon 
 to-day. Mr. Frothingham sails with us, and his 
 daughter Antoinette, who will be a great com- 
 fort to me. The prince doesn't know about her 
 yet," she added naively, " but he must take her." 
 St. George nodded approvingly. Unless all signs 
 failed, he reflected, Yaque had some surprises in 
 store at the hands of the daughter of its sovereign. 
 " Where does the prince appoint? " he asked. 
 He listened in entire disapproval while she told 
 him of the place below quarantine where they 
 were to board the submarine. The prince, it 
 appeared, had sent his servant early that morning 
 to assure them that all was in readiness, a bit of 
 oriental courtesy which made no impression upon 
 St. George, though it explained the prompt with- 
 drawal from 19 McDougle Street. When she had 
 finished, St. George rose and stood before the 
 fire, looking down at her from a world of 
 uncertainty. 
 
 '* I don't like it. Miss Holland," he declared, 
 and hesitated, divided between the desire to tell 
 
104 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 her that he was going too, and the fear lest Mrs, 
 Hastings should arrive from the chemist's. 
 
 Olivia made a gesture of throwing it all from 
 her. 
 
 "Have a muffin — do," she begged. "This is 
 my last breakfast in America for a time — 
 let me have a pleasant memory of it. Mr. St. 
 George, I want — oh, I want to tell you how greatly 
 I appreciate " 
 
 " Ah, please," urged St. George, and smiled 
 while he protested, " you see, I've been very 
 selfish about the whole matter. I'm selfish now 
 to be here at all when, I dare say, you've no 
 end of things to do." 
 
 " No," Olivia disclaimed, " I have not," and 
 thus proved that she was a woman of genius. For 
 a less complex woman always flutters through 
 the hour of her departure. Only Juno can step 
 from the clouds without packing a bag and feeding 
 the peacocks and leaving, pinned to an asphodel, 
 a note for Jupiter. 
 
 " Then tell me what you are going to do in 
 Yaque," he besought. " Forgive me — what are 
 you going to do all alone there in that strange 
 land, and such a land? " 
 
 He divined that at this she would be very brave 
 and buoyant, and he was lost in anticipative 
 admiration; when she was neither he admired 
 more than ever. 
 
 " I don't know," said Olivia gravely, " I only 
 
TWO LITTLE MEN 105 
 
 know that I must go. You see that, do you not — 
 that I must go? " 
 
 " Ah, yes," St. George assured her, " I do 
 indeed, believe me. Don't you think," he said, 
 " that I might give you a lamp to rub if you 
 need help? And then I'll appear." 
 
 " In Yaque? " 
 
 He nodded gravely. 
 
 " Yes, in Yaque. I shall rise out of a jar like 
 the Evil Genie ; and though I shall be quite help- 
 less you will still have the lamp. And I shall be 
 no end glad to have appeared." 
 
 " But suppose," said Olivia merrily, " that 
 when I have eaten a pomegranate or a potato 
 or something in Yaque I forget all about America? 
 And when you step out of the jar I say ' Off 
 with his head,' by mistake. How shall I know 
 it is you when the jar is opened? " 
 
 " I shall ask you what the population of Yaque 
 is," he assured her, " and how the island compares 
 with Manhattan, and if this is your first visit, 
 and how you are enjoying your stay; and then 
 you will recognize the talk of civilization and 
 spare me." 
 
 "No," she protested, " I've longed to say * Off 
 with his head ' to too many people who have said 
 all that to me. And you mustn't say that a 
 holiday always seems like Sunday, either." 
 
 Whereat they both laughed, and it seemed an 
 uncommonly pleasant world, and even the sad 
 
106 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 errand that was taking Olivia to Yaque looked 
 like a hope. 
 
 Then the talk ran on pleasantly, and things 
 went very briskly forward, and there was no 
 dearth of fleet little smiles at this and that. 
 What was she to bring him from Yaque — a pet 
 ibis? No, he had no taste for ibises — unless 
 indeed there should be Fourth-Dimension ibises; 
 and even then he begged that she would select 
 instead a magic field -glass, with which one might 
 see what is happening at an infinite distance; 
 although of what use would that be to him, he 
 wanted to know, since it would be his too late to 
 follow her errantry through Yaque? They felt, 
 as they talked, quite like the puppets of the days 
 of Haroun-al-Raschid ; only the puppets, poor 
 children of mere magic, had not the traditions 
 of the golden age of science for a setting, and 
 were obliged to content themselves with mere 
 tricks of jars of genii instead of applied electricity 
 and its daring. What an Arabian Nights' Enter- 
 tainment we might have had if only Scheherazade 
 had ever heard of the Present ! As for the thoasand- 
 and-one-nights, they would not have contained 
 all her invention. No wonder that the time went 
 trippingly for the two who were concerned in such 
 bewildering speculation as the prince had made 
 possible and who were furthering acquaintance- 
 ship besides. 
 
 "Ah, well now, at all events," begged St. George 
 
TWO LITTLE MEN 107 
 
 at length, " will you remember something while 
 you are away ? ' ' 
 
 " Your kindness, always," she returned. 
 
 " But will you remember," said St. George 
 with his boy's eagerness, " that there is some one 
 who hopes no less than you for your success, and 
 who will be infinitely proud of any command 
 at all from you? And will you remember that, 
 though I may not be successful, I shall at least 
 be doing something to try to help you? " 
 
 " You are very good," she said gently, " I shall 
 remember. For already you have not only 
 helped me— you have made the whole matter 
 possible." 
 
 " And what of that," propounded St. George 
 gloomily, "if I can't help you just when the 
 danger begins? I insist, Miss Holland, that it 
 takes far more good nature to see some one else 
 set off at adventure than it takes to go one's self. 
 Won't you let me come back here at twelve 
 o'clock and go down with you to the boat? " 
 
 " By all means," Olivia assented, " my aunt 
 and I shall both be glad, Mr. St. George. Then 
 you can wish us well. WTiat is a submarine like," 
 she wanted to know; " were you ever on one? " 
 
 " Never, excepting a number of times," replied 
 St. George, supremely unconscious of any vague- 
 ness. He was rapidly losing count of all events 
 up to the present. He was concerned only with 
 these things: that she was here with him, that 
 
108 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 the time might be measured by minutes until she 
 would be caught away to undergo neither knew 
 what perils, and that at any minute Mrs. Hastings 
 might escape from the chemist's. 
 
 Although the commonplace is no respecter 
 of enchantments, it was quite fifteen minutes 
 before the sword fell and Mrs. Hastings did make 
 the moment her prey, as pinkly excited as though 
 her drawing-room had been untenanted. And 
 in the meantime no one knows what pleasantly 
 absurd thing St. George longed to say, it is so 
 perilous when one is sailing away to Yaque and 
 another stands upon the shore for a word of fare- 
 well. But, indeed, if it were not for the soberest 
 moments of farewell, journeys and their returns 
 would become very tame affairs. When the first 
 man and maid said even the most formal farewell, 
 providing they were the right man and the right 
 maid, the very stars must have begun their 
 motion. Very likely the fixed stars are nothing 
 but grey-beards with no imagination. Distance 
 lends enchantment, but the frivolous might say 
 that the preliminary farewell is the mint that 
 coins it. And, enchantment being independ- 
 ent of the commonplace, after all, it may have 
 been that certain stars had already begun to sing 
 while St. George sat staring at the little bowing 
 flames of the juniper branches and Olivia was 
 taking her tea. Then in came Mrs. Hastings, 
 a very literal interfering goddess, and her bonnet 
 
TWO LITTLE MEN 109 
 
 was frightfully awry so that the parrot upon it 
 looked shockingly coquettish and irreverent and 
 lent to her dignity a flavour of ill-timed wag- 
 gishness. But it must be admitted that Mrs. 
 Hastings and everything that she wore were *'les 
 antipodes des graces." She was followed by a 
 footman, his arms filled with parcels, and she 
 sank among them on the divan and held out 
 her limp, plump hand for a cup of tea. Mrs. 
 Hastings had the hands that are fettered by 
 little creases at the wrists and whose wedding 
 rings always seem to be uncomfortably snug. 
 She sat down, and her former activity dis- 
 solved, as it were, into another sort of energy 
 and became fragments of talk. Mrs. Hastings 
 was like the old woman in Ovid who sacrificed 
 to the goddess of silence, but could never keep 
 still; save that Mrs. Hastings did not sacrifice. 
 
 "Good morning, Mr. St. George," she said. 
 "I'm sure I've quite forgotten everything. Olivia 
 dear, I've had all the prescriptions made up that 
 I've ever taken to Rutledge's, because no one can 
 tell what the climate will be like, it's so low on the 
 map. I've looked up the Azores — that's where 
 we get some of our choicest cheese. And camphor 
 — I've got a pound of camphor. And I must 
 say positively that I always was against these 
 wars in the far East, because all the camphor 
 comes from Korea or one of those ft-ightful islands 
 and now it has gone up twenty-six cents a pound. 
 
110 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 And then the flaxseed, OH via dear. I've got a 
 tin of flaxseed, for no one can tell " 
 
 St. George doubted if she knew when he said 
 good morning, although she named him Mr. 
 St. John, gave him permission to go to the boat, 
 hoped in one breath that he would come again to 
 see them, and in the next that he would send them 
 a copy of whatever the Sentinel might publish 
 about them, in serene oblivion of the state of 
 the post-office department in Yaque. Mrs. Hast- 
 ings, in short, was one of the women who are 
 thrown into violent mental convulsions by the 
 prospect of a journey; this was not at all because 
 she was setting sail specifically for Yaque, for the 
 moment that she saw a porter or a pier, though 
 she was bound only for the Bronx or Staten 
 Island, she was affected in the same way. 
 
 As Olivia gave St. George her hand he came 
 perilously near telling her that he would foUow 
 her to Yaque; but he reflected that if he were to 
 tell her at all, he would better do so on the way to 
 the submarine. So he went blindly down the 
 hall and rang the elevator bell for so long that 
 the boy deliberately stopped on the floor below 
 and waited, with the diabolical independence of 
 the American lords of the lift, " for to teach 'im 
 a lessing," this one explained to a passing cham- 
 ber-maid. 
 
 St. George hturied to his apartment to leave a 
 note for Amory who was directed upon his arrival 
 
TWO LITTLE MEN 111 
 
 to bide there and await his host's return. Then 
 he paced the floor until it was time to go back to 
 the Boris, deaf to Rollo's solemn information that 
 the dust comes up out of the varnish of furni- 
 ture during the night, like cream out of milk. 
 By the time he had boarded a down-town car, 
 St, George had tortured himself to distraction, 
 and his own responsibility in this submarine 
 voyage loomed large and threatening. Therefore, 
 it suddenly assumed the proportion of mountains 
 yet unseen when, though it wanted ten minutes 
 to twelve when he reached the Boris, his card was 
 returned by a faint polite clerk with the informa- 
 tion that Mrs. Hastings and Miss Holland had 
 been gone from the hotel for half an hour. There 
 was a note for him in their box the clerk believed, 
 and presently produced it — a brief, regretful 
 word from Olivia telling him that the prince had 
 found that they must leave fully an hour earlier 
 than he had planned. 
 
 Sick with apprehension, cursing himself for 
 the ease and dexterity with which he had per- 
 mitted himself to be outwitted by Tabnit, St. 
 George turned blindly from the office with some 
 vague idea of chartering all the tugs in the harbour. 
 It came to him that he had bungled the matter 
 from first to last, and that Bud or Bennietod 
 would have used greater shrewdness. And while 
 he was in the midst of anathematizing his char- 
 acteristic confidence he stepped in the outer 
 
112 ROIIANCE ISLAND 
 
 hallway and saw that which caused that con- 
 fidence to balloon smilingly back to support him. 
 
 In the vestibule of the Boris, deaf to the hover- 
 ing attention of a door-boy more curious than 
 dutiful, stood two men of the stature and com- 
 plexion of Prince Tabnit of Yaque. They were 
 dressed like the youth who had answered the 
 door of the prince's apartment, and they were 
 speaking softly with many gestures and evidently 
 in some perplexity. The drooping spirits of 
 St. George soared to Heaven as he hastened to 
 them. 
 
 " You are asking for Miss Holland, the daughter 
 of King Otho of Yaque," he said, with no time 
 to smile at the pranks of the democracy with 
 hereditary titles. 
 
 The men stared and spoke almost together. 
 
 " We are," they said promptly. 
 
 " She is not here," explained St. George, " but 
 I have attended to some affairs for her. Will 
 you come with me to my apartment where we 
 may be alone? " 
 
 The men, who somehow made St. George think 
 of tan-coloured greyhounds with very gentle eyes, 
 consulted each other, not with the suspicion of 
 the vulgar but with the caution of the thorough- 
 bred. 
 
 " Pardon," said one, " if we may be quite 
 assured that this is Miss Holland's friend to whom 
 we speak " 
 
TWO LITTLE MEN 113 
 
 St. George hesitated. The hall-boy listened 
 with an air of polite concern, and there were 
 curious over-shoulder glances from the passers-by. 
 Suddenly St. George's face lighted and he went 
 swiftly through his pockets and produced a scrap 
 of paper— the fragment that had lain that morn- 
 ing on the floor of the prince's deserted apartment, 
 and that bore the arms of the King of Yaque. 
 It was the strangers' turn to regard him with 
 amazement. Immediately, to St. George's utmost 
 embarrassment, they both bowed very low and 
 pronounced together: 
 " Pardon, ad6n!" 
 
 " My name is St. George," he assured them, 
 " and let's get into a cab." 
 
 They followed him without demur. 
 St. George leaned back on the cushions and 
 looked at them — lean lithe little men with rapid 
 eyes and supple bodies and great repose. They 
 gave him the same sense of strangeness that he 
 had felt in the presence of the prince and of the 
 woman in the Bitley Reformatory— as if, it 
 whimsically flashed to him, they some way rhymed 
 with a word which he did not know. 
 
 " What is it," St. George asked as they rolled 
 away, " what is it that you have come to tell 
 Miss Holland? " 
 
 Only one of the men spoke, the other appear- 
 ing content to show two rows of exceptionally 
 white teeth. 
 
114 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 ** May we not know, ad6n," asked the man 
 respectfully, " whether the prince has given her 
 his news? And if the prince is still in your 
 land?" 
 
 '* The prince's servant, Elissa, has tried to 
 stab Miss Holland and has got herself locked 
 up," St. George imparted without hesitation. 
 
 An exclamation of horror broke from both 
 men. 
 
 " To stab— to kill! " they cried. 
 
 " Quite so," said St. George, " and the prince, 
 upon being discovered, disclosed some very impor- 
 tant news to Miss Holland, and she and her 
 friends started an hour ago for Yaque." 
 
 "That is well, that is well!" cried the little 
 man, nodding, and momentarily hesitated; "but 
 yet his news — what news, ad6n, has he told 
 her? " 
 
 For a moment St. George regarded them both 
 in silence. 
 
 " Ah, well now, what news had he? " he asked 
 briefly. 
 
 The men answered readily. 
 
 " Prince Tabnit was commissioned, by the 
 Yaquians to acquaint the princess with the news 
 of the strange disappearance of her father, the 
 king, and to supplicate her in his place to accept 
 the hereditary throne of Yaque." 
 
 " Jupiter! " said St. George under breath. 
 
 In a flash the whole matter was clear to him. 
 
TWO LITTLE MEN 115 
 
 Prince Tabnit had delivered no such message 
 from the people of Yaque, but had contented 
 himself with the mere intimation that in some 
 vanishing future she would be expected to 
 ascend the throne. And he had done this 
 only when Olivia herself had sought him out 
 after an attempt had been made upon her life 
 by his servant. It seemed to St. George far 
 from improbable that the woman had been acting 
 under the prince's instructions and, that failing, 
 he himself had appeared and obligingly placea 
 the daughter of King Otho precisely within the 
 prince's power. Now she was gone with him, 
 in the hope of aiding her father, to meet Heaven 
 knew what peril in this pagan island; and he, 
 St. George, was wholly to blame from first to 
 last. 
 
 " Good Heavens," he groaned, " are you sure — 
 but are you sure? " 
 
 " It is simple, ad6n," said the man, " we came 
 with this message from the people of Yaque. 
 A day before we were to land, Akko and I — I am 
 Jarvo — overheard the prince plan with the others 
 to tell her nothing — nothing that the people 
 desire. When they knew that we had heard 
 they locked us up and we have only this morning 
 escaped from the submarine. If the prince has 
 told her this message everything is well. But 
 as for us, I do not know. The prince has 
 gone." 
 
116 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " He told her nothing — ^nothing," said St. 
 George, " but that her father and the Hereditary- 
 Treasure have disappeared. And he has taken 
 her with him. She has gone with him." 
 
 Deaf alike to their exclamations and their 
 questions St. George sat staring unseeingly through 
 the window, his mind an abyss of fear. Then the 
 cab drew up at the door of his hotel and he 
 turned upon the two men precipitantly. 
 
 " See," he cried, " in a boat on the open sea, 
 would you two be at all able to direct a course 
 to Yaque? " 
 
 Both men smiled suddenly and brilliantly. 
 
 " But we have stolen a chart," annoimced Jarvo 
 with great simplicity, " not knowing what thing 
 might befall." 
 
 St. George wrenched at the handle of the cab 
 door. He had a glimpse of Amory within, just 
 ringing the elevator bell, and he bundled the 
 two little men into the lobby and dashed up 
 to him. 
 
 "Come on, old Amory," he told him exultingly. 
 " Heaven on earth, put out that pipe and pack. 
 We leave for Yaque to-night 1 " 
 
CHAPTER Vn 
 
 DUSK, AND SO ON" 
 
 Dusk on the tropic seas h a ceremony per- 
 formed with reverence, as if the rising moon were 
 a priestess come among her silver vessels. Shad- 
 ows like phantom sails dip through the dark and 
 lie idle where unseen crafts with unexplained 
 cargoes weigh anchor in mid-air. One almost 
 hears the water cunningly lap upon their invisible 
 sides. 
 
 To Little Cawthome, lying luxuriously in a 
 hammock on the deck of The Aloha, fancies like 
 these crowded pleasantly, and slipped away or 
 were merged in snatches of remembered songs. 
 His hands were clasped behind his head, one foot 
 was tapping the deck to keep the hammock in 
 motion while strange compounds of tune and 
 time broke aimlessly from his lips. 
 
 " Meet me by moonlight alone. 
 And then I will tell you a tale. 
 Must be told in the moonlight alone 
 In the grove at the end of the vale" 
 
 he caroled contentedly. 
 
 117 
 
118 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Amory, the light of his pipe cheerfully glowing, 
 lay at full length in a steamer chair. The Aloha 
 was bounding briskly forward, a solitary speck 
 on the bosom of darkening purple, and the men 
 sitting in the companionship of silence, which all 
 the world praises and seldom attains, had been 
 engaging in that most entertaining of pastimes, 
 the comparison of present comfort with past toil. 
 Little Cawthorne's satisfaction flowered in speech. 
 
 " Two weeks ago to-night," he said, running his 
 hands through his grey curls, " I took the night 
 desk when Ellis was knocked out. And two weeks 
 ago to-morrow morning we were the only paper to 
 be beaten on the Fownes will story. Hi — you." 
 
 " Happy, Cawthorne? " Amory removed his 
 pipe to inquire with idle indulgence. 
 
 " Am I happy? " affirmed Little Cawthorne 
 ecstatically in four tones, and went on with his 
 song: 
 
 "The daylight may do for the gay, 
 The thoughtless, the heartless, the free, 
 But there's something about the moon's ray 
 That is sweeter to you and to me." 
 
 " Did you make that up? " inquired Amory 
 with polite interest. 
 
 '* I did if I want to," responded Little Cawthorne. 
 " Everything's true out here — go on, tell every- 
 thing you like. I'U believe you." 
 
 St. George came out of the dark and leaned on 
 the rail without speaking. Sometimes he won- 
 
UUSK, AND SO ON 119 
 
 dered if he were he at all, and he liked the doubt. 
 He felt pleasantly as if he had been cut loose from 
 all old conditions and were sailing between skies 
 to some unknown planet. This was not only 
 because of the strange waters rushing underfoot 
 but because of the flowering and singing of some- 
 thing within him that made the world into which 
 he was sailing an alien place, heavenly desirable. 
 A week ago that day The Aloha had weighed 
 anchor, and these seven days, in fairly fortunate 
 weather, her white nose had been cleaving seas 
 to traverse which had so long been her owner's 
 dream; and yet her owner, in pleasant apostasy, 
 had turned his back upon the whole matter of 
 what he had been used to dream, and now ungrate- 
 fully spent his time in trying to count the hours to 
 his journey's end. 
 
 Somewhere out yonder, he reflected, as he leaned 
 on the rail, this southern moonlight was flooding 
 whatever scene she looked on; the lapping of the 
 same sea was in her ears; and his future and hers 
 might be dependent upon those two perplexed 
 tan-coloured greyhounds below. By which one 
 would have said that matters had been going 
 briskly forward with St. George since the morning 
 that he had breakfasted with Olivia Holland. 
 
 Exactly when the end of the journey would be 
 was not evident either to him or to the two 
 strange creatures who proposed to be his guides. 
 Or rather to Jarvo, who was still the spokesman; 
 
120 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 lean little Akko, although his intelligence was 
 unrivaled, being content with monosyllables for 
 stepping-stones while the stream of Jarvo's soft 
 speech flowed about him. Bamay, the captain, 
 frankly distrusted them both, and confided to 
 St. George that " them two little jool-eyed salts 
 was limbs av the old gint himself, and they 
 reminded him, Bamay, of a pair of haythen 
 naygurs," than which he could say no more. 
 But then, Bamay 's wholesale skepticism was his 
 only recreation, save talking about his pretty 
 daughter " of school age," and he liked to stand 
 tucking his beard inside his collar and indulging 
 in both. In truth, Barnay, who knew the waters, 
 of the Atlantic fairly well, was sorely tried to take 
 orders from the two little brown strangers who, 
 he averred, consulted a " haythen apparaytus " 
 which they would cheerfully let him see but of 
 which he could " make no more than av the spach 
 av a fish," and then directed him to take courses 
 which lay far outside the beaten tracks of the 
 high seas. 
 
 St. George, who had had several talks with 
 them, was puzzled and doubtful, and more than 
 once confided to himself that the lives of the 
 passenger list of The Aloha might be worth no 
 more than coral headstones at the bottom of the 
 South Atlantic. But he always consoled himself 
 with the cheering reflection that he had had to 
 come — ^there was no other way half so good. So 
 
DUSK, AND SO ON 121 
 
 The Aloha continued to plow her way as serenely 
 as if she were heading toward the white cliffs 
 of Dover and trim villas and a custom-house. 
 And the sea lay a blue, uninhabited glory save 
 as land that Barnay knew about marked low 
 blades of smoke on the horizon and slipped back 
 into blue sheaths. 
 
 This was the evening of the seventh day, and 
 that noon Jarvo had looked despondent, and 
 Barnay had sworn strange oaths, and St. 
 George had been disquieted. He stood up now, 
 going vaguely down into his coat pockets for his 
 pipe, his erect figure thrown in relief against 
 the hurrying purple. St. George was good to look 
 at, and Amory, with the moonlight catching 
 the glass of his pince-nez, smoked and watched 
 him, shrewdly pondering upon exactly how 
 much anxiety for the success of the enterprise 
 was occupying the breast of his friend and how 
 much of an emotion a good bit stronger. 
 Amory himself was not in love, but there 
 existed between him and all who were a 
 special kinship, like that between a lover of 
 music and a musician. 
 
 Little Cawthorne rose and shuffled his feet 
 lazily across deck. 
 
 " Where is that island, anyway? " he wanted 
 to know, gazing meditatively out to sea. 
 
 St. George turned as if the interruption was 
 grateful. 
 
122 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 •• The island. I don't see any island," com- 
 plained Little Cawlhome. " I tell you," he con- 
 fided, " I guess it's just Chillingworth's little way 
 of fixing up a nice long vacation for us." 
 
 They smiled at memory of Chillingworth*s grudg- 
 ing and snarling assents to even an hour off duty. 
 
 From below came Bennietod, walking slowly. 
 The seaman's life was not for Bennietod, and he 
 yearned to reach land as fervently as did St. 
 George, though with other anxiety. He sat 
 down on the moon-lit deck and his face was like 
 that of a little old man with uncanny shrewdness. 
 His week among them had wrought changes in 
 the head office boy. For Bennietod was ambi- 
 tious to be a gentleman. His covert imitations 
 had always amused St, George and Amory. 
 Now in the comparative freedom of TJie Aloha 
 his fancy had rein and he had adopted all the 
 habits and the phrases which he had long reserved 
 and liked best, mixing them with scraps of allu- 
 sions to things which Benfy had encouraged him 
 to read, and presenting the whole in his native 
 lower East-side dialect. Bennietod was Bowery- 
 bom and office-bred, and this sad metropolitanism 
 almost made of him a good philosopher. 
 
 "I'd like immensely to say something," 
 observed St. George abruptly, when his pipe was 
 lighted. 
 
 *' Oh, yes. All right," shrilled Little Cawthome 
 with resignation, " I suppose you all feel I'm 
 
DUSK, AND SO ON 123 
 
 the Jonah and you thirst to scatter me to the 
 whales." 
 
 " I want to know," St. George went on slowly, 
 " what you think. On my life, I doubt if I 
 thought at all when we set out. This all promised 
 good sport, and I took it at that. Lately, I've 
 been wondering, now and then, whether any of 
 you wish yourselves well out of it." 
 
 For a moment no one spoke. To shrink from 
 expression is a characteristic in which the extremes 
 of cultivation and mediocrity meet; the reserve 
 of delicacy in St. George and Amory would have 
 been a reserve of false shame in Bennietod, and 
 of an exaggerated sense of humour in Little Caw- 
 thome. It was not remarkable that from the 
 moment the enterprise had been entered upon, 
 its perils and its doubtful outcome had not once 
 been discussed. St. George vaguely reckoned with 
 this as he waited, while Amory smoked on and 
 blew meditative clouds and regarded the bowl 
 of his pipe, and Little Cawthome ceased the 
 motion of his hammock, and Bennietod hugged 
 his knees and looked shrewdly at the moon, as 
 if he knew more about the moon than he would 
 care to tell. St. George felt his heart sink a 
 little. Then Little Cawthome rose and squared 
 valiantly up to him. 
 
 " What," inquired the little man indignantly, 
 " are you trying to do? Pick a fight? " 
 St. George looked at him in surprise. 
 
124 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " Because if you are," continued Little Caw- 
 thome without preamble, '* we're three to one. 
 And three of us are going to Yaque. Well put 
 you ashore if you say so." 
 
 St. George smiled at him gratefully. 
 
 " No — Bennietod? " inquired Little Cawthome. 
 
 Bennietod, pale and manifestly weak, grinned 
 cheerfully and fumbled in sudden abashment at 
 an amazing checked Ascot which he had derived 
 from unknown sources. 
 
 " Bes' t'ing fever I met up wid," he assented, 
 " ef de deck'd lay down levil. I'm de sonny of 
 a sea-horse if it ain't." 
 
 " Amory? " demanded the little man. 
 
 Amory looked along his pipe and took it 
 briefly from his lips and shook his head. 
 
 " Don't say these things," he pleaded in his 
 pleasant drawl, " or I'll swear something horrid." 
 
 St. George merely held his pipe by the bowl 
 and nodded a little, but the hearts of all of them 
 glowed. 
 
 After dinner they sat long on deck. RoUo, at 
 his master's invitation, joined them with a man- 
 dolin, which he had been discovered to play con- 
 siderably better than any one else on board. 
 Rollo sat bolt upright in a reclining chair to prove 
 that he did not forget his station and strummed 
 softly, and acknowledged approval with: 
 
 " Yes, sir. A little music adds an air to any 
 occasion, / always think, sir." 
 
DUSK, AND SO ON 125 
 
 The moon was not yet full, but its light in that 
 warm world was brilliant. The air was drowsy 
 and scented with something that might have been 
 its own honey or that might have come from the 
 strange blooms, water-sealed below. Now and 
 then St. George went aside for a space and walked 
 up and down the deck or sent below for Jarvo. 
 Once, as Jarvo left St. George's side. Little Caw- 
 thome awoke and sat upright and inquiring, in his 
 hammock. 
 
 " What is the matter with his feet? " he 
 inquired peevishly. " I shall certainly ask him 
 directly." 
 
 " It's the seventh day out," Amory observed, 
 " and still nobody knows." 
 
 For Jarvo and Akko had another distinction 
 besides their diminutive stature and greyhound 
 build. Their feet, clad in soft soleless shoes, 
 made of skins, were long and pointed and of 
 almost uncanny flexibility. It had become impos- 
 sible for any one to look at either of the little men 
 without letting his eyes wander to their curi- 
 ously expressive feet, which, like " courtier 
 speech," were expressive without revealing 
 anything. 
 
 " I t'ink," Bennietod gave out, " dat dey're 
 lost Eyetalian organ-grinder monkeys, wid huming 
 intelligence, like Bertran's Bimi." 
 
 " What a suspicious child it is," yawned Little 
 Cawthome, and went to sleep again. Toward 
 
126 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 midnight he awoke, refreshed and happy, and 
 broke into instant song: 
 
 " The daylight may do for the gay, 
 The thoughtless, the heartless, the free, 
 But there's something about the moon's ray — " 
 
 he was chanting in perfect tonelessness, when 
 St. George cried out. The others sprang to their 
 feet. 
 
 " Lights! " said St. George, and gave the glass 
 to Amory, his hand trembling, and very nearly 
 snatched it back again. 
 
 Far to the southeast, faint as the lost Pleiad, 
 a single golden point pricked the haze, danced, 
 glimmered, was lost, and reappeared to their 
 eager eyes. The impossibility of it all, the 
 impossibility of believing that they could have 
 sighted the lights of an island hanging there in the 
 waste and hitherto known to nobody simply 
 "because nobody knew the truth about the Fourth 
 Dimension did not assail them. So absorbed had 
 St. George become in the undertaking, so con- 
 vincing had been the events that led up to it, and 
 so ready for anything in any dimension were his 
 companions, that their excitement was simply the 
 ancient excitement of lights to the mariner and 
 nothing more; save indeed that to St. George they 
 spoke a certain language sweeter than the language 
 of any island lying in the heart of mere science or 
 jmere magic either. 
 
DUSK, AND SO ON 127 
 
 When it became evident that the lights were no 
 will-o'-the-wisps, born of the moon and the void, 
 but the veritable lights that shine upon harbours, 
 Bennietod tumbled below for Jarvo, who came on 
 deck and gazed and doubted and well-nigh wept 
 for joy and poured forth strange words and called 
 aloud for Akko. Akko came and nodded and 
 showed white teeth. 
 
 " To-morrow," he said only. 
 
 Barnay came. 
 
 " Fwhat matther?" He put it cynically, scowl- 
 ing critically at Jarvo and Akko. " All in the 
 way av fair fight, that'll be about Mor-rocco, if 
 I've the full av my wits about me, an' music to 
 my eyes, by the same token." 
 
 Jarvo fixed him with his impenetrable look. 
 
 "It is the light of the king's palace on the 
 summit of Mount Khalak," he announced simply. 
 
 The light of the king's palace. St. George 
 heard and thrilled with thanksgiving. It would be 
 then the light at her very threshold, provided 
 the impossible is possible, as scientists and 
 devotees have every reason to think. But was she 
 there — was she there? If there was an oracle for 
 the answer, it was not St. George. The little 
 white stars danced and signaled faintly on the far 
 horizon. Whatever they had to reveal was for 
 nearer eyes than his. 
 
 The glass passed from hand to hand, and in 
 turn they all swept the low sky where the faint 
 
128 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 points burned; but when some one had cried that 
 the lights were no longer visible, and the others 
 had verified the cry by looking blankly into a 
 sudden waste of milky black— black water, pale 
 light — -and turned baffled eyes to Jarvo, the little 
 man spoke smoothly, not even reaching a lean, 
 brown hand for the glass. 
 
 " But have no fear, adon," he reassured them, 
 "the chart is not exact — it is that which has 
 delayed us. It will adjust itself. The light may 
 long disappear, but it will come again. The gods 
 will permit the possible." 
 
 They looked at one another doubtfully when the 
 two little brown men had gone below, where 
 Bamay had immediately retired, tucking his 
 beard in his collar and muttering sedition. If the 
 two strange creatures were twin Robin Goodf ellows 
 perpetrating a monstrous twentieth century 
 prank, if they were gigantic evolutions of Puck 
 whose imagination never went far beyond thresh- 
 ing corn with shadowy flails, at least this very 
 modern caper demanded respect for so perfectly 
 catching the spirit of the times. At all events it 
 was immensely clever of them to have put their 
 finger upon the public pulse and to have realized 
 that the public imagination is ready to believe 
 anything because it has seen so much proved. 
 Still, " science was faith once"; and besides, to 
 St. George, charts and compasses of all known 
 and unknown systems of seamanship were sud- 
 
DUSK. AND SO ON 12§ 
 
 denly become but the dead letter of the law. The 
 spirit of the whole matter was that Olivia might 
 be there, under the lights that his own eyes would 
 presently see again. " Who, remembering the 
 first kind glance of her whom he loves, can fail to 
 believe in magic? " It is very likely that having 
 met Olivia at all seemed at that moment so 
 wonderful to St. George that any of the " frolic 
 things " of science were to be accepted with 
 equanimity. 
 
 For an hour or more the moon, flooding the edge 
 of the deck of The Aloha, cast four shadows 
 sharply upon the smooth boards. Lined up at the 
 rail stood the four adventurers, and the glass 
 passed from one to another like the eye of the 
 three Grey Sisters. The far beacon appeared and 
 disappeared, but its actuality might not be 
 doubted. If Jarvo and Akko were to be trusted, 
 there in the velvet distance lay Yaque, and Med, 
 the King's City, and the light upon the very 
 palace of its American sovereign. 
 
 St. George's pulses leaped and trembled. Amory 
 lifted lazy lids and watched him with growing 
 understanding and finally, upon a pretext of 
 sleep, led the others below. And St. George, with 
 a sense of joyful companionship in the little light, 
 paced the deck until dawn. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE PORCH OF THE MORNING 
 
 By afternoon the island of Yaque was an accom- 
 plished fact of distinguishable parts. There it 
 lay, a thing of rock and green, like the islands of 
 its sister latitudes before which the passing ships 
 of all the world are wont to cast anchor. But 
 having once cast anchor before Yaque the ships 
 of all the world would have had great difficulty 
 in landing anybody. 
 
 Sheer and almost smoothly hewn from the 
 utmost coast of the island rose to a height of 
 several hundred feet one scarcely deviating wall 
 of rock; and this apparently impregnable wall 
 extended in either direction as far as the sight 
 could reach. Above the natural rampart the 
 land sloped upward still in steep declivities, but 
 cut by tortuous gorges, and afar inland rose the 
 mountain upon whose summit the light had been 
 descried. There the glass revealed white towers 
 and colunms rising from a mass of brilliant 
 tropical green, and now smitten by the late 
 sun; but save these towers and columns not a 
 
 130 
 
THE PORCH OF THE MORNING 131 
 
 sign of life or habitation was discernible. No 
 smoke arose, no wharf or dock broke the serene 
 outline of the black wall lapped by the warm 
 sea; and there was no sound save that of strong 
 torrents afar off. Ivonely, inscrutable, the great 
 mass stood, slightly shelved here and there to 
 harbour rank and blossomy growths of green and 
 presenting a rugged beauty of outline, but appar- 
 ently as uninhabitable as the land of the North 
 Silences. 
 
 Consternation and amazement sat upon the 
 faces of the owner of The Aloha and his guests 
 as they realized the character of the remarkable 
 island. St. George and Amory had counted 
 upon an adventure calling for all diplomacy, but 
 neither had expected the delight of hazard that 
 this strange, fairy-like place seemed about to 
 present. Each felt his blood stirring and singing 
 in his veins at the joy of the possibilities that 
 lay folded before them. 
 
 " We shall be obliged to land upon the east 
 coast then, Jarvo? " observed St. George; "but 
 how long will it take us to sail round the island? " 
 
 " Very long," Jarvo responded, " but no, adou, 
 we land on this coast." 
 
 " How is that possible? " St. George asked. 
 
 " Well, hi— you," said Little Cawthome, "I'm 
 a goat, but I'm no mountain goat. See the 
 little Swiss kid skipping from peak to peak and 
 from crag to crag " 
 
132 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " Do we scale the wall? " inquired St. George, 
 " or is there a passage in the rock? " 
 
 Bennietod hugged himself in uncontrollable 
 ecstasy. 
 
 " Hully Gee, a submarine passage, in under de 
 sea, like Jules Weme," he said in a delight that 
 was almost awe. 
 
 " There is a way over the rock," said Jarvo, 
 " partly hewn, partly natural, and this is known 
 to the islanders alone. That way we must take. 
 It is marked by a White Blade blazoned on the 
 rock over the entrance of the submarines. The 
 way is cunningly concealed — ^hardly will the glass 
 reveal it, ad on." 
 
 Bamay shook his head. 
 
 " You've a bad time comin' with the home- 
 sickness," he prophesied, tucking his beard far 
 down in his collar until he looked, for Bamay, 
 smooth-shaven, "I've sailed the sou' Atlantic up 
 an' down fer a matther av four hundhred years, 
 more or less, an' I niver as much as seed hide nor 
 hair av the place before this prisint. There ain't 
 map or chart that iver dhrawed breath that 
 shows ut, new or old. Ut's been lifted out o' 
 groimd to be afther swallowin' us in — a sweet 
 dose will be the lot av us, mesilf with as foine 
 a gir-rl av school age as iver you'll see in anny 
 counthry. ' ' 
 
 " Ah yes, Bamay," said St. George soothingly — 
 but he would have tried now to soothe a man 
 
THE PORCH OF THE MORNING 133 
 
 in the embrace of a sea-serpent in just the same 
 absent-minded way, Araory thought indulgently. 
 
 The sun was lowering and birds of evening were 
 beginning to brood over the painted water when 
 The Aloha cast anchor. In the late light the 
 rugged sides of the island had an air of almost 
 sinister expectancy. There was a great silence 
 in their windless shelter broken only by the boom 
 and charge of the breakers and the gulls and 
 choughs circling overhead, winging and dipping 
 along the water and returning with discordant 
 cries to their crannies in the black rock. Before 
 the yacht, blazoned on a dark, water-polished 
 stratum of the volcanic stone, was the White 
 Blade which Jarvo told them marked the sub- 
 terranean entrance to the mysterious island. 
 
 St. George and his companions and Bamay, 
 Jarvo and Akko were on deck. RoUo, whose 
 soul did not disdain to be valet to a steam yacht, 
 was tranquilly mending a canvas cushion. 
 
 " The adon will wait until sunrise to go ashore?" 
 asked Jarvo. 
 
 ''Sunrise!'' cried St. George. "Heaven on 
 earth, no. We'll go now." 
 
 There was no need to ask the others. Whatever 
 might be toward, they were eager to be about, 
 though Rollo ventured to St. George a depreca- 
 tory : "You know, sir, one can't be too careful, sir. " 
 
 " Will you prefer to stay aboard? " St. George 
 put it quietly. 
 
134 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " Oh, no, sir," said RoUo with a grieved face, 
 " one should meet danger with a Hght heart, 
 sir," and went below to pack the oil-skins. 
 
 " Hear me now," said Barnay in extreme 
 disfavour. "It's I that am to lay hereabouts and 
 wait for you, sorr? Lord be good to me, an' 
 fwhat if she lays here tin year', and you some- 
 wheres fillin* the eyes av the aygles with your 
 brains blowed out, neat? " he demanded mis- 
 anthropically. " Fwhat if she lays here on that 
 gin'ral theory till she's rotted up, sorr? " 
 
 " Ah well now, Barnay," said St. George grimly, 
 " you couldn't have an easier career." 
 
 Little Cawthorne, from leaning on the rail 
 staring out at the island, suddenly pulled himself 
 up and addressed St. George. 
 
 " Here we are," he complained, " here has been 
 me coming through the watery deep all the way 
 from Broadway, with an octopus clinging to each 
 arm and a dolphin on my back, and you don't 
 even ask how I stood the trip. And do you 
 realize that it's sheer madness for the five of us 
 to land on that island together? " 
 
 " What do you mean? " asked St. George. 
 
 The little man shook his grey curls. 
 
 " What if it's as Barnay says? " he put it. 
 " What if tliey should bag us all — who'll take back 
 the glad news to the harbour? Lord, you can't tell 
 what you're about walking into. You don't even 
 know the specific gravity of the island," he sug- 
 
THE PORCH OF THE MORNING liJ5 
 
 gested earnestly. " How do you know but your 
 own weight will flatten you out the minute you 
 step ashore? " 
 
 St. George laughed. " He thinks he is reading 
 the fiction page, ' ' he observed indulgently. ' ' Still , 
 I fancy there is good sense on the page, for once. 
 We don't know anything about anything. I 
 suppose we really ought not to put all five eggs 
 
 in one basket. But, by Jove " 
 
 He looked over at Amory with troubled eyes. 
 "As host of this picnic," he said, " I dare say 
 I ought to stay aboard and let you fellows — but 
 I'm hanged if I will." 
 
 Little Cawthorne reflected, frowning; and you 
 could as well have expected a bird to frown as 
 Little Cawthorne. It was rather the name of his 
 expression than a description of it. 
 
 " Suppose," he said, " that Bennietod and I sit 
 rocking here in this bay — if it is a bay — while you 
 two rest your chins on the top of that ledge of 
 rock up there, and look over. And about to-mor- 
 row or day after we two will venture up behind 
 
 you, or you could send one of the men back " 
 
 " My thunder, "said Bennietod wistfully, "ain't 
 I goin' to get to climb in de pantry window at 
 
 de palace — nor fire out of a loophole- " 
 
 " Bennietod an' I couldn't talk to a prince any- 
 way," said Little Cawthorne; "we'd get our 
 language twisted something dizzy, and probably 
 tell him ' yes, ma'am.' " 
 
136 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 St. George's eyes softened as he looked at the 
 little man. He knew well enough what it cost 
 him to make the suggestion, which the good sense 
 of them all must approve. Not only did Little 
 Cawthorne always sacrifice himself, which is 
 merely good breeding, but he made opportunities 
 to do so, which is both well-bred and virtuous. 
 When Rollo came up with the oil-skins they told 
 him what had been decided, and Rollo, the faith- 
 ful, the expressionless, dropped his eyelids, but 
 he could not banish from his voice the wistfulness 
 that he might have been one to stay behind. 
 
 " Sometimes it is best for a person to change 
 his mind, sir," was his sole comment. 
 
 Presently the little green dory drew away from 
 The Aloha, and they left her lying as much at her 
 ease as if the phantom island before her were in 
 every school-boy's geography, with a scale of 
 miles and a list of the principal exports attached. 
 
 " If we had diving dresses, adon," Jarvo sug- 
 gested, " we might have gone down through the 
 sluice and entered by the lagoon where the sub- 
 marines pass." 
 
 " Jove," said Amory, trying to row and adjust 
 his pince-nez at the same time, "Chillingworth 
 will never forgive us for missing that." 
 
 " You couldn't have done it," shouted Little 
 Cawthorne derisively, from the deck of the yacht, 
 " you didn't wear your rubbers. If anybody 
 sticks a knife in you send up a r-r-r-ocket! " 
 
THE PORCH OF THE MORNING 137 
 
 The landing, effected with the utmost caution, 
 was upon a flat stone already a few inches sub- 
 merged by the rising tide. Looking up at the 
 jagged, beetling world above them their task 
 appeared hopeless enough. But Jarvo found 
 footing in an instant, and St. George andAmory 
 pressed closely behind him, Rollo and little Akko 
 silently bringing up the rear and carrying the 
 oil-skins. Slowly and cautiously as they made 
 their way it was but a few minutes until the three 
 standing on the deck, and Barnay open-mouthed 
 in the dory, saw the sinuous line of the five bodies 
 twist up the tortuous course considerably above 
 the blazoned emblem of the White Blade. 
 
 In truth, with Jarvo to set light foot where no 
 foot seemed ever before to have been set, with 
 Jarvo to inspect every twig and pebble and to 
 take sharp turns where no turn seemed possible, 
 the ascent, perilous as it was, proved to be no 
 such superhuman feat as from below it had 
 appeared. But it seemed interminable. Even 
 when the sea lay far beneath them and the faces 
 of the watchers on the deck of The Aloha were no 
 longer distinguishable, the grim wall continued 
 to stretch upward, melting into the sky's late blue. 
 
 The afterglow laid a fair path along the water, 
 and the warm dusk came swiftly out of the east. 
 At snail's pace, now with heads bent to knees, 
 now standing erect to draw themselves up by 
 the arms or to leap a wicked-looking crevice, th^ 
 
138 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 four took their way up the black side of the 
 rock. Birds of the cHffs, disturbed from long 
 rest, wheeled and screamed about them, almost 
 brushing their faces with long, fearless wings. 
 There was an occasional shelf where, with backs 
 against the wall spotted with crystals of feldspar, 
 they waited to breathe, hardly looking down 
 from the dizzy ledge. Great slabs of obsidian 
 were piled about them between stretches of 
 calcareous stone, and the soil which was like 
 beds of old lava covered by thin layers of lime- 
 stone, was everywhere pierced by sharp shoulders 
 of stone lying in savage disarray. Gradually 
 rock-slides and rock-edges yielded a less insecure 
 footing on the upper reaches, but the chasms 
 widened and water dripping from lateral cre- 
 vasses made the vague trail slippery and the 
 occasional earth sodden and treacherous. For 
 a quarter of a mile their way lay over a kind 
 of porous gravel into which their feet sank, 
 and beyond at the summit of a ridge Jarvo 
 halted and threw back to them a summary warn- 
 ing to prepare for " a long leap." A sharp 
 angle of rock, jutting out, had been split down 
 the middle by some ancient force — very likely 
 a Paleozoic butterfly had brushed it with its 
 wing — and the edges had been worn away in a 
 treacherous slope to the very lip of the crumbling 
 promontory. From this edge to the edge of the 
 opposite abutment there was a gap of wicked 
 
THE PORCH OF THE MORNING 139 
 
 width, and between was a sheer drop into space 
 wherefrom rose the sound of tumbling waters. 
 When Jarvo had taken the leap, easily and 
 gracefully, alighting on the other side like the 
 greyhound that he resembled, and the others, fol- 
 lowing, had cleared the edge by as safe a margin 
 as if the abyss were a minor field-day event, 
 St. George and Amory looked back with sudden 
 wonder over the path by which they had come. 
 
 " I feel as if I weighed about ninety pounds," 
 said St. George; " am I fading away or anything?" 
 
 Amory stood still. 
 
 " I was thinking the same thing," he said. 
 ** By Jove — do you suppose — what if Little Caw- 
 thorne hit the other end of the nail, as usual? 
 Suppose the specific gravity — suppose there is 
 something — suppose it doesn't hold good in this 
 dimension that a body — ^by Jove," said Amory, 
 " wouldn't that be the deuce? " 
 
 St. George looked at Jarvo, bounding up the 
 stony way as easily as if he were bounding down. 
 
 " Ah well now," he said, " you know on the 
 moon an ordinary man would weigh only twenty- 
 six or seven pounds. Why not here? We aren't 
 held down by any map! " 
 
 They laughed at the pleasant enormity of the 
 idea and were hurrying on when Akko, behind 
 them, broke his settled silence. 
 
 " In America," he said, " a man feels like a 
 mountain. Here he feels like a man." 
 
140 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " What do you mean by that? " demanded 
 St. George uneasily. But Akko said no more, 
 and St. George and Amory, with a disquieting 
 idea that each was laughing at the other, let 
 the matter drop. 
 
 From there on the way was easier, leveling 
 occasionally, frequently swelling to gentle ridges, 
 and at last winding up a steep trail that was not 
 difficult to keep in spite of the fast falling night. 
 And at length Jarvo, rounding a huge hummock 
 where converging ridges met, scrambled over 
 the last of these and threw himself on the ground. 
 
 " Now," he said simply. 
 
 The two men stood beside him and looked 
 down. It seemed to St. George that they 
 looked not at all upon a prospect but upon the 
 sudden memory of a place about which he might 
 have dreamed often and often and, waking, had 
 not been able to remember, though its familiarity 
 had continued insistently to beat at his heart; 
 or that in what was spread before him lay the 
 satisfaction of Burne- Jones' wistful definition of 
 a picture: "... a beautiful, romantic dream 
 of something that never was, never will be, in a 
 light better than any light that ever shone, in a 
 land no one can define or remember, only 
 desire ..." yet it was to St. George as if he had 
 reached no strange land, no alien conditions; but 
 rather that he had come home. It was like a 
 home-coming in which nothing is changed, none 
 
THE PORCH OF THE MORNING 141 
 
 of the little improvements has been made which 
 we resent because no one has thought to tell us 
 of them; but where everything is even more as 
 one remembers than one knew that one remem- 
 bered. 
 
 At his feet lay a pleasant valley filled with 
 the purple of deep twilight. Far below a lagoon 
 caught the late light and spread it in a pattern 
 among hidden green. In the midst of the valley 
 towered the mountain whose summit, royally 
 crowned by shining towers, had been visible from 
 the open sea. At its feet, glittering in the abun- 
 dant light shed upon its white wall and dome 
 and pinnacle, stood Med, the King's City — ^but 
 its light was not the light of the day, for that 
 was gone; nor of the moon, not risen; and no 
 false lights vexed the dark. Yet he was looking 
 into a cup of light, as clear as the light in a gazing- 
 crystal and of a quality as wholly at variance 
 with reality. The rocky coast of Yaque was 
 literally a massive, natural wall; and girt by it 
 lay the heart of the island, fertile and populous 
 and clothed in mystery. This new face which 
 Nature turned to him was a glorified face, and 
 some way it meant what he meant. 
 
 St. George was off for a few steps, trampling 
 impatiently over the coarse grass of the bank. 
 Somewhere in that dim valley — was she there, 
 was she there? Was she in trouble, did she need 
 him, did she think of him? St. George went 
 
142 ROMANCE ISLAND . 
 
 through the ancient, delicious list as conscien- 
 tiously as if he were the first lover, and she were 
 the first princess, and this were the first ascent of 
 Yaque that the world had ever known. For by 
 some way of miracle, the mystery of the island 
 was suddenly to him the very mystery of his 
 love, and the two so filled his heart that he 
 could not have told of which he was thinking. 
 That which had lain, shadowy and delicious, in 
 his soul these many days — not so very many, 
 either, if one counts the suns — was become not 
 only a thing of his soul but a thing of the outside 
 world, almost of the visible world, something that 
 had existed for ever and which he had just found 
 out; and here, wrapped in nameless light, lay 
 its perfect expression. When a shaft of silver 
 smote the long grass at his feet, and the edge 
 of the moon rose above the mountain, St. 
 George turned with a poignant exultation — did 
 a mere victory over half a continent ever make a 
 man feel like that? — and strode back to the others. 
 
 '* Come on," he called ringingly in a voice that 
 did everything but confess in words that some- 
 thing heavenly sweet was in the man's mind, 
 "let's be off!" 
 
 Amory was carefully lighting his pipe. 
 
 " I feel sort of tense," he explained, " as if the 
 whole place would explode if I threw down my 
 match. What do you think of it? " 
 
 St. George did not answer. 
 
THE PORCH OF THE MORNING 143 
 
 "It's a place where all the lines lead up," he 
 was saying to himself, " as they do in a cathe- 
 dral." 
 
 The four went the fragrant way that ^led 
 to the heart of the island. First the path fol- 
 lowed the high bank the branches of whose 
 tropical undergrowth brushed their faces with 
 brief gift of perfume. On the other side was 
 a wood of slim trunks, all depths of shadow 
 and delicacies of borrowed light in little pools. 
 Ever^'^vhere, everywhere was a chorus of slight 
 voices, from bark and air and secret moss, singing 
 no forced notes of monotone, but piping a true 
 song of the gladness of earth, plaintive, sweet, 
 indescribably harmonious. It came to St. George 
 that this was the way the woods at night would 
 always sound if, somehow, one were able to hear 
 the sweetness that poured itself out. Even that 
 familiar sense in the night-woods that something 
 is about to happen was deliciously present with 
 him ; and though Amory went on quietly enough, 
 St. George swam down that green way, much as one 
 dreams of floating along a street, above-heads. 
 
 The path curved, and went hesitatingly down 
 many terraces. Here, from the dimness of the 
 marge of the island, they gradually emerged 
 into the beginnings of the faint light. It was 
 not like entering upon dawn, or upon the moon- 
 light. It was by no means like going to meet 
 the lights of a city. It was literally " a light 
 
144 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 better than any light that ever shone," and 
 it wrapped them round first like a veil and 
 then like a mantle. Dimly, as if released from 
 the censer-smoke of a magician's lamp, boughs 
 and glades, lines and curves were set free of the 
 dark; and St. George and Amory could see about 
 them. Yet it did not occur to either to distrust 
 the phenomenon, or to regard it as unnatural or 
 the fruit of any unnatural law. It was somehow 
 quite as convincing to them as is his first sight of 
 electric light to the boy of the countryside, and 
 no more to be regarded as witchcraft. 
 
 St. George was silent. It was as if he were on 
 the threshold of Far- Away, within the Porch of the 
 Morning of some day divine. The place was so 
 poignantly like the garden of a picture that one 
 has seen as a child, and remembered as a place 
 past all speech beautiful, and yet failed ever to rea- 
 lize in after years, or to make any one remember, 
 or, save fleetingly in dreams to see once more, 
 since the picture-book is never, never chanced 
 upon again. Sometimes he had dreamed of a 
 great sunny plain, with armies marching; some- 
 times he had awakened at hearing the chimes, and 
 fancied sleepily that it was infinite music; some- 
 times, in the country in the early morning, he had 
 had an unreasonable, unaccountable moment of 
 perfect happiness : and now the fugitive element 
 of them all seemed to have been crystallized and 
 made his own in that floating walk down the 
 
THE PORCH OF THE MORNING 145 
 
 wooded terraces of this unknown world. And 
 yet he could not have told whether the element 
 was contained in that beauty, or in his thought 
 of Olivia. 
 
 At last they emerged upon a narrow, grassy 
 terrace where white steps mounted to a wide 
 parapet. Jarvo ran up the steps and turned: 
 
 " Behold Med, adon," he said modestly, as if 
 he had at that moment stirred it up in a sauce- 
 pan and baked it before their astonished eyes. 
 
 They were standing at the top of an immense 
 flight of steps extending as far to right and left 
 as they could see, and leading down by easy 
 stages and wide landings to the white-paved city 
 itself. The clear light flooded the scene — ^lucid, 
 vivid, many-peopled. Far as the eye could see, 
 broad streets extended, lined with structures rival- 
 ing in splendour and beauty those unforgotten 
 " topless towers." Temples, palaces, and public 
 buildings rose, storey upon storey, built of hewn 
 stones of great size; and noble arches faced an 
 open square before a temple of colossal masonry 
 crowning an eminence in the centre of the city. 
 Directly in line with this eminence rose the 
 mountain upon whose summit stood the far-seen 
 pillars where burned the solitary light. 
 
 If an enchanted city had risen from the waves 
 because some one had chanced to speak the right 
 word, it could have been no more bewildering; and 
 yet the look of this city was so substantial, so 
 
146 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 adapted to all commonplace needs, so essentially 
 the scene of every-day activity and purpose, that 
 dozens of towns of petty European principalities 
 seem far less actual and practicable homes of 
 men. Busy citizens hurrying, the bark of a dog, 
 the mere tone of a temple bell spoke the ordinary 
 occupations of all the world; and upon the chief 
 street the moon looked down as tranquilly as if 
 the causeway were a continuation of Fifth 
 Avenue. 
 
 But it was as if the spirit of adventure in St. 
 George had suddenly turned and questioned him, 
 saying : 
 
 " What of Olivia? " 
 
 For Olivia gone to a far-away island to find her 
 father was subject of sufficient anxiety; but 
 Olivia in the power of a pretender who might have 
 at command such undreamed resources was more 
 than cool reason could comprehend. That was 
 the principal impression that Med, the King's 
 City, made upon St. George. 
 
 " To the right, adon," Jarvo was saying, 
 " where the walls are highest — that is the palace 
 of the prince, the Palace (if the Litany." 
 
 " And the king's palace? " St. George asked 
 eagerly. 
 
 Jarvo lifted his face to the solitary summit light 
 Upon the mountain. 
 
 '* But how does one ascend? " cried St. George. 
 
 " By permission of Prince Tabnit," replied 
 
THE PORCH OF THE MOROTNG 147 
 
 Jarv^o, " one is borne up by six imperial carriers, 
 trained in the service from birth. One attempting 
 the ascent alone would be dashed in pieces." 
 
 " No municipal line of airships? " ventured 
 Amory in slow astonishment. 
 
 Jarvo did not quite get this. 
 
 " The airships, adon," he said, " belong to the 
 imperial household and are kept at the summit 
 of Mount Khalak." 
 
 " A trust," comprehended Amory; " an abso- 
 lute monarchy is a bit of a trust, anyhow. Of 
 course, it's sometimes an outraged trust . . ." he 
 murmured on. 
 
 " The adon," said Jarvo humbly, " will under- 
 stand that we, I and Akko, have borne great 
 risk. It is necessary that we make our peace 
 with all speed, if that may be. The very walls 
 are the ears of Prince Tabnit, and it is better to 
 be behind those walls. May the gods permit the 
 possible." 
 
 " Do you mean to say," asked St. George, 
 " that we too would better look out the prince 
 at once? " 
 
 " The ad6n is wise," said Jarvo simply, " but 
 nothing is hid from Prince Tabnit." 
 
 St. George considered. In this mysterious 
 place, whose ways were as unknown to him and 
 to his companions as was the etiquette of the 
 court of the moon, clearly diplomacy was the 
 better part of valour. It was wiser to seek out 
 
148 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Prince Tabnit, if he had really arrived on the 
 island, than to be upon the defensive. 
 
 " Ah, very well," he said briefly, " we will 
 visit the prince." 
 
 "Farewell, adon," said Jarvo, bowing low, 
 " may the gods permit the possible." 
 
 " Of course you will communicate with us * 
 to-morrow," suggested St. George, " so that if 
 we wish to send RoUo down to the yacht " 
 
 " The gods will permit the possible, adon," 
 Jarvo repeated gently. 
 
 There was a flash of Akko's white teeth and 
 the two little men were gone. 
 
 St. George and Amory turned to the descending 
 of the wide white steps. Such immense, impos- 
 sible white steps and such a curious place for 
 these two to find themselves, alone, with a valet. 
 Struck by the same thought they looked at 
 each other and nodded, laughing a little. 
 
 " Alone in the distance," said Amory, emptying 
 his pipe, " and not a cab to be seen." 
 
 Rollo thrust forward his lean, shadowed face. 
 
 " Shall I look about for a 'ansom, sir? " he 
 inquired with perfect gravity. 
 
 St. George hardly heard. 
 
 " It's like cutting into a great, smooth sheet of 
 white paper," he said whimsically, " and making 
 any figure you want to make." 
 
 Before they reached the bottom of the steps 
 they divined, issuing from an isolated, temple- 
 
The porch oi? the morning 149 
 
 seeming building below, a train of sober-liveried 
 attendants, all at first glance resembling Jarvo 
 and Akko. These defiled leisurely toward the 
 strangers and lined up irregularly at the foot of 
 the steps. 
 
 " Enter Trouble," said Amory happily. 
 
 They found themselves confronting, in the midst 
 of the attendants, an olive man with no angles, 
 whose face, in spite of its health and even wealth 
 of contour, was ridiculously grave, as if the papier- 
 macM man in the down-town window should 
 have had a sudden serious thought just before 
 his papier-machS incarnation. 
 
 " Permit me," said the man in perfect English 
 and without bowing, " to bring to you the greeting 
 of his Highness, Prince Tabnit, and his welcome 
 to Yaque. I am Cassyrus, an officer of the 
 government. At the command of his Highness I 
 am come to conduct you to the palace." 
 
 " The prince is most kind," said St. George, 
 and added eagerly: " He is returned, then? " 
 
 " Assuredly. Three days ago," was the reply. 
 
 " And the king — is he returned? " asked St. 
 George. 
 
 The man shook his head, and his very anxiety 
 seemed important. 
 
 " His Majesty, the King," he affirmed, " is still 
 most lamentably absent from his throne and his 
 people." 
 
 *' And his daughter? " demanded St. George 
 
150 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 then, who could not possibly have waited an 
 instant longer to put that question. 
 
 " The daughter of his Majesty, the King," 
 said Cassyrus, looking still more as if he were 
 having his portrait painted, " will in three days 
 be recognized publicly as Princess of Yaque." 
 
 St. George's heart gave a great bound. Thank 
 Heaven, she was here, and safe. His hope and 
 confidence soared heavenward. And by some 
 miracle she was to take her place as the people of 
 Yaque had petitioned. But what was the mean- 
 ing of that news of the prince's treachery which 
 Jarvo and Akko had come bearing? The prince 
 had faithfully fulfilled his mission and had con- 
 ducted the daughter of the King of Yaque safely 
 to her father's country. What did it all mean? 
 
 St. George hardly noted the majestic square 
 through which they were passing. Impressions 
 of great buildings, dim white and misty grey and 
 bathed in light, bewilderingly succeeded one 
 another; but, as in the days which followed the 
 news of his inheritance, he found himself now in a 
 temper of unsurprise, in that mental atmosphere — 
 properly the normal — which regards all miracle 
 as natural law. He even omitted to note what 
 was of passing strangeness: that neither the 
 retinue of the minister nor the others upon the 
 streets cast more than casual glances at their 
 unusual visitors. But when the great gates of the 
 palace were reached his attention was challenged 
 
THE PORCH OF THE MORNING 151 
 
 and held, for though mere marvels may become 
 the air one breathes, beauty will never cease 
 to amaze, and the vista revealed was of almost 
 disconcerting beauty. 
 
 Avenues of brightness, arches of green, 
 glimpses of airy columns, of boundless lavras set 
 with high, pyramidal shrines, great places of quiet 
 and straight line, alleys whose shadow taught 
 the necessity of mystery, the sound of water — 
 the pure, positive element of it all — and every- 
 where, above, below and far, that delicate, laby- 
 rinth light, diffused from no visible source. It 
 was as if some strange compound had changed the 
 character of the dark itself, transmuting it to a 
 subtle essence more exquisite than light, inhabit- 
 ing it with wonders. And high above their heads 
 where this translucence seemed to mix with the 
 upper air and to fuse with moonbeams, sprang 
 almost joyously the pale domes and cornices of 
 the palace, sending out floating streamers and 
 pennons of colours nameless and unknown. 
 
 "Jupiter," said the human Amory in awe, "what 
 a picture for the first page of the supplement." 
 
 St. George hardly heard him. The picture held 
 so perfectly the elusive charm of the Question — 
 the Question which profoundly underlies all things. 
 It was like a triumphant burst of music 
 which yet ends on a high note, with imperfect 
 close, hinting passionately at some triumph still 
 loftier. 
 
152 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 From either side of the wall of the palace yard 
 came glittering a detachment of the Royal Golden 
 Guard, clad in uniforms of unrelieved cloth-of- 
 gold. These halted, saluted, wheeled, and between 
 their shining ranks St. George and Amory footed 
 quietly on, followed by Rollo carrying the yellow 
 oil-skins. To St. George there was relief in 
 the motion, relief in the vastness, and almost a 
 boy's delight in the pastime of living the hour. 
 
 Yet Royal Golden Guard, majestic avenues, 
 and towered palace with its strange banners 
 floating in strange light, held for him but one 
 reality. And when they had mounted the steps 
 of the mighty entrance, and the sound of 
 unrecognized music reached him — a very myth of 
 music, elusive, vagrant, fugued — and the palace 
 doors swung open to receive them, he could have 
 shouted aloud on the brilliant threshold: 
 
 " He says she is here in Yaque." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 
 
 So there were St. George and Amory presently 
 domiciled in a prince's palace such as Asia and 
 Europe have forgotten, as by and by they will 
 forget the Taj Mahal and the Bon March^. And 
 at nine o'clock the next morning in a certain 
 Tyrian purple room in the west wing of the 
 Palace of the Litany the two sat breakfasting. 
 
 " One always breakfasts," observed St. George. 
 "The first day that the first men spend on Mars I 
 wonder whether the first thing they do will be to 
 breakfast." 
 
 " Poor old Mars has got to step down now," 
 said Amory. " We are one farther on. I don't 
 know how it will be, but if I felt on Mars the way I 
 do now, I should assent to breakfast. Shouldn't 
 you? " 
 
 " On my life, Toby," said St. George, " as an 
 idealist you are disgusting. Yes, I should." 
 
 The table had been spread before an open win- 
 dow, and the window looked down upon the palace 
 garden, steeped in the gold of the sunny morning, 
 
 »33 
 
154 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 and formal with aisles of mighty, flowering trees. 
 Within, the apartment was lofty, its walls fash- 
 ioned to lift the eye to light arches, light capitals, 
 airy traceries, and spaces of the hue of old ivory, 
 held in heavenly quiet. The sense of colour, 
 colour both captive and atmospheric, was a new 
 and persistent delight, for it was colour purified, 
 specialized, and infinitely extended in either direc- 
 tion from the crudity of the seven-winged spec- 
 trum. The room was like an alcove of outdoors, 
 not divorced from the open air and set in contra- 
 distinction, but made a continuation of its space 
 and order and ancient repose — a kind of exquisite 
 porch of light. 
 
 Across this porch of light Rollo stepped, bear- 
 ing a covered dish. The little breakfast-table and 
 the laden side-table were set with vessels of 
 rock-crystal and drinking-cups of silver gilt, 
 and breakfast consisted of delicately-prepared 
 sea-food, a pulpy fruit, thin wine and a paste of 
 delicious powdered gums. These things Rollo 
 served quite as if he were managing oatmeal 
 and eggs and china. One would have said 
 that he had been brought up between the covers 
 of an ancient history, nothing in consequence 
 being so old or so new as to amaze him. Upon 
 their late arrival the evening before he had 
 instantly moved about his duties in all the quiet 
 decorum with which he officiated in three rooms 
 and a bath, emptying the oil-skins, disposing 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 155 
 
 of their contents in great cedar chests, and, from 
 certain rich and alien garments laid out for the 
 guests, pretending as unconcernedly to fleck 
 lint as if they had been broadcloth from Fifth 
 Avenue. He stood bending above the breakfast- 
 table, his lean, shadowed hands perfectly at home, 
 his lean, shadowed face all automatic attention. 
 
 " Rollo," said St. George, " go and look out 
 the window and see if Sodom is smoking. ' ' 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Rollo, and moved to the 
 nearest casement and bent his look submissively 
 below. 
 
 " Everything quiet, sir," he reported literally; 
 " a very warm day, sir. But it's easy to sleep, 
 sir, no matter how warm the days are if only the 
 nights are cool. Begging your pardon, sir." 
 
 St. George nodded. 
 
 " You don't see Jezebel down there in the 
 trees," he pressed him, " or Elissa setting off 
 to found Carthage? Chaldea and Egypt all 
 calm? " he anxiously put it. 
 
 Rollo stirred uneasily. 
 
 " There's a couple o' blue-tailed birds scrappin' 
 in a palm tree, sir," he submitted hopefully. 
 
 " Ah," said St. George, " yes. There would be. 
 Now, if you like," he gave his servant permission, 
 " you may go to the festivals or the funeral games 
 or wherever you choose to-day. Or perhaps," 
 he remembered with solicitude, " you would pre- 
 fer to be present at the wedding-of-the-land- 
 
156 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 water-with-the-sea-water, providing, as I suspect, 
 Tyre is handy? " 
 
 " Thank you, sir," said Rollo doubtfully. 
 
 " Mind you put your money on the crack disc- 
 thrower, though," warned St. George, " and you 
 might put up a couple of darics for me." 
 
 " No," languidly begged Amory, "pray no. You 
 are getting your periods mixed something horrid." 
 
 " A person's recreation is as good for him as 
 his food, sir," proclaimed Rollo, sententious, 
 anxious to agree. 
 
 " Food," said Amory languidly, " this isn't 
 food — it's molten history, that's what it is. 
 Think — this is what they had to eat at the cafes 
 boulevardes of Gomorrah. And to think we've 
 been at Tony's, before now. Do you remember," 
 he asked raptly, " those brief and savoury ban- 
 quets around one o'clock, at Tony's? From 
 where Little Cawthome once went away wearing 
 two omelettes instead of his overshoes? Don't 
 tell me that Tonycana and all this belong to the 
 same system in space. Don't tell me " 
 
 He stopped abruptly and his eyes sought those 
 of St. George. It was all so incredible, and 
 yet it was all so real and so essentially, distract- 
 ingly natural. 
 
 " I feel as if we had stepped through some- 
 thing, to somewhere else. And yet, somehow, there 
 is so little difference. Do you suppose when people 
 die they don't notice any difference, either? " 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 157 
 
 ^" What I want to know," said Amory, filling 
 his^ pipe, " is how it's going to look in print. 
 Think of Crass— digging for head-lines." 
 
 St. George rose abruptly. Amory was delicious, 
 
 especially his drawl; but there were times 
 
 " Print it, " he exclaimed, " you might as well 
 try to print the absolute." 
 Amory nodded. 
 
 " Oh, if you're going to be Neoplatonic," he 
 said, "I'm off to hum an Orphic hymn. Isn't 
 it about time for the prince? I want to get out 
 with the camera, while the light is good." 
 
 The lateness of the hour of their arrival at the 
 palace the evening before had prevented the 
 prince from receiving them, but he had sent a 
 most courteous message announcing that he him- 
 self would wait upon them at a time which he 
 appointed. While they were abiding his coming, 
 Rollo setting aside the dishes, Amory smoking' 
 strolling up and down, and examining the faint 
 symbolic devices upon the walls' tiling, St. George 
 stood before one of the casements, and looked 
 over the aisles of flowering tree-tops to the 
 grim, grey sides of Mount Khalak, inscrutable, 
 inaccessible, now not even hinting at the walls 
 and towers upon its secret summit. He was 
 thinking how heavenly curious it was that 
 the most wonderful thing in his common- 
 place world of New York— that is, his meeting 
 with Olivia— should, out here in this world of 
 
158 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 things wonderful beyond all dream, still hold 
 supreme its place as the sovereign wonder, the 
 sovereign delight. 
 
 " I dare say that means something," he said 
 vaguely to himself, "and I dare say all the people 
 who are — in love — know what it does mean," 
 and at this his spirit of adventure must have 
 nodded at him, as if it understood, too. 
 
 When, in a little time. Prince Tabnit appeared 
 at the open door of the " porch of light," it 
 was as if he had parted from St. George in McDou- 
 gle Street but the night before. He greeted him 
 with exquisite cordiality and his welcome to 
 Amory was like a welcome unfeigned. He was 
 clad in white of no remembered fashion, with the 
 green gem burning on his breast, but his manner 
 was that of one perfectly tailored and about the 
 most cosmopolitan offices of modernity. One 
 might have told him one's most subtly humour- 
 ous story and rested certain of his smile. 
 
 " I wonder," he asked with engaging hesitation 
 when he was seated, " whether I may have a 
 — cigarette? That is the name ? Yes, a cigarette. 
 Tobacco is unknown in Yaque. We have invented 
 no colonies useful for the luxury. How can it be 
 — forgive me — that your people, who seem 
 remote from poetry, should be the devisers and 
 popularizers of this so poetic pastime ? To breathe 
 in the green of earth and the light of the dead 
 sun! The poetry of your American smoke 
 delights me." 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 159 
 
 St. George smiled as he offered the prince his 
 case, 
 
 " In America," he said, " we devised it as a 
 vice, your Highness. We are obhged to do the 
 same with poetry, if we popularize it." 
 
 And St. George was thinking: 
 
 " Miss Holland. He has seen Miss Holland— 
 perhaps yesterday. Perhaps he will see her 
 to-day. And how in this world am I ever to 
 mention her name?" 
 
 But the prince was in the idlest and most genial 
 of humours. He spoke at once of the matters 
 ^uppermost in the minds of his guests, gave them 
 jnews of the party from New York, told how they 
 iwere in comfort in the palace on the summit of 
 Mount Khalak, struck a momentary tragic note 
 in mention of the mystery still mantling the 
 absence of the king and repeated the announce- 
 ment already made by Cassyrus, the premier, that 
 in two days' time, failing the return of the sov- 
 ereign, the king's daughter would be publicly 
 recognized, with solemn ceremonial, as Princess 
 of Yaque. Then he turned to St. George, his 
 eyes searching him through the haze of smoke. 
 ^^ "Your own coming to Yaque," he said abruptly, 
 " was the result of a sudden decision? " 
 
 " Quite so, your Highness, " replied St. George. 
 " It was wholly unexpected." 
 
 "Then we must try to make it also an 
 unexpected pleasure," suggested the prince 
 lightly. "I am come to ask you to spend the 
 
160 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 day with me in looking about Med, the King's 
 City." 
 
 He dropped the monogrammed stub of his 
 cigarette in a little jar of smaragdos, brought, he 
 mentioned in passing, from a despoiled temple of 
 one of the Chthonian deities of Tyre, and turned 
 toward his guests with a winning smile. 
 
 " Come," he said, " I can no longer postpone 
 my own pleasure in showing you that our nation 
 is the Lady of Kingdoms as once were Babylon 
 and Chaldea." 
 
 It was as if the strange panorama of the night 
 before had once more opened its frame, and they 
 were to step within. As the prince left them 
 St. George turned to Rollo for the novelty of 
 addressing a reality. 
 
 " How do you wish to spend the day, Rollo? " 
 he. asked him. 
 
 Rollo looked pensive. 
 
 " Could I stroll about a bit, sir? " he asked. 
 
 " Stroll! " commanded St. George cheerfully. 
 
 " Thank you, sir," said Rollo. "I always think 
 a man can best learn by observation, sir." 
 
 "Observe! " supplemented his master pleas- 
 antly, as a detachment of the guard appeared to 
 conduct Amory and him below. 
 
 " Don't black up the sandals," Amory warned 
 Rollo as he left him, ** and be back early. We 
 may want you to get us ready for a mastodon 
 hunt." 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 161 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Rollo with simplicity, " I'll be 
 back quite some time before tea-time, sir." 
 
 St. George was smiling as they went down the 
 corridor. He had been vain of his love that, in 
 Yaque as in America, remained the thing it was, 
 supreme and vital. But had not the simplicity 
 of Rollo taken the leap in experience, and 
 likewise without changing? For a moment, as he 
 went down the silent corridors, lofty as the 
 woods, vocal with faint inscriptions on the 
 uncovered stone, the old human doubt assailed 
 him. The very age of the walls was a protest 
 against the assumption that there is a touchstone 
 that is ageless. Even if there is, even if love 
 is unchanging, the very temper of unconcern of 
 his valet might be quite as persistent as love 
 itself. But the gallery emptying itself into a 
 great court open to the blue among graven rafters, 
 St. George promptly threw his doubt to the fresh, 
 heaven-kissing wind that smote their faces, and 
 against mystery and argument and age alike he 
 matched only the happy clamour of his blood. 
 Olivia Holland was on the island, and all the age 
 was gold. In Yaque or on the continents there 
 can be no manner of doubt that this is love, 
 as Love itself loves to be. 
 
 They emerged in the appeasing air of that 
 perfect morning, and the sweetness of the flower- 
 ing trees was everywhere, and wide roads pointed 
 invitingly to undiscovered bournes, and overhead 
 
162 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 in the curving wind floated the flags and stream- 
 ers of those joyous, wizard colours. 
 
 They went out into the rejoicing world, and 
 it was like penetrating at last into the heart of 
 that " land a great way off " which holds captive 
 the wistful thought of the children of earth, and 
 reveals itself as elusively as ecstasy. If one can 
 remember some journey that he has taken long 
 ago — Long Ago and Far Away are the great 
 touchstones — and can remember the glamourie of 
 the hour and forget the substructure of events, 
 if he can recall the pattern and forget the fabric, 
 then he will understand the spirit that informed 
 that first morning in Yaque. It was a morning 
 all compact of wonder and delight — wonder at 
 that which half-revealed itself, delight in the 
 ever-present possibility that here, there, at any 
 moment, Olivia Holland might be met. As for 
 the wonder, that had taken some three thousand 
 years to accumulate, as nearly as one could 
 compute; and as for the delight, that had taken 
 less than ten days to make possible; and yet 
 there is no manner of doubt which held high 
 place in the mind of St. George as the smooth 
 miles fled away from hurrying wheels. 
 
 Such wheels! Motors? St. George asked him- 
 self the question as he took his place beside the 
 prince in the exquisitely light vehicle, Amory 
 following with Cassyrus, and the suites coming 
 after, like the path from a lanthom. For the 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 163 
 
 vehicles were a kind of electric motor, but con- 
 structed exquisitely in a fashion which, far from 
 affronting taste, delighted the eye by leading it to 
 lines of unguessed beauty. They were motors 
 as the ancients would have built them if they 
 had understood the trick of science, motors in 
 which the lines of utility were veiled and taught 
 to be subordinate. The speed attained was by 
 no means great, and the motion was gentle and 
 sacrificed to silence. And when St. George 
 ventured to ask how they had imported the 
 first motors, the prince answered that as Colum- 
 bus was sailing on the waters of the Atlantic at 
 adventure, the people of Yaque were touring 
 the island in electric motors of much the same 
 description, though hardly the clumsiness, of 
 those which he had noticed in New York. 
 
 This was the first astonishment, and other 
 astonishments were to follow. For as they went 
 about the island it was revealed that the 
 remainder of the world is asleep with science 
 for a pillow and the night-lamp of philosophy 
 casting shadows. Yet as the prince exhibited 
 wonders, one after another, St. George, dimly 
 conscious that these are the things that men die 
 to discover, would have given them all for one 
 moment's meeting with Olivia on that high-road 
 of Med. If you come to think of it, this may be 
 why science always has moved so slowly, creep- 
 ing on from point to point. 
 
164 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Thus it came about that when Prince Tabnit 
 indicated a low, pillared, temple -like building as the 
 home of perpetual motion, which gave the power 
 operating the manufactures and water supply of 
 the entire island, St. George looked and understood 
 and resolved to go over the temple before he 
 left Yaque, and then fell a- wondering whether, 
 when he did so, Olivia would be with him. 
 When the prince explained that it is ridiculous 
 to suppose that combustion is the chief means 
 of obtaining light and heat, or that Heaven pro- 
 vided divinely-beautiful forests for the express 
 purpose of their being burned up ; and when he told 
 him that artificial light and heat were effected 
 in a certain reservoir (built with a classic regard 
 for the dignity of its use as a link with unspoken 
 forces) St. George listened, and said over with 
 attention the name of the substance acted upon 
 by emanations — and wondered if Olivia were not 
 afraid of it. So it was all through the exhibition 
 of more wonders scientific and economic than 
 any one has dreamed since every one became a 
 victim of the world's habit of being afraid to 
 dream. Although it is true that when St. 
 George chanced to observe that there were about 
 Med few farms of tilled ground, the prince's 
 reply did startle him into absorbed attention: 
 
 " You are referring to agriculture? " Prince Tab- 
 nit said after a moment's thought. " I know the 
 word from old parchments brought from Phoe- 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 165 
 
 nicia by our ancestors. But I did not know- 
 that the art is in practice anywhere in the world. 
 Do you mean to assure me," cried the prince 
 suddenly, " that the vegetables which I ate in 
 America were raised by what is known as 
 * tilling the soil' ? " 
 
 "How else, your Highness?" doubted St. George, 
 wondering if he were responsible for the fading 
 mentality of the prince. 
 
 Prince Tabnit looked away toward the splen- 
 dour of some new thought. 
 
 " How beautiful," he said, "to subsist on the 
 sun and the dust. Beautiful and lost, like the 
 dreams of Mitylene. But I feel as if I were 
 reading in Genesis," he declared. " Is it possible 
 that in this ' age of science ' of yours it has not 
 occurred to your people that if plants grow 
 by slowly extracting their own elements from 
 the soil, those elements artificially extracted and 
 applied to the seed will render growth and 
 fruitage almost instantaneous?" 
 
 " At all events we've speculated about it," 
 St. George hastened to impart with pride, " just 
 as we do about telephones that will let people 
 see one another when they talk. But nearly 
 every one smiles at both." 
 
 " Don't smile," the prince warned him. " Yaque 
 has perfected both those inventions only since 
 she ceased to smile at their probability. Nothing 
 can be simpler than instantaneous vegetation 
 
166 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Any Egyptian juggler can produce it by using 
 certain acids. We have improved the process until 
 our fruits and vegetables are produced as they are 
 needed, from hour to hour. This was one of the 
 so-called secrets of the ancient Phoenicians — has 
 it never occurred to you as important that the 
 Phoenician name for Dionysos, the god of wine- 
 growers, was lost? " 
 
 Mentally St. George added another barrel to 
 the cargo of The Aloha, and wondered if the 
 Sentinel would start botanical gardens and a 
 lighting plant and turn them to the account of 
 advertisers. 
 
 All the time, mile upon mile, was unrolling 
 before them the unforgetable beauty of the 
 island. So perfectly were its features mar- 
 shaled and so exact were its proportions that, 
 as in many great experiences and as in all great 
 poems, one might not, without familiarity, recall 
 its detail, but must instead remain wrapped in 
 the glory of the whole. The avenues, wide as 
 a river, swept between white banks of majestic 
 buildings combining with the magic of great mass 
 the pure beauty of virginal line. Line, the joy of 
 line, the glory of line, almost, St. George thought, 
 the divinity of line, was everywhere manifest; and 
 everywhere too the divinity of colour, no longer 
 a quality extraneous, laid on as insecure fancy 
 dictates, but, by some law long unrevealed, now 
 actually identified with the object which it not 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 167 
 
 SO much decorated as purified. Tlie most inter- 
 esting of the thoroughfares led from the Bury- 
 chorus, or public square, along the lagoon. This 
 fair water, extending from Med to Melita, was 
 greenly shored and dotted with strange little 
 pleasure crafts with exquisite sweeping prows 
 and silken canopies. Before a white temple, 
 knee-deep in whose flowered ponds the ibises 
 dozed and contemplated, was anchored the impe- 
 rial trireme, with delicately-embroidered sails 
 and prow and poop of forgotten metals. 
 From within, temple music sounded softly and 
 was never permitted to be silenced, as the flame 
 of the Vestals might never be extinguished. Here 
 on the shores had begun the morning traffic of 
 itinerant merchants of Med and Melita, compelled 
 by law to carry on their exchange in the morning 
 only, when the light is least lovely. Upon can- 
 opied wagons drawn by strange animals, with 
 shining horns, were displayed for sale all the 
 pleasantest excuses for commerce — ostrich feath- 
 ers, gums, gems, quicksilver, papyrus, bales of 
 fair cloth, pottery, wine and oranges. The 
 sellers of salt and fish and wool and skins were 
 forced down under the wharfs of the lagoon, 
 and there endeavoured to attract attention by 
 displaying fanciful and lovely banners and by 
 liberating faint perfumes of the native orris and 
 algum. Street musicians, playing tunefully upon 
 the zither and upon the crowd, wandered, wear- 
 
168 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 ing wreaths of fir, and clustered about stalls 
 where were offered tenuous blades, and statues, 
 and temple vessels filled with wine and flowers. 
 
 At the head of the street leading to the temple 
 of Baaltis (My Lady — Aphrodite) the prince's 
 motor was checked while a procession of pilgrims, 
 white-robed and carrying votive offerings, passed 
 before them, the votive tablet to the Lady Tanith 
 and the Face of Baal being borne at the head of 
 the line by a dignitary in a smart electric vic- 
 toria. This was one of the frequent Festival 
 Embassies to Melita, to combine religious rites 
 with mourning games and the dedication of the 
 tablet, and there was considerable delay incident 
 to the delivery of a wireless message to the 
 dignitary with the tablet of the Semitic inscrip- 
 tion. St. George wondered vaguely why, in a 
 world of marvels, progress should not already 
 have outstripped the need of any communi- 
 cation at all. This reminded him of some- 
 thing at which the prince had hinted away off 
 in another aeon, in another world, when St. 
 George had first seen him, and there followed 
 ten minutes of talk not to be forgotten. 
 
 " Would it be possible for you to tell me, 
 your Highness," St. George asked, — and there- 
 after even a lover must have forgiven the brief 
 apostasy of his thought — "how it can be that 
 you know the English? How you are able to 
 speak it here in Yaque? " 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 169 
 
 The motor moved forward as the procession 
 passed, and struck into a magnificent country- 
 avenue bordered by trees, tall as elms and 
 fragrant as acacias. 
 
 " I can tell you, yes," said the prince, " but 
 I warn you that you will not in the least under- 
 stand me. I dare say, however, that I may illus- 
 trate by something of which you know. Do 
 there chance to be, for example, any children in 
 America who are regarded as prodigies of certain 
 understanding? " 
 
 " You mean," St. George asked, " children who 
 can play on a musical instrument without knowing 
 how they do it, and so on? " 
 
 " Quite so," said the prince with interest. 
 
 " Many, your Highness," affirmed St. George. 
 ** I myself know a child of seven who can play 
 most difficult piano compositions without ever 
 having been taught, or knowing in the least how 
 he does it." 
 
 " Do you think of any one else? " asked the 
 prince. 
 
 " Yes," said St. George, " I know a little lad of 
 about five, I should say, who can add enormous 
 numbers and instantly give the accurate result. 
 And he has no idea how he does that, and no one 
 has ever taught him to count above twelve. 
 Oh — every one knows those cases, I fancy." 
 
 " Has any one ever explained them, Mr. St. 
 George? " asked the prince. 
 
170 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " How should they? " asked St. George simply. 
 *' They are prodigies." 
 
 " Quite so," said the prince again. " It is almost 
 incredible that these instances seem to suggest 
 to no one that there must be other ways to ' learn ' 
 music and mathematics — and, therefore, every- 
 thing else — than those known to your civilization. 
 Let me assure you that such cases as these, far 
 from being miracles and prodigies, are perfectly 
 normal when once the principle is understood, as 
 we of Yaque understand it. It is the average 
 intelligence among your people which is abnormal, 
 inasmuch as it is unable to perform these func- 
 tions which it was so clearly intended to exer- 
 cise." 
 
 " Do you mean," asked St. George, " that we 
 need not learn — as we understand ' learn' ? " 
 
 " Precisely," said the prince simply. " You are 
 accustomed, I was told in New York, to say that 
 there is ' no royal road to learning. ' On the con- 
 trary, I say to you that the possibilities of these 
 children are in every one. But to my intense 
 surprise I find that we of Yaque are the only ones 
 in the world who understand how to use these 
 possibilities. Our system of education consists 
 simply in mastering this principle. After that, 
 all knowledge — all languages, for instance — 
 everything — ^belongs to us." 
 
 St. George looked away to the rugged sides of 
 Mount Khalak, lying in its clouds of iris morning 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 171 
 
 mist, unreal as a mountain of Ultima Thule. It 
 was all right — what he had just been hearing was 
 a part of this ultimate and fantastic place to 
 which he had come. And yet he was real enough, 
 and so, according to certain approved dialectic, 
 perhaps these things were realities, too. He stole 
 a glance at the prince's profile. Here was actually 
 a man who was telling him that he need not 
 have faced Latin and Greek and calculus; that 
 they might have been his of his own accord if 
 only he had understood how to call them in! 
 
 " That would make a ver}^ joHy thing of col- 
 lege," he pensively conceded. " You could not 
 show me how it is managed, your Highness? " 
 he besought. " That will hardly come in bulk, 
 too " 
 
 The prince shook his head, smiling. 
 
 " I could not ' show you,' as you say," he 
 answered, "any more than I could, at present, 
 send a wireless communication without the appa- 
 ratus — though it will be only a matter of time 
 until that is accomplished, too." 
 
 ■ St. George pulled himself up sharply. He 
 glanced over his shoulder and saw Amory 
 polishing his pince-nez and looking quite as if 
 he were leaning over hansom-doors in the park, 
 and he turned quickly to the prince, half con- 
 vinced that he had been mocked. 
 
 "Suppose, your Highness," he said, " that I were 
 to print what you have just told me on the front 
 
172 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 page of a New York morning paper, for people 
 to glance over with their coffee? Do you think 
 that even the most open-minded among them 
 would believe that there is such a place as Yaque?" 
 
 The prince smiled curiously, and his long- 
 fringed lids drooped in momentary contempla- 
 tion. The auto turned into that majestic avenue 
 which terminates in the Eurychorus before the 
 Palace of the Litany. St. George's eye eagerly 
 swept the long white way. At its far end stood 
 Mount Khalak. She must have passed over this 
 very ground. 
 
 " There is," the prince's smooth voice broke 
 in upon his dream, " no such place as Yaque — 
 as you understand ' place.' " 
 
 " I beg your pardon, your Highness? " St. 
 George doubted blankly. Good Heavens. Maybe 
 there had arrived in, Yaque no Olivia, as he 
 understood Olivia. 
 
 " You showed some surprise, I remember," 
 continued the prince, " when I told you, in McDou- 
 gle Street, that we of Yaque understand the 
 Fourth Dimension." 
 
 McDougle Street. The sound smote the ear 
 of St. George much as would the clang of the fire 
 patrol in the midst of light opera. 
 
 " Yes, yes," he said, his attention now com- 
 pletely chained. Yet even then it was not that 
 he cared so absorbingly about the Fourth Dimen- 
 sion. But what if this were all some trick and 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 173 
 
 if, in this strange land, Olivia had simply been 
 flashed before his eyes by the aid of mirrors? 
 
 " I find," said the prince with deliberation, 
 " that in America you are familiar with the 
 argument that, if your people understood only 
 length and breadth and did not understand the 
 Third Dimension — thickness — you could not then 
 conceive of lifting, say, a square or a triangle 
 and laying it down upon another square or tri- 
 angle. In other words, you would not know 
 an3^hing of up and down." 
 
 St. George nodded. This was the familiar talk 
 of college class-rooms. 
 
 "As it is," pursued the prince, " your people 
 do perfectly understand lifting a square and 
 placing it upon a square, or a triangle upon a 
 triangle. But you do not know anything about 
 placing a cube upon a cube, or a pyramid upon a 
 pyramid so that both occupy the same space at 
 the same time. We of Yaque have mastered that 
 principle also," the prince tranquilly concluded, 
 " and all that of which this is the alphabet. That 
 is why we are able to keep our island unknown 
 to the world — not to say ' invisible.' " 
 
 For a moment St. George looked at him speech- 
 lessly; then, in spite of himself, a slow smile 
 overspread his face. 
 
 " But," he said, " your Highness, there is not a 
 mathematician in the civilized world who has not 
 considered that problem and cast it aside, witl; 
 
174 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 the word that if fourth-dimensional space does 
 exist it can not possibly be inhabited." 
 
 " Quite so," said the prince. " and yet here we 
 are." 
 
 And, if you come to think of it — as St. George 
 did — that is the only answer to a world of impos- 
 sibilities already proved possible. But the vista 
 which all this opened smote him with irresistible 
 humour. 
 
 " Ah well now, I suppose, your Highness," he 
 said, " that our ocean liners sail clean through 
 the island of Yaque, then, and never even have 
 their smoke pushed side wise? " 
 
 The prince laughed pleasantly. 
 
 " Have you ever," he asked, " had occasion to 
 explain the principles of hydraulics, or chess, or 
 philosophical idealism to a three-year-old child, 
 or a charwoman? You must forgive me, but 
 really I can think of no better comparison. I 
 am quite as powerless now as you have been if 
 you have ever attempted it. I can only assure 
 you that such things are. Without Jarvo or 
 Akko or some one who understood, you might 
 have sailed the high seas all your life and never 
 have come any nearer to Yaque." 
 
 St. George reflected. 
 
 " Is Yaque the only example of this kind of 
 thing," he asked, " that the Fourth Dimension 
 would reveal? " 
 
 "By no means," said the prince in surprise, 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 175 
 
 " the world is literally teeming with like revela- 
 tions, once the key is in your hands. The 
 Fourth Dimension is only the beginning. We 
 utilize that to isolate our island. But the 
 higher dimensions are gradually being conquered, 
 too. Nearly all of us can pass into the Fifth at 
 will, ' disappearing,' as you have the word, from 
 the lower dimensions. It is well-known to you 
 that in a land whose people knew length and 
 breadth, but no up and down, an object might be 
 pushed, but never lifted up or put down. If it 
 were to be lifted, such a people would believe it 
 to have ' disappeared.' So, from you who know 
 only three dimensions, Yaque has ' disappeared,' 
 until one of us guides you here. Also we pass at 
 will into the Fifth Dimension and even higher, 
 and seem to ' disappear'; the only difference is 
 that, there, we should not be able yet to guide 
 one who did not himself understand how to pass 
 there. Just as one who understands how to die 
 and to come to life, as you have the phrase, would 
 not be able to take with him any one who did 
 not understand how to take himself there . . ." 
 
 St. George listened, grasping at straws of com- 
 prehension, remembering how he had heard all 
 this theorized about and smiled at; but most of 
 all he was beset by a practical consideration. 
 
 " Then," he said suddenly, the question leap- 
 ing to his lips almost against his will, " if you 
 hold this key to all knowledge, how is it that the 
 
176 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 king — Mr. Holland — could get away from yoUi 
 and the Hereditary Treasure be lost? " 
 
 The prince sighed profoundly. 
 
 " We have by no means," he said, " perfected 
 our knowledge. We are at one with the absolute 
 in knowledge — true. But the affairs of every day 
 most frequently elude us. Not even the most 
 advanced among us are perfect intuitionists. We 
 have by no means reached that desirable and 
 inevitable day when our minds shall flow together, 
 without need of communication, without possi- 
 bility of secret. We still suffer the disadvan- 
 tage of a slight barrier of personality." 
 
 " And it is into one of these lapses," thought 
 St. George irreverently, " that the king has dis- 
 appeared." Aloud he asked curiously concerning 
 a matter which was every moment becoming more 
 incomprehensible . 
 
 " But how, your Highness," he said simply, 
 " did your people ever consent to have an Ameri- 
 can for your king? " 
 
 Before the prince could reply there occurred a 
 phenomenon that sent all thought of such insub- 
 stantialities as the secrets of the Fourth Dimen- 
 sion far in the background. 
 
 The prince's motor, closely followed by the 
 others of the train, had reached a little eminence 
 from which the island unrolled in fair patterns. 
 Before them the smooth road unwound in varied 
 light. At their left lay a still grove from 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 177 
 
 whose depths was glimpsed a sUm needle of a 
 tower, rising, arrow-like, from the green. In the 
 distance lay Med, with shining domes. The water 
 of the lagoon gave brightness here and there 
 among the hills. And as St. George and the 
 prince looked over the prospect they saw, far down 
 the avenue toward Med, a little, moving speck — a 
 speck moving with a rapidity which neither the 
 prince's motor nor any known motor of Yaque 
 had ever before permitted itself. 
 
 In an instant the six members of the Royal 
 Golden Guard, who upon beautiful, spirited horses 
 rode in advance of the train of the prince, wheeled 
 and thundered back, lifting glittering hands of 
 warning. "Aside! Aside!" shrieked the main 
 Golden Guard, " a motor is without control! " 
 
 Immediately there was confusion. At a touch 
 the prince's car was drawn to the road's extreme 
 edge, and the Golden Guards rode furiously back 
 along the train, hailing the peaceful, slow-going 
 machines into orderly retreat. They were all 
 sufficiently amenable, for at sight of the alarming 
 and unprecedented onrush of the growing speck 
 that was bearing full down upon them, anxiety 
 sat upon every face. 
 
 St. George watched. And as the car drew 
 nearer the thought which, at first sight of its speed, 
 had vaguely flashed into being, took definite shape, 
 and his blood leaped to its music. AVhose hand 
 would be upon that lever, whose daring would be 
 
178 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 directing its flight, whose but one in all Yaque— 
 and that Olivia's ? 
 
 It was Olivia. That was plain even in the mere 
 instant that it took the great, beautiful motor, at 
 thirty miles an hour, to flash past them. St. 
 George saw her — coat of hunting pink and flutter- 
 ing veil and shining eyes ; he was dimly conscious 
 of another little figure beside her, and of the 
 unmistakable and agonized Mrs. Hastings in the 
 tonneau; but it was only Olivia's glance that he 
 caught as it swept the prince. There was the 
 faintest possible smile, and she was gone; and St. 
 George, his heart pounding, sat staring stupidly 
 after that shining cloud of dust, frantically won- 
 dering whether she could just possibly have seen 
 him. For this was no trick of the imagination, 
 his galloping heart told him that. And whether 
 or not Yaque was a place, the world, the world 
 was within his grasp, instinct with possibilities 
 heavenly sweet. His eyes met Amory's in the 
 minute when Cassyrus, prime minister of Yaque, 
 had it borne in upon him that this was no runaway 
 machine, but the ordinary and preferred pace 
 of the daughter of their king; and while Cassyrus, 
 at the enormity of the conception, breathed 
 out expostulations in several languages — some of 
 them known to us only by means of inscriptions 
 on tombs — Amory spoke to St. George: 
 
 " Who was the other girl? " he asked compre- 
 hensively. 
 
THE tADY OF KINGDOMS 179 
 
 " What other girl? " St. George blankly mur- 
 mtired. 
 
 And at this, Amory turned away with a look 
 that could be made to mean whatever Amory 
 meant. 
 
 On went the imperial train faring back to Med 
 over the road lately stirred to shining dust by the 
 wheels of Olivia's auto. Olivia's auto. St. George 
 was secretly saying over the words with a kind of 
 ecstatic non-comprehension, when the prince spoke: 
 
 " That," he said, " may explain why an Ameri- 
 can has been able to govern us. Chance crowned 
 him, but he made himself king." 
 
 Prince Tabnit hesitated and his eyes wandered 
 — and those of St. George followed — to a far 
 winding dot in that opal valley, a mere speck 
 of silver with a prick of pink, fleeing in a cloud of 
 sunny dust. 
 
 " I do not know if you will know what I mean," 
 said the prince, " but hers is the spirit, and the 
 spirit of her father, the king, which Yaque had 
 never known. It is the spirit which we of 
 Phoenicia seem to have lost since the wealth of the 
 world accumulated at her ports and she gave her 
 trust to the hands of mariners and mercenaries, 
 and later bowed to the conqueror. It is the spirit 
 that not all the continental races, I fancy, have 
 for endowment, but yours possesses in rich meas- 
 ure. For this we would exchange half that we 
 have achieved." 
 
180 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 St. George nodded, glowing. 
 
 "It is a great tribute, your Highness," he said 
 simply, and in his heart he laid it at Olivia's feet. 
 
 Thereafter, in the long ride to Melita, during 
 luncheon upon a high white terrace overlooking 
 the sailless sea, and in the hours on the unforget- 
 able roads of the islands, St. George, while 
 incommunicable marvels revealed themselves 
 linked with incommunicable beauty, sat in the 
 prince's motor, his eyes searching the horizon for 
 that fleeing speck of silver and pink. It did not 
 appear again. And when the train of the prince 
 rolled into the yard of the Palace of the Litany it 
 trembled upon St. George's lips to ask whether 
 the formalities of the court would permit him that 
 day to scale the skies and call upon the royal 
 household. 
 
 " For whatever he says, I've got to do," thought 
 St. George, " but no matter what he says, I 
 shall go. Doesn't Amory realize that we've been 
 more than twelve hours on this island, and that 
 nothing has been done? " 
 
 And then as they crossed the grassy court in 
 the delicate hush of the merging light — the name- 
 less radiance already penetrating the dusk — the 
 prince spoke smoothly, as if his words bore no 
 import deeper than his smile: 
 
 " You are come," he said courteously, "in 
 time for one of the ceremonies of our regime 
 most important — to me. You will, I hope, do 
 
THE LADY OF KINGDOMS 181 
 
 honour to the occasion by your presence. This 
 evening, in the Hall of Kings in the Palace of the 
 Litany, will occur the ceremony of my betrothal." 
 
 " Your betrothal, your Highness? " repeated 
 St. George uncertainly. 
 
 " You will be attended by an escort," the prince 
 continued, " and Balator, the commander of the 
 guard, will receive you in the hall. May the 
 gods permit the possible." 
 
 He swept through the portico before them, and 
 they followed dumbly. 
 
 The betrothal of the prince. 
 
 St. George heard, and his eager hope went 
 down in foreboding. He turned, hardly daring 
 to read his own dread in the eyes of Amory. 
 
 Amory, as St. George had said, was delicious, 
 especially his drawl; but there were times — 
 now, for example, when all that the eyes of 
 Amory expressed was what his lips framed, soUo- 
 voce: 
 
 " An American heiress, betrothed to the prince 
 of a cannibal island! Wouldn't Chillingworth 
 turn in his grave at his desk? " 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 TYRIAN PURPI.E 
 
 The " porch of light " proved to be an especially 
 fascinating place at evening. Evening, which 
 makes most places resemble their souls instead 
 of their bodies, had a grateful task in the beautiful 
 room whose spirit was always uppermost, and 
 Evening moved softly in its ivory depths, prelud- 
 ing for Sleep. Here, his lean, shadowed face all 
 anxiety, Rollo stood, holding at arm's length a 
 parti-coloured robe with floating scarfs. 
 
 " It seems to me, sir," he said doubtfully, 
 *' that this one would 'ave done better. Beggin' 
 your pardon, sir." 
 
 St. George shook his head distastefully. 
 
 " It doesn't matter," he said, and broke into 
 a slow smile as he looked at Amory. The robes 
 which the prince had provided for the evening 
 were rather harder to become accustomed to 
 than the notion of intuitive knowledge. 
 
 " There's an air about this one though, sir," 
 opined Rollo firmly, " there's a cut — a sort of 
 way with the seams, so to speak, sir, that the other 
 
 182 
 
TYRIAN PURPLE 183 
 
 can't touch. And cut is what counts, sir, cut 
 counts every time." 
 
 " Ah, yes, I dare say, Rollo," said St. George, 
 " and as a judge of ' cut ' I don't say you can be 
 equaled. But I do say that in the styles of 
 Deuteronomy you aren't necessarily what you 
 might call up." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Rollo, dropping his eyes, 
 " but a well-dressed man was a well-dressed 
 man, sir, then as now." 
 
 As a matter of fact the well-knit, athletic young 
 figures looked uncommonly well in the garments 
 a la mode in Yaque. One would have said that 
 if the garments followed Deuteronomy fashions 
 they had at all events been cut by the scissors 
 of a court tailor to Louis XV. The result was 
 beautiful and bizarre, but it did not suggest 
 stageland because the colours were so good. 
 
 " I dare say," said St. George, examining the 
 exquisitely fine cloth whose shades were of curious 
 depth and richness, " that this may be regular 
 Tyrian purple." 
 
 Amory waved his long sleeves. -^ 
 
 " Stop," he languidly begged, " you make me 
 feel like a golden text," 
 
 St. George went back to the row of open case- 
 ments and resumed his walk up and down before 
 the windows that looked away to the huge 
 threatening bulk of Mount Khalak. Since the 
 prince's announcement that afternoon St. George 
 
184 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 had done little besides continuing that walk. 
 Now it wanted hardly half an hour to the momen- 
 tous ceremony of the evening, big with at least 
 one of the dozen portents of which he accused it. 
 
 " Amory," he burst out as he walked, " if you 
 didn't know anything about it, would you say 
 that the prince could possibly have made her 
 consent to marry him? " 
 
 Amory, left in the middle of the great room, 
 stood polishing his pince-nez exactly as if he had 
 been waiting at the end of Chillingworth's desk 
 of a bright, American morning. 
 
 " If I didn't know anything about it," he said 
 cheerfully, " I should say that he had. As it is, 
 having this afternoon watched a certain motor 
 wear its way past me, I should say that nothing 
 in Yaque is more unlikely. And that's about as 
 strong as you could put it." 
 
 " We don't know what the man may have 
 threatened," said St. George morosely, " he may 
 have played upon her devotion to her father to 
 some ridiculous extent. He may have refused 
 to land the submarine at Yaque at all other- 
 wise " 
 
 St. George broke off suddenly. 
 
 "Toby! " he said. 
 
 Amory looked over and nodded. He had seen 
 that look before on St. George's face. 
 
 " She's not going to marry the prince," said 
 St. George, " and if her father is alive and in a 
 
TYRIAN PURPLE 185 
 
 hole, he's going to be pulled out. And she's not 
 going to marry the prince." 
 
 " Why, no," assented Amory, " no." 
 
 He had guessed a good deal of the truth since he 
 had been watching St. George flee over seas upon 
 a yacht, shod, so to speak, with fire, and he had 
 arrived at the suspicion that The Aloha was 
 winged by little Loves and guided under water by 
 plenty of blue and green dragons. But he had 
 not, until now, been thoroughly certain that 
 St. George's spirit of adventure had another name; 
 and though theoretically his sympathies leaped to 
 the look in his friend's eyes, yet he found himself 
 wondering practically what effect romance would 
 be having upon their enterprise. After all, from 
 a newspaper point of view, to relinquish any part 
 of the adventure was a kind of tragedy, and it 
 cost Amory something to emphasize his assent. 
 
 " Of course she won't," he said, " and now let's 
 toddle down and see about it." 
 
 When the tread of the feet of a detachment 
 of the Royal Golden Guard was heard without, 
 Rollo advanced to the door with a dignity which 
 amounted to melancholy. The setting of a palace 
 and the proximity of a prince had raised his office 
 to the majesty of skilled labour. He always 
 threw open the door now as who should say, 
 " Enter, But mind you have a reason." 
 
 At sight of the long liberty of the corridor where 
 the light lay mysteriously touching tiles and tap- 
 
186 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 estries to festal colours, Amory's spirits rose 
 contagiously, and his eyes shone behind his pince- 
 nez. 
 
 " Me," he said, looking ahead with enjoyment 
 at the glittering escort, " me — done in a fabric of 
 about the eleventh shade of the Yaque spectrum 
 — made loose and floppy, after a modish Canaan- 
 itish model. I'll wager that when the first-born 
 of Canaan was in the flood-tide of glory, this 
 very gown was worn by one of the most beautiful 
 women in the pentapolis of Philistia. I'm going 
 to photograph the model for the Sunday supple- 
 ment, and name it The Nebuchadnezzar " 
 
 Amory murmured on, and St. George hardly 
 heard him. He could almost count by minutes 
 now the time until he should see her. Would she 
 see him, and might he just possibly speak with her, 
 and what would the evening hold for her? As 
 he went forth where she would be, the spell of 
 the place was once more laid upon him, as it had 
 been laid in the hour of his coming. Once more, as 
 in the hour when he had first looked down upon 
 the valley brimming with a light " better than 
 any light that ever shone " he was at one with the 
 imponderable things which, always before, had 
 just eluded him. Now, as then, the thought of 
 Olivia was the symbol for them all. So the two 
 went on through the winding galleries — silent, 
 haunted — ^to the great staircase, and below into 
 the crowded court. And when they reached the 
 
TYRIAN PURPLE 187 
 
 threshold of the audience-chamber they involun- 
 tarily stood still. 
 
 The hall was like a temple in its sense of space 
 and height and clear air, but its proportions did 
 not impress one, and indeed one could not remem- 
 ber its boundaries as one does not consider 
 the boundaries of a grove. It was amphitheatre- 
 shaped, and about it ran a splendid colonnade, in 
 the niches of whose cornices were beautiful 
 grotesques — but Yaque seemed to be a land whose 
 very grotesques had all the dignity of the ultimate 
 instead of crying for the indulgence due a phase. 
 The roof was inlaid with prisms of clear stone, and 
 on high were pilasters carved with the Tyrian 
 sphinxes crucified upon upright crosses, sur- 
 mounted by parhelions of burnished metal. All 
 the seats faced a great dais at the chamber's far 
 end where three thrones were set. 
 
 But it was the men and women in the great 
 chamber who filled St. George with wonder. The 
 women — they were beautiful women, slow-moving, 
 slow-eyed, of soft laughter and sudden melancholy, 
 and clear, serene profiles and abundant hair. And 
 they were all alive, fully and mysteriously alive, 
 alive to their finger-tips. It was as if in compari- 
 son all other women acted and moved in a kind 
 of half -consciousness. It was as if, St. George 
 thought vaguely, one were to step through the 
 frame of a pre-Raphaelite tapestry and suddenly 
 find its strange women rejoicing in fulfillment 
 
188 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 instead of yearning, in noon instead of dusk. 
 As he stood looking down the vast chamber, all 
 springing columns and light lines lifting through 
 the honey-coloured air, it smote St. George that 
 these people, instead of being far away, were 
 all near, surprisingly, unbelievably near to him, 
 — in a way, nearer to his own elusive personality 
 than he was himself. They were all obviously of 
 his own class; he could perfectly imagine his 
 mother, with her old lace and Roman mosaics, 
 moving at home among them, and the bishop, 
 with his wise, kindly smile. Yet he was irre- 
 sistibly reminded of a certain haunting dream of 
 his childhood in which he had seemed to himself 
 to walk the world alone, with every one else allied 
 against him because they all knew something that 
 he did not know. That was it, he thought sud- 
 denly, and felt his pulse quickening at the intima- 
 tion: They all knew something that he did not 
 know, that he could not know. But, as they 
 swept him with their clear-eyed, impersonal look, 
 a look that seemed in some exquisite fashion to 
 take no account of individuality, he was gratefully 
 aware of a curious impression that they would 
 like to have had him know, too. 
 
 " They wish I knew — they'd rather I did know," 
 St. George found himself thinking in a strange 
 excitement, " if only I could know — if only I could 
 know." 
 
 He looked about him, smiling a little at his folly. 
 
TYRIAN PURPLE 189 
 
 He saw the light flash on Amory's glasses as they 
 turned inquisitively on this and that, and some- 
 how the sight steadied him. 
 
 " Ah well," he assured himself, "I'll look 
 them up in a thousand years or so, and we'll 
 dine together, and then we'll say: ' Don't you 
 remember how I didn't know? ' " 
 
 Immediately there presented himself to them 
 a little man who proved to be Balator, lord-chief- 
 commander of the Royal Golden Guard, and now 
 especially directed by the prince, he pleasantly 
 told them, to be responsible for their enter- 
 tainment and comfort during the ceremony to 
 follow. They were, in fact, his guests for the 
 evening, but St. George and Amory were uncer- 
 tain whether, considering his office, this was a 
 high honour or a kind of exalted durance. How- 
 ever, as the man was charming the doubt was 
 not important. He had an attenuated face, so 
 conveniently brown by race as to suggest the most 
 soldierly exposure, and he had great, peaceable, 
 slow-lidded eyes. He was, they subsequently 
 learned, an authority upon insect life in Yaque, 
 for he had never had the smallest opportunity 
 to go to war. 
 
 As Balator led his guests to their seats near 
 the throne every one looked on them, as they 
 passed, with the serenest fellowship, and no 
 regard persisted longer than a glance, friendly 
 and fugitive. Balator himself not only rcf r.ined 
 
190 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 from stoning the barbarians with commonplaces, 
 but he did not so much as mention America to 
 them or treat them otherwise than as compan- 
 ions, as if his was not only the cosmopolitanism 
 that knows no municipal or continental aliens 
 of its own class, but a kind of inter-dimensional 
 cosmopolitanism as well. 
 
 " Which," said Amory afterward, " was envia- 
 ble. The next man from Trebizond or Saturn 
 or Fez whom I meet I'm going to greet and treat 
 as if he lived the proverbial ' twenty minutes 
 out.' " 
 
 A great clock boomed and throbbed through 
 the palace, striking an hour that was no more 
 intelligible than the jargon of a ship's clock to a 
 landsman. Somewhere an orchestra thrilled into 
 haunting sound, poignant with disclosures barely 
 missed. Overhead, through the mighty rafters 
 of the conical roof, the moon looked down. 
 
 " That'll be the same old moon," said Amory. 
 "By Jove! Won't it?" 
 
 " It will, please Heaven," said St. George rest- 
 lessly; " I don't know. Will it? " 
 
 Near the throne was seated a company of 
 dignitaries who wore upon their breasts great 
 stars and were soberly dressed in a kind of 
 scholar's gown. Some whispered together and 
 nodded and looked as solemn as tithing men; 
 and others were feverishly restless and continually 
 took papers from their graceful sleeves. By 
 
TYRIAN PURPLE 191 
 
 developments these were revealed to be the 
 High Council of Yaque, conservative and radical, 
 even in dimensional isolation. Farther back rose 
 tier upon tier of seats sacred to the wives and 
 daughters of the ministry, and St. George even 
 looked hopelessly and mechanically among these 
 for the face that he sought. 
 
 To some seats slightly elevated, not far from 
 the dais, his attention was at length challenged 
 by an upheaving and billowing of purple and 
 black. He looked, and in the same instant 
 what seemed to have been a kind of storm centre 
 resolved itself cloudily into Mrs. Medora Hastings, 
 breathlessly resuming her seat, while Mr. Augustus 
 Frothingham, in indescribably gorgeous apparel 
 elaborately bent to receive — and a member of 
 the High Council bent to hand — two glittering 
 articles which St. George was certain were side- 
 combs. There the lady sat, tilting her head to 
 keep her tortoise-shell glasses on her nose, per- 
 petually curving their chain over her ear, a ges- 
 ture by which the side-combs were perpetually 
 displaced. If the island people had been painted 
 purple, St. George felt sure that she would have 
 acted quite the same. Personality meant nothing 
 to her — not, as with them, because it had been 
 merged in something greater, but because, with 
 her, it was overborne by self. And there sat 
 Mr. Frothingham (who did not attend the play 
 during court because he believed that a man of 
 
192 . ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 affairs should not unduly stimulate the imagina- 
 tion), his head thrown back so that his long 
 hair rested on his amazing collar, his hands laid 
 trimly along his knees. In that crystal air, 
 instinct with its delicate, dominant implication 
 of things imponderable, the. personality of each 
 persisted undisturbed, in a kind of adamantine 
 unconsciousness. Again, as when he had con- 
 sidered the soul of Rollo, St. George smiled a 
 shade bitterly. Is it then so easy to persist, he 
 wondered? Is love's uttermost gift so little? 
 But as the music swelled with premonitory mean- 
 ing, he understood something that its very transi- 
 toriness disclosed : the persistence of love, 
 love's mere immortality, is the dead letter of 
 the law without that which is elusive, imponder- 
 able, even evanescent as the spirit of the land 
 to which he had come, into which he felt him- 
 self new-bom. 
 
 Immediately, bestowing its gift of altered mood, 
 other music, cut by the lift and fall of trumpets, 
 sounded from hidden places all about the walls 
 and from the alcoves of the lofty roof. Then a 
 veil hanging between two pillars was drawn aside, 
 and the prince's train appeared. There were a 
 detachment of the guard, splendid in their unre- 
 lieved gold, and the officers of the court, at their 
 head Cassyrus, the premier, who had manifestly 
 been compounded of Heaven to be a drum-major, 
 and had so undeviating; a look that he seemed 
 
TYRIAN PURPLE 193 
 
 always to have been caught, red-handed, at his 
 post. Last came Prince Tabnit, dressed in pure 
 white save for a collar of precious stones from 
 which hung the strange green gem that St. 
 George remembered. His clear face and the 
 whiteness of his hair lent to him an air of almost 
 unearthly distinction. His delicate hands wear- 
 ing no jewels were at his sides, and his head was 
 magnificently erect. He mounted the dais as 
 the music sank to silence, and without preface 
 began to speak. 
 
 " My people," he said, and St. George felt him- 
 self thrilling with the strength and tenderness of 
 that voice, " in the continuance of this our time 
 of trial we come among you that we may win 
 strength and courage from your presence. Since 
 one mind dwells in us all, we have no need of words 
 of cheer. That no message from his Majesty, the 
 King, has come to us is known to you all, with 
 mourning. But the gods — to whom ' here ' is 
 the same as ' there ' — will permit the possible, 
 and they have permitted to us the presence of the 
 daughter of our sovereign, by the grace of the 
 infinite, heir to the throne of Yaque. In two days, 
 should his Majesty not then have returned to his 
 sorrowing people, she will, in accordance with our 
 custom, be crowned Hereditary Princess of Yaque 
 and, after one year. Queen of Yaque and your 
 rightful sovereign." 
 
 As the prince paused, a little breath of assent 
 
191 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 was in the room, more potent than any crudity 
 of applause. 
 
 " Next," pursued the prince, " we would invite 
 your attention to our own affairs, which are of 
 importance solely as they are affected by the 
 immemorial tradition of the House of the Litany. 
 Therefore, in accordance with the custom of our 
 predecessors for two thousand years," lightly piw- 
 sued the prince, " we have named this day as the 
 day of our betrothal. Moreover, this is deter- 
 mined upon in justice to the daughters of the 
 twenty peers of Yaque, whose marriage the law 
 forbids until the choice of the head of the House 
 of the Litany has been made ..." 
 
 St. George listened, and his hope soared heaven- 
 ward as the hope of young love will soar, in spite 
 of itself, at the mere sight of open sky. The 
 daughters of the twenty peers of Yaque! Of 
 course they were to be considered. Why should 
 he fear that, because Olivia was in Yaque, the mere 
 mention of a betrothal referred to Olivia? He 
 was bold enough to smile at his fears, to smile 
 even when, as the prince ceased speaking, the 
 music sounded again, as it were from the air, in a 
 chorus of pure young voices with a ripple of 
 unknown strings in accompaniment. 
 
 Suddenly, at the opening of great doors, a 
 flood of saffron light was poured upon a stair, 
 and at the summit appeared the leisurely head 
 of a procession which the two men were destined 
 
TYRIAN PURPLE 195 
 
 never to forget. Across the gallery and down 
 the stair — it might have been the Golden Stair 
 linking Near with Far — came a score of exquisite 
 women in all the glory of their youth, of perfect 
 physical beauty and splendid strength and full- 
 ness of life; and the wonder was not their 
 beauty more than a kind of dryad delicacy of 
 that beauty, which was yet not frailty but a 
 look of angelic strength. But they were not 
 remote — they were gloriously human, almost, one 
 would say, divinely human, all gentle movement 
 and warmth and tender breath. They were not 
 remote, save as one's own soul would be remote 
 by its very excess of intimacy with life. Little 
 maids, so shy that their actuality was certain, 
 came before them carrying flowers, and these 
 were followed by youths scattering fragrant 
 burning powder whose fallen flames were 
 instantly pounced upon and extinguished by small 
 furry lemurs trained to lay silver discs upon the 
 flames. And as they all ranged themselves 
 about the throne a little figure appeared at the 
 top of the stairway alone, beneath , the lifted 
 curtain. 
 
 She was veiled; but the elastic step, the girlish 
 grace, the poise and youthful dignity were not to be 
 mistaken. The room whirled round St. George, 
 and then closed in about him and grew dark. For 
 this was the woman advancing to her betrothal; 
 from the manner of her entrance there could be 
 
196 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 no doubt of that. And it was none of the 
 daughters of the twenty peers. It was Olivia. 
 
 She wore a trailing gown of rainbow hues, more 
 like the hues of water than of texture, and the 
 warm light fell upon these as she descended and 
 variously multiplied them to beauty. Her little 
 feet were sandaled and a veil of indescribable 
 thinness was wound about her abundant hair and 
 fell across her face, but the gold of her hair 
 escaped the veil and rippled along her gown. 
 Carven chains and necklaces were upon her throat, 
 and bracelets of beaten gold and jewels upon her 
 arms. About her forehead glittered a jeweled 
 band with pendent gems which, at her moving, 
 were like noon sun upon water. 
 
 As he realized that this was indeed she whom 
 he had come to seek, only to find her hedged about 
 with difficulties — and it might be by divinities — 
 which he had not dreamed of coping, a kind 
 of madness seized St. George. The lights danced 
 before his eyes, and his impulse had to do with 
 rushing up to the dais and crying everybody 
 defiance but Olivia. On the moon-lit deck of 
 The Aloha he had dreamed out the island and the 
 rescue of the island princess, and a possible home- 
 going on his yacht to a home about which he had 
 even dared to dream, too. But it had not once 
 occurred to him to forecast such a contingency as 
 this, or, later, so to explain to himself Prince 
 Tabnit's change of purpose in permitting lier 
 
TYRIAN PURPLB 197 
 
 recognition as Princess of Yaque— indeed, if what 
 Jarvo and Akko had told him in New York were 
 accurate, in bringing her to the island at all. 
 And yet what, he thought crazily, if his guess at 
 her part in this betrothal were far wrong? What 
 if her father's safety were not the only considera- 
 tion? What if, not unnaturally dazzled by the 
 fairy-land which had opened to her . . , even while 
 he feared, St, George knew far better. But the 
 number of terrors possible to a man in love is 
 equal to those of battle-fields. 
 
 Amory bent toward him, murmuring excitedly. 
 
 " Jupiter," he said, " is she the American girl? " 
 
 " She's Miss Holland," answered St. George 
 miserably. 
 
 *' No — no, not the princess," said Amory, " the 
 other." 
 
 St. George looked. On the stair was a little 
 figure in rose and silver — very tiny, very fair, and 
 no doubt the lawyer's daughter. 
 
 " I dare say it is," he told him, as one would 
 say, " Now what the deuce of it? " 
 
 Prince Tabnit had risen to receive Olivia, and 
 St. George had to see him extend his hand and 
 assist her beside him upon the dais. In the absence 
 of her father she was obliged to stand alone. Then 
 the little figure in rose and silver and one of the 
 daughters of the peers advanced and lifted her 
 veil, and St. George wanted to shout with sudden 
 exultation. This then was she — so near, so near. 
 
198 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Surely no great harm could come to them so long 
 as the sea and the mystery of the island no longer 
 lay between them. Did she know of his pres- 
 ence? Although he and Amory were seated so 
 near the throne, they were at one side, and her 
 clear, pure profile was turned toward them. And 
 Olivia did not lift her eyes throughout the prime 
 minister's long address, of which St. George and 
 Amory, so lapped were they in wild projects and 
 importunities, heard nothing until, uttered with 
 indescribable pompousness, as if Cassyrus were 
 a dowager and had made the match himself, the 
 concluding words beat upon St. George's heart 
 like stones. They were the formal announce- 
 ment of the betrothal of Olivia, daughter of his 
 Majesty, Otho I of Yaque, to Tabnit, Prince of 
 Yaque and Head of the House of the Litany. 
 
 St. George saw Prince Tabnit kneel before 
 Olivia and place a ring upon her hand — no doubt 
 the ring which had betrothed the island princesses 
 for three thousand years. He saw the High 
 Council standing with bowed heads, like the nec- 
 essary archangels in an old painting; he caught 
 the flash of the turquoise-blue ephod of the 
 head of the religious order, as the benediction was 
 pronounced by its wearer. And through it all 
 he said to himself that all would be well if only 
 she understood, if only she had the supreme self- 
 consciousness to play the game. After all he 
 knew her so little. He was certain of her 
 
TYRIAN PURPLE 199 
 
 exquisite, playful fancy, but had she imagina- 
 tion? Would she see the value of the moment 
 and watch herself moving through it? Or would 
 she live it with that feminine, unhumourous 
 seriousness which is woman's weakness? She 
 had an exquisite independence, he was certain 
 that she had humour, and he remembered how 
 alive she had seemed to him, receptive, like a 
 woman with ten senses. But after all, would 
 not her graceful sanity of view, that sense of 
 tradition and unerring taste which he so rever- 
 enced, yet handicap her now and prevent her 
 from daring whatever she must dare? 
 
 Amory was beside himself. It was all very 
 well to feel a great sympathy for St. George, but 
 the sight was more than journalistic flesh and 
 blood could look upon with sympathetic calm. 
 
 "An American girl!" he breathed in spite of 
 himself. " Why, St. George, if we can leave 
 this island alive — " 
 
 " Well, you won't," St. George explained, with 
 brutal directness, " unless you can cut that." 
 
 Before silence had again fallen, the prime 
 minister, all his fever of importance still upon 
 him, once more faced the audience. This time 
 his words came to St. George like a thunderbolt : 
 
 '* In three days' time, at noon, in this the Hall 
 of Kings," he cried, letting each phrase fall as if 
 he were its proud inventor, " immediately fol- 
 lowing the official recognition of Olivia, daughter 
 
200 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 of Otho I, as Hereditary Princess of Yaque, there 
 will be solemnized, according to the immemorial 
 tradition of the island last observed six hundred 
 and eighty-four years ago by Queen Pentel- 
 laria, the marriage of Olivia of Yaque, to his 
 Highness, Prince Tabnit, head of the House of 
 the Litany, and chief administrator of justice. 
 For the law prescribes that no unmarried woman 
 shall sit upon the throne of Yaque. At noon of 
 the third day will be observed the double ceremony 
 of the recognition and the marriage. May the 
 gods permit the possible." 
 
 There was a soft insistence of music from above, a 
 stir and breath about the room, the premier backed 
 away to his seat, and St. George, even with the 
 horrified tightening at his heart, was conscious 
 of a vague commotion from the vicinity of Mrs. 
 Medora Hastings. Then he saw the prince rise 
 and turn to Olivia, and extend his hand to conduct 
 her from the hall. The great banquet room beyond 
 the colonnade was at once thrown open, and 
 there the court circle and the ministry were 
 to gather to do honour to the new princess, 
 whom Prince Tabnit was to lead to the seat at 
 his right hand at the table's head. 
 
 To the amazement of his Highness, Olivia made 
 no movement to accept the hand that he offered. 
 Instead, she sat slightly at one side of the great 
 glittering throne, looking up at him with some- 
 thing like the faintest conceivable smile which, 
 
TYRIAN PURPLE 201 
 
 while one saw, became once more her exquisite, 
 girHsh gravity. When the music sank a Httle 
 her voice sounded above it with a sweet dis- 
 tinctness : 
 
 " One moment, if you please, your Highness," 
 she said clearly. 
 
 It was the first time that St. George had heard 
 her voice since its good-by to him in New York. 
 And before her words his vague fears for her were 
 triumphantly driven. The spirit that he had 
 hoped for was in her face, and something else; St. 
 George could have sworn that he saw, but no 
 one else could have seen the look, a glimpse of 
 that delicate roguery that had held him captive 
 when he had breakfasted with her — several hun- 
 dred years before, was it? — at the Boris. Ah, 
 he need not have feared for her, he told himself 
 exultantly. For this was Olivia — of America — 
 standing in a company of the women who 
 seemed like the women of whom men dream, 
 and whose presence, save in glimpses at first 
 meetings, they perhaps never wholly realize. These 
 were the women of the land which " no one can 
 define or remember." And yet, as he watched 
 her now, St. George was gloriously conscious 
 that Olivia not only held her own among them, 
 but that in some charm of vividness and of 
 knowledge of laughter, she transcended them all. 
 
 A ripple of surprise had gone round the room. 
 For all the air of the ultimate about the island- 
 
202 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 women, St. George doubted whether ever in the 
 three thousand years of Yaque's history a woman 
 had raised her voice from that throne upon a 
 like occasion. And such a tender, beguiling, 
 cajoling little voice it was. A voice that held 
 little remarques upon whatever it had just said, 
 and that made one breathless to know what 
 would come next. 
 
 "Bully!" breathed Amory, his eyes shining 
 behind his pince-nez. 
 
 Prince Tabnit hesitated. 
 
 " If the princess wishes to speak with us " 
 
 he began, and Olivia made a charming gesture 
 of dissent, and all the jewels in her hair and upon 
 her white throat caught the light and were set 
 glittering, 
 
 " No," she said gently, " no, your Highness. 
 I wish to speak in the presence of my people." 
 
 She gave the " my " no undue value, yet it 
 fell from her lips with delicious audacity. 
 
 " Indeed," she said, " I think, your Highness, 
 that I will speak to my people myself." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE END OF THE EVENING 
 
 The Hall of Kings was very still as Olivia rose. 
 She stood with one hand touching her veil's hem, 
 the other resting on the low, carved arm of the 
 throne, and at the coming and going of her 
 breath her jewels made the light lambent with 
 the indeterminate colours of those strange, joyous 
 banners floating far above her head. 
 
 Her voice was very sweet and a little tremulous 
 — and it is the very grace of a woman's courage 
 that her voice tremble never so slightly. It 
 seemed to St. George that he loved her a thousand 
 times the more for that mere persuasive wavering 
 of her words. And, while he listened to what he 
 felt to be the prelude of her message, it seemed to 
 him that he loved her another thousand times 
 the more — what heavenly ease there is in this 
 arithmetic of love — for the tender meaning 
 which, upon her lips, her father's name took on. 
 When, speaking with simplicity and directness of 
 the subject that lay uppermost in the minds of 
 them all, she asked their utmost endeavour in 
 
 203 
 
204 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 their common grief, it was clear that what she 
 said transcended whatever phenomena of mere 
 experience lay between her and those who heard 
 her, and they understood. The rapport was 
 like that among those who hear one music. 
 But St. George listened, and though his mind 
 applauded, it ran on ahead to the terrifying future. 
 This was all very well, but how was it to help her 
 in the face of what was to happen in three days' 
 time? 
 
 " Therefore," Olivia's words touched tranquilly 
 among the flying ends of his own thought, " I 
 am come before you to make that sacrifice which 
 my love for my father, and my grief and my 
 anxiety demand. I count upon your support, 
 as he would count upon it for me. I ask that one 
 heart be in us all in this common sorrow. And 
 I am come with the unalterable determination 
 both to renounce my throne there" — never was 
 anything more enchanting than the way those 
 two words fell from her lips — " and to postpone 
 my marriage " — there never was anything more 
 profoundly disquieting than those two words in 
 such a connection — " until such time as, by your 
 effort and by my own, we may have news of 
 my father, the king; and until, by your effort 
 or by my own, the Hereditary Treasure shall 
 be restored." 
 
 So, serenely and with the most ingenuous con- 
 fidence, did the daughter of the absent King 
 
THE END OF THE EVENING 205 
 
 Otho make disposition of the hour's events. 
 Amory leaned forward and feverishly polished 
 his pince-nez. 
 
 " What do you think of that? " he put it, 
 beneath his breath, " what do you think of that? " 
 St. George, watching that little figure— so 
 adorably, almost pathetically little in its corner of 
 the great throne— knew that he had not counted 
 upon her in vain. Over there on the raised seats 
 Mrs. Medora Hastings and Mr. Augustus Froth- 
 ingham were looking on matters as helplessly as 
 they would look at a thunder-storm or a circus 
 procession, and they were taking things quite as 
 seriously. But Olivia, in spite of the tragedy that 
 the hour held for her, was giving the moment 
 its exact value, guiltless of the feminine immo- 
 rality of panic. To give a moment its due 
 without that panic, is, St. George knew, a 
 kind of genius, like creating beauty, and divining 
 another's meaning, and redeeming the spirit of a 
 thing from its actuality. But by that time the 
 arithmetic of his love was by way of being in too 
 many figures to talk about. Which is the proper 
 plight of love. 
 
 Every one had turned toward Prince Tabnit,and 
 as St. George looked it smote him whimsically that 
 that impassive profile was like the profiles upon 
 the ancient coins which, almost any day, might 
 be cast up by a passing hoof on the island mold. 
 Indeed, St. George thought, one might almost 
 
206 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 have spent the prince's profile at a fig-stall, and 
 the vender would have jingled it among his silver 
 and never have detected the cheat. But in the 
 next moment the joyous mounting of his blood 
 running riot in audacious whimsies was checked 
 by the even voice of the prince himself. 
 
 " The gratitude and love of this people," he 
 said slowly, " are due to the daughter of its 
 sovereign for what she has proposed. It is, 
 however, to be remembered that by our ancient 
 law the State and every satrapy therein shall 
 receive no service, whether of blood or of bond, 
 from an alien. The king himself could serve 
 us only in that he was king. To his daughter as 
 Princess of Yaque and wife of the Head of the 
 House of the Litany, this service in the search 
 for the sovereign and the Hereditary Treasure 
 will be permitted, but she may serve us only 
 from the throne." 
 
 " Upon my soul, then that lets us out," mur- 
 mured Amory. 
 
 And St. George remembered miserably how, in 
 that dingy house in McDougle Street, he and 
 Olivia had listened once before to the recital of 
 that law from the prince's lips. If they had 
 known how next they would hear it! If they 
 had known then what that law would come to 
 mean to her! What could she do now- -what 
 could even Olivia do now but assent? 
 
 She could do a great deal, it appeared. She 
 
THE END OF THE EVENING 207 
 
 could incline her head, with a bewitching droop 
 of eyelids, and look up to meet the eyes of the 
 prince with a serenity that was like a smile. 
 
 " In my country," said Olivia gravely, " when 
 anything special arises they frequently find that 
 there is no law to cover it. It would seem to us " 
 — it was as though the humility of that " us " 
 took from her superb daring — " that this is a 
 matter requiring the advice of the High Council. 
 Therefore," asked little Olivia gently, " will you 
 not appoint, your Highness, a special session of the 
 High Council to convene at noon to-morrow, to 
 consider our proposition? " 
 
 There was a scarcely perceptible stir among 
 the members of the High Council, for even the 
 liberals were, it would seem, taken aback 
 by a departure which they themselves had not 
 instituted. Olivia, still in submission to tradi- 
 tion which she could not violate, had gained the 
 time for which she hoped. With a grace 
 that was like the conferring of a royal favour, 
 Prince Tabnit appointed the meeting of the 
 High Council for noon on the following day, 
 
 " May the gods permit the possible," he added, 
 and once more extended his hand to Olivia. This 
 time, with lowered eyes, she gave him the tips 
 of her fingers and, as the beckoning music swelled 
 a delicate prelude, she stepped from the dais and 
 suffered the prince to lead her toward the banquet 
 hall. 
 
208 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Amory drew a long breath, and it came to St. 
 George that if he, Amory, said anything about 
 what he would give if he had a leased wire to the 
 Sentinel Office, there would no longer be room 
 on the island for them both. But Amory said 
 no such thing. Instead, he looked at St. 
 George in distinct hesitation. 
 
 "I say," he brought out finally, "St. George, 
 by Jove, do you know, it seems to me I've seen 
 Miss Frothingham before. And how jolly beauti- 
 ful she is," he added almost reverently. 
 
 " Maybe it was when you were a Phoenician 
 galley slave and she went by in a trireme," offered 
 St. George, trying to keep in sight the bright 
 hair and the floating veil beyond the press of the 
 crowd. Would he see Olivia and would he be 
 able to speak with her, and did she know he 
 was there, and would she be angry? Ah well, 
 she could not possibly be angry, he thought; 
 but with all this in his mind it was hardly reason- 
 able of Amory to expect him to speculate on where 
 Miss Frothingham might have been seen before. 
 If it weren't for this Balator now, St. George 
 said to himself restlessly, and suddenly observed 
 that Balator was expecting them to follow him. 
 So, in the slow-moving throng, all soft hues and 
 soft laughter, they made their way toward the 
 colonnade that cut off the banquet room. And 
 at every step St. George thought," she has passed 
 here — and here — and here," and all the while, 
 
THE END OF THE EVENING 209 
 
 through the mighty open rafters in the conical 
 roof, were to be seen those strange banners joy- 
 ously floating in the delicate, alien light. The 
 wine of the moment flowed, in his veins, and he 
 moved under strange banners, with a strange 
 ecstasy in his heart. 
 
 Therefore, suddenly to hear Rollo's voice at 
 his shoulder came as a distinct shock. 
 
 " It's one of them little brown 'uns, sir," Rollo 
 announced in his best tone of mystery. " He's 
 settin' up stairs, sir, an' he's all fer settin' there till 
 he sees you. He says it's most important, sir." 
 
 Amory heard. 
 
 " Shall I go up? " he asked eagerly; " I'd like 
 a whiff of a pipe, anyway. It'll be something to 
 tie to." 
 
 " Will you go? " asked St. George in undis- 
 guised gratitude. He was prepared to accept 
 most risks rather than to lose sight of the star 
 he was following. 
 
 With a word to Balator who explained where, 
 on his return, he could find them, Amory turned 
 with Rollo, and slipped through the crowd. Hav- 
 ing reasons of his own for getting back to the 
 hall below, Amory was prepared to speed well 
 the interview with "the little brown 'un " who, 
 he supposed, was Jarvo. 
 
 It was Jarvo — Jarvo, in a state of excitement, 
 profound and incredible. The little man, from 
 the annoyingly serene mode of mind in which he 
 
210 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 had left them, was become, for him, almost 
 agitated. He sprang up from a divan in the 
 great dressing-room of their apartment and 
 approached Amory almost without greeting, 
 
 " Adon, adon," he said earnestly, " you must 
 leave the palace at once — at once. But to-night ! " 
 
 Amory hunted for his pipe, found and lighted 
 it, pressing a cigarette upon Jarvo who accepted, 
 and held it, alight, in the palm of his hand. 
 
 " To-night," he repeated, as if it were a game. 
 
 " Ah well, now," said Amory reasonably, " why, 
 Jarvo? And we so comfortable." 
 
 The little man looked at Amory beseechingly. 
 
 " I know what I know," he said earnestly, 
 " many things will happen. There is danger 
 about the palace to-night — danger it may be for 
 you. I do not know all, but I come to warn 
 you, and to warn the adon who has been kind 
 to us. You have brought us here when we 
 were alone in America, ' ' said Jarvo simply. ' ' Akko 
 and I will help you now. It was Akko who 
 remembered the tower." 
 
 Amory looked down at the bowl of his pipe, 
 and shook his vestas in their box, and turned 
 his eyes to Rollo, listening near by with an air 
 of the most intense abstraction. Yes, all these 
 things were real. They were all real, and here 
 was he, Amory, smoking. And yet what was all 
 this amazing talk about danger in the palace, 
 and being warned, and remembering the tower? 
 
THE END OF THE EVENING 211 
 
 " Anybody would think I was Crass, writing 
 head -lines," he told himself, and blew a cloud of 
 smoke through which to look at Jarvo. 
 
 " What are you talking about? " he demanded 
 sternly. 
 
 Jarvo had a little key in his hand, which he 
 shook. The key was on a slender, carved ring, 
 and it jingled. And when he offered it to him 
 Amory abstractedly took it. 
 
 " See, adon," said Jarvo, " see! In the ilex 
 grove on the road that we took last night there 
 is a white tower — it may be that you have noticed 
 it to-day. That tower is empty, and this is 
 the key. There may be guards, but I shall know 
 how to pass among them. You must come with 
 me there to-night, the three. Even then it may 
 be too late, I do not know. The gods will per- 
 mit the possible. But this I know: the Royal 
 Guard are of the lahnas, on whom the tax to 
 make good the Hereditary Treasure will fall 
 most heavily. They are filled with rage against 
 your people — ^you and the king who is of your 
 people. I do not know what they will do, but 
 you are not safe for one moment in the palace. 
 I come to warn you." 
 
 Amory's pipe went out. He sat pulling at it 
 abstractedly, trying to fit together what St. 
 George had told him of the Hereditary Treasure 
 situation. And more than at any other time 
 since his arrival on the island his heart leaped up 
 
212 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 at the prospect of promised adventure. What if 
 St. George's romantic apostasy were not, after all, 
 to spoil the flavour of the kind of adventure for 
 which he, Amory, had been hoping? He leaned 
 eagerly forward. 
 
 " Wliat would you suggest? " he said. 
 
 Jarvo's eyes brightened. At once he sprang to 
 his feet and stood before Amory, taking soft steps 
 here and there as he talked, in movement graceful 
 and tenuous as the greyhound of which he had 
 reminded St. George. 
 
 " In the palace yard," explained the little man 
 rapidly, " is a motor which came from Melita, 
 bringing guests for the ceremony of to-night. 
 They will remain in the palace until after the 
 marriage of the prince, two days hence. But 
 the motor — that must go back to-night to Melita, 
 adon. I have made for myself permission to take 
 it there. But you — the three — must go with me. 
 At the tower in the ilex grove I shall leave you, 
 and I shall return. Is this good? " 
 
 " Excellent. But what afterward ? " demanded 
 Amory. "Are we all to keep house in the tower? " 
 
 Jarvo shook his head, like a man who has 
 thought of everything. 
 
 " Through to-morrow, yes," he said, " but 
 to-morrow night, when the dark falls " 
 
 He bent forward and spoke softly. 
 
 " Did not the adon wish to ascend the moun- 
 tain? " he asked, 
 
THE END OF THE EVENING 213 
 
 " Rather," said Amory, " but how, good 
 heavens? " 
 
 " I and Akko wish to ascend also; the prince has 
 sent us no message, and we fear him," said Jarvo 
 simply. " There are on the island, ad6n, six 
 carriers, trained from birth to make the ascent. 
 They are the sons of those whose duty it was to 
 ascend, and they the sons for many generations. 
 The trail is very steep, very perilous. Six were 
 taught to go up with messages long before the 
 knowledge of the wireless way, long before 
 the flight of the airships. They are become 
 a tradition of the island. It is with them 
 that you must ascend — if you have no 
 fear." 
 
 " Fear! " cried Amory. " But these men, what 
 of them? They are in the employ of the State. 
 How do you know they will take us? " 
 Jarvo dropped his eyes. 
 
 " I and Akko," he said quietly, " we are two of 
 these six carriers, adon." 
 
 Then Amory leaped up, scattering the ashes of 
 his pipe over the tiles. This, then, was what was 
 the matter with the feet of the two men, about 
 which they had all speculated on the deck of The 
 Aloha, the feet trained from birth to make the 
 ascent of the steep trail, feet become long, 
 
 tenuous, almost prehensile 
 
 "It's miracles, that's what it is," declared 
 Amory solemnly. ' ' How on earth did they come to 
 
214 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 take you to New York? " he could not forbear 
 asking. 
 
 " The prince knew nothing of your country, 
 adon," answered Jarvo simply. " He might have 
 needed us to enter it." 
 
 "To climb the custom-house," said Amory 
 abstractedly, and laughed out suddenly in sheer 
 light-heartedness. Here was come to them an 
 undertaking to which St. George himself must 
 warm as he had warmed at the prospect of the 
 voyage. To go up the mountain to the thres- 
 hold of the king's palace, where lived the daughter 
 of the king. 
 
 Amory bent himself with a will to mastering 
 each detail of the little man's proposals. Rollo, 
 they decided, was at once to make ready a few 
 belongings in the oil-skins. Immediately after 
 the banquet St. George and Amory were 
 to mingle with the throng and leave the 
 palace — no difficult matter in the press of 
 the departures — and, on the side of the court- 
 yard beneath the windows of the banquet 
 room, Jarvo, already joined by Rollo, would 
 be awaiting them in the motor bound for 
 Melita. 
 
 " It sounds as if it couldn't be done," said 
 Amory in intense enjoyment. "It's bully." 
 
 He paced up and down the room, talking it 
 over. He folded his arms, and looked at the 
 matter from all sides and wondered, as touching a 
 
THE END OF THE EVENING 215 
 
 Story being " covered " for Chillingworth, whether 
 he were leaving anything unthought. 
 
 " Chillingworth! " he said to himself in ecstasy. 
 "Wouldn't Chillingworth dote to idolatry upon 
 this sight? " 
 
 Then Amory stood still, facing.,gomething that 
 he had not seen before. He had come, in his walk, 
 upon a little table set near the room's entrance, 
 and bearing a decanter and some cups. 
 
 " Hello," he said, " Rollo, where did this come 
 from? " 
 
 Rollo came forward, velvet steps, velvet press- 
 ing together of his hands, face expressionless as 
 velvet too. 
 
 " A servant of 'is 'ighness, sir," he said — 
 Rollo did that now and then to let you know that 
 his was the blood of valets — " left it some time 
 ago, with the compliments of the prince. It 
 looks like a good, nitzy Burgundy, sir," added 
 Rollo tolerantly, " though the man did say it was 
 bottled in something B. C, sir, and if it was it's 
 most likely flat. You can't trust them vintages 
 much farther back than the French Revolootion, 
 beggin' your pardon, sir." 
 
 Amory absently lifted the decanter, and then 
 looked at it with some curiosity. The decanter 
 was like a vase, ornamented with gold medallions 
 covered with exquisite and precise engraving of 
 great beauty and variety of design. Serpents, 
 men contending with lions, sacred trees and apes 
 
216 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 were chased in the gold, and the little cups of 
 sard were engraved in pomegranates and segments 
 of fruit and pendent acorns, and were set with 
 cones of cornelian. The cups were joined by a 
 long cord of thick gold. 
 
 Amory set his hand to the little golden stopper, 
 perhaps hermetically sealed, he thought idly, at 
 about the time of the accidental discovery of glass 
 itself by the Phoenicians. Amory was not imag- 
 inative, but as he thought of the possible age of 
 the wine, there lay upon him that fascination 
 communicable from any link between the present 
 and the living past. 
 
 " Solomon and Sargon," he said to himself, 
 " the geese in the capitol, Marathon, Alexander, 
 Carthage, the Norman conquest, Shakespeare and 
 Miss Frothingham! " 
 
 He smiled and twisted the carven stopper. 
 
 " And the girl is alive," he said almost wonder- 
 ingly. " There has been so much Time in the 
 world, and yet she is alive now. Down there in 
 the banquet room." 
 
 The odour of the contents of the vase, spicy, 
 penetrating, delicious, crept out, and he breathed 
 it gratefully. It was like no odour that he 
 remembered. This was nothing like Rollo's 
 " good, nitzy Burgundy " — this was something 
 infinitely more wonderful. And the odour — the 
 odour was like a draught. And wasn't this the 
 wine of wines, he asked himself, to give them 
 
THE END OF THE EVENING 217 
 
 courage, exultation, the most superb daring 
 when they started up that delectable moimtain? 
 St. George must know ; he would think so too. 
 
 " Oh, I say," said Amory to himself, " we 
 must put some strength in Jarvo's bones too — 
 poor little brick! " 
 
 With that Amory drew the carven stopper, 
 fitted in the little funnel that hung about the neck 
 of the vase, poured a half-finger of the wine in 
 each cup, and lifted one in his hand. But the 
 mere odour was enough to make a man live 
 ten lives, he thought, smiling at his own strange 
 exultation. He must no more than touch it to 
 his lips, for he wanted a clear head for what was 
 coming. 
 
 " Come, Jarvo," he cried gaily — was he shout- 
 ing, he wondered, and wasn't that what he was 
 trying to do — to shout to make some far-away 
 voice answer him? "Come and drink to the 
 health of the prince. I.ong may he live, long 
 may he live — without us ! " 
 
 Amory had stood with his back to the little 
 brown man while he poured the wine. As he 
 turned, he lifted one cup to his lips and Rollo 
 gravely presented the other to Jarvo. But 
 with a bound that all but upset the velvet valet, 
 the little man cleared the space between him and 
 Amory and struck the cup from Amory 's hand. 
 
 "Adon!" he cried terribly, " adon! Do not 
 drink — do not drink! " 
 
218 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 The precious liquid splashed to the floor with 
 the falling cup and ran red about the tiles. 
 Instantly a powerful and delightful fragrance 
 rose, and the thick fumes possessed the air. 
 Amory threw out his hands blindly, caught dizzily 
 at Rollo, and was half dragged by Jarvo to the 
 open window. 
 
 " Oh, I say, sir — " burst out Rollo, more upset 
 over the loss of the wine than he was alarmed 
 at the occurrence. If it came to losing a good, 
 nitzy Burgundy, Rollo knew what that meant. 
 
 " Adon," cried Jarvo, shaking Amory 's shoul- 
 ders, " did you taste the liquor — tell me — the 
 liquor — did you taste? " 
 
 Amory shook his head. Jarvo's face and the 
 hovering Rollo and the whole room were envel- 
 oped in mist, and the wine was hot on his lips 
 where the cup had touched them. Yet 
 while he stood there, with that permeating fra- 
 grance in the air, it came to him vaguely that 
 he had never in his life known a more perfectly 
 delightful moment. If this, he said to him- 
 self vaguely, was what they meant by wine in 
 the old days, then so far as his own experience 
 went, the best " nitzy " Burgundy was no more 
 than a flabby, vin ordinaire beside it. Not that 
 " flabby " was what he meant to call it, but that 
 was the word that came. For he felt as if no 
 less than six men were flowing in his veins, he 
 summed it up to himself triumphantly. 
 
THE END OF THE EVENING 219 
 
 But after all, the effect was only momentary. 
 Almost as quickly as those strange fumes had 
 arisen they were dissipated. And when presently 
 Amory stood up unsteadily from the seat of the 
 window, he could see clearly enough that Jarvo, 
 with terrified eyes, was turning the vase in his 
 hands. 
 
 " It is the same," he was saying, " it must be 
 the same. The gods have permitted the possible. 
 I was here to tell you." 
 
 " Tell me what? " demanded Amory with 
 ungrateful irritation. " Is the stuff poison? " 
 he asked, tottering in spite of himself as he 
 crossed the floor toward him. But Jarvo 
 turned his face, and upon it was such an 
 incongruous terror that Amory involuntarily 
 stood still. 
 
 " There are known to be two," said Jarvo, 
 holding the vase at arm's length, " and the one 
 is abundant life, if the draught is not over- 
 measured. But the other is ten thousand times 
 worse than death." 
 
 " What do you mean? " cried Amory roughly. 
 " What are you talking about? If the stuff is 
 poison can't you say so? " 
 
 Jarvo looked at him swiftly. 
 
 " These things are not spoken aloud in Yaque," 
 he said simply, and after that he held his peace. 
 Amory threatened him and laughed at him, 
 but Jarvo shook his head. At last Amory 
 
220 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 scoffed at the whole matter and stretched out his 
 hand for the vase. 
 
 " Come," he said, " at all events I'll take it 
 with me. It can't be very much worse than the 
 American liqueurs." 
 
 " My word for it, sir, beggin' your pardon," 
 said Rollo earnestly, "it's a kind of what you 
 might call med-i-eval Burgundy, sir." 
 
 " It is not well," said Jarvo, handing the vase 
 with reluctance, " yet take it — ^but see that it 
 touches no lips. I charge you that, adon." 
 
 Amory smiled and slipped the little vase in his 
 coat pocket. 
 
 "It's all right," he said, " I won't let it get 
 away from me. I can find my legs now; I'll go 
 back down. Look sharp, Rollo. Be down there 
 with the oil-skins. We put on this Tyrian purple 
 stuff over the whole outfit," he explained to Jarvo, 
 " and I suppose, you know, that you can get both 
 robes back here for us, if we escape in them? " 
 
 " Assuredly, adon," said Jarvo, " and you must 
 escape without delay. This wine must mean 
 that the prince, too, wishes you harm. Now 
 let me be before you for a little, so that no one 
 may see us together. I shall go now, imme- 
 diately, to the motor — it is waiting already by 
 the wall on the side of the courtyard opposite 
 the windows of the banquet hall. I shall not 
 fail you." 
 
 " On the side of the courtyard opposite the 
 
THE END OF THE EVENING 221 
 
 windows of the banquet room," repeated Amory. 
 "Thanks, Jarvo. You're all kinds of a good 
 fellow." 
 
 " Yes, adon," gravely assented the little man 
 from the threshold. 
 
 Ten minutes later Amory followed. Already 
 Rollo had packed the oil-skins, and Amory, his 
 nerves steadied and the excitement of all that the 
 night promised come upon him, hurried before 
 him down the corridor, his thoughts divided in 
 their allegiance between the delight of telling 
 St. George what was toward, and the new and 
 alluring delight of seeing Antoinette Frothingham 
 near at hand in the banquet room. After all, he 
 had had only the vaguest glimpse of a little figure 
 in rose and silver, and he doubted if he could tell 
 her from the princess, but for the interpreting gown. 
 
 Amory looked up with an irrepressible thrill of 
 delight. He was just at that moment crossing 
 the high white audience-hall, the anteroom 
 to the Hall of Kings — he, Amory, in Tyrian 
 purple garments. If anything were needed to 
 complete the picture it would be to meet face to 
 face, there in that big, lonely room, a little figure in 
 rose and silver. It made his heart beat even to 
 think of the possibilities of that situation. He 
 skirted the Hall of Kings, and stood in one of 
 the archways of the colonnade, facing the 
 banquet room. 
 
 The banquet-table extended about three side'> 
 
222 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 of the room, whose centre the guests faced. The 
 middle space was left pure, un vexed by columns 
 or furnishing. At the room's far end Amory 
 glimpsed the prince, at his side Olivia's white 
 veil, and her women about her; and, nearer, St. 
 George and Balator in the place appointed. A 
 guard came to conduct him, and he crossed 
 to his seat and sank down with the look that 
 could be made to mean whatever Amory 
 meant. 
 
 " I expect to be served," murmured the jour- 
 nalist in him, " by beautiful tame megatheriums, 
 in sashes. And is that glyptodon salad? " 
 
 St. George's eyes were upon the guests, so 
 tranquilly seated, aware of the hour. 
 
 " I fancy," he said in half -voice, " that presently 
 we shall see little flames issuing from their hair, 
 as there used from the hair of the ladies in Wer- 
 ner's ballets." 
 
 Then as Balator leaned toward him in his 
 splendid leisure, fostering his charm, there came 
 an amazing interruption. 
 
 The low key of the room was electrically raised 
 by a cry, loosed from some other plight of being, 
 like an odour of burning encroaching upon a 
 garden. 
 
 . " Why have you not waited? " some one called, 
 and the voice — clear, equal, imperious — evened 
 its way upon the air and reduced to itself the 
 soft speech of the others. Silence fell upon them 
 
THE END OF THE EVENING 223 
 
 all, and their eyes were toward a figure standing 
 in the open interval of the room — a figure whose 
 aspect thrilled St. George with sudden, inexpli- 
 cable emotion. 
 
 It was an old man, incredibly old, so that one 
 thought first of his age. His beard and hair 
 were not all grey, but he had grotesquely brown 
 and wrinkled flesh. His stuff robe hung in straight 
 folds about his singularly erect figure, and there 
 was in his bearing the dignity of one who has 
 understood all fine and gentle things, all things 
 of quietude. But his look was vacant, as if the 
 mind were asleep. 
 
 " Why have you not waited? " he repeated 
 almost wonderingly. " Why have you not sent 
 forme?" and his eyes questioned one and another, 
 and rested on the face of the prince upon the 
 dais, with Olivia by his side. The guard, whom 
 in some fashion the strange old man had eluded, 
 hurried from the borders of the room. But he 
 broke from them and was off up half the length 
 of the hall toward the prince's seat. 
 
 " Do you not know? " he cried as he went, 
 " I am Malakh. Read one another's eyes and 
 you will know. I am Malakh." 
 
 As the guards closed about him he tottered 
 and would have fallen save that they caught him 
 roughly and pressed to a door, half carrying him, 
 and he did not resist. But as speech was renewed 
 another voice broke the murmur, and with great 
 
224 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 amazement St. George knew that this was Olivia's 
 voice. 
 
 " No," she cried — but half as if she distrusted 
 her own strange impulse, " let him stay — let him 
 stay." 
 
 St. George saw the prince's look question her. 
 He himself was unable to account for her unex- 
 pected intercession, and so, one would have said, 
 was Olivia. She looked up at the prince almost 
 fearfully, and down the length of the listening 
 table, and back to the old man whose eyes were 
 upon her face. 
 
 " He is an old man, your Highness," St. George 
 heard her saying, " let him stay." 
 
 Prince Tabnit, who gave a curious impression of 
 doing everything that he did in obedience to 
 inertia rather than in its defiance, indicated some 
 command to the puzzled guards, and they led 
 old Malakh to a stone bench not far from the 
 dais, and there he sank down, looking about 
 him without surprise. 
 
 "It is well," he said simply, " Malakh has 
 come." 
 
 While St. George was marveling — but not that 
 the old man spoke the English, for in Yaque it 
 was not surprising to find the very madmen 
 speaking one's own tongue — Balator explained 
 the man. 
 
 " He is a poor mad creature," Balator said. 
 " He walks the streets of Med saying ' Melek, 
 
THE END OE THE EVENING 225 
 
 Melek,' which is to say, ' king,' and so he is 
 seeking the king. But he is mad, and they say 
 that he always weeps, and therefore they pretend 
 to believe that he says ' Malakh,' which is to 
 say ' salt,' And they call him that for his 
 tears. Doubtless the princess does not under- 
 stand. Her Highness has a tender heart." 
 
 St. George was silent. The incident was trivial, 
 but Olivia had never seemed so near. 
 
 Sometimes in the world of commonplace there 
 comes an extreme hour which one afterward 
 remembers with " Could that have been I? But 
 could it have been I who did that? " And one 
 finds it in one's heart to be certain that it was not 
 one's self, but some one else — some one very 
 near, some one who is always sharing one's own 
 consciousness and inexplicably mixing with one's 
 moments. " Perhaps," St. George would have 
 said, " there is some such person who is nearly, 
 but not quite, I myself. And if there is, it was 
 he and not I who was at that banquet! " It 
 was one of the hours which seem to have been 
 made with no echo. It was; and then passed 
 into other ways, and one remembered only a 
 brightness. For example, St, George listened to 
 what Balator said, and he heard with utmost 
 understanding, and with the frequent pleasure of 
 wonder, and was now and then exquisitely amused 
 as one is amused in dreams. But even as he 
 listened, if he tried to remember the last thing 
 
226 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 that was said, and the next to the last thing, he 
 found that these had escaped him ; and as he rose 
 from the table he could not recall ten words that 
 had been spoken. It was as if the some one very 
 near, who is always sharing one's consciousness 
 and inexplicably mixing with one's moments, had 
 taken St. George's part at the banquet while he, 
 himself, sat there in the r61e of his own outer 
 consciousness. But neither he nor that hypothet- 
 ical " some one else," who was also he, lost for one 
 instant the heavenly knowledge that Olivia was 
 up there at the head of the table. 
 
 Amory, in spite of diplomatic effort, had not 
 succeeded in imparting to St. George anything 
 of his talk with Jarvo. Balator was too near, 
 and the place was somehow too generally attentive 
 to permit a secret word. So, as they rose from 
 the table, St. George was still in ignorance of 
 what was toward and knew nothing of either 
 the Ilex Tower or the possibilities of the morrow. 
 He had only one thought, and that was to speak 
 with Olivia, to let her know that he was there on 
 the island, near her, ready to serve her — ah well, 
 chiefly, he did not disguise from himself, what he 
 wanted was to look at her and to hear her speak 
 to him. But Amory had depended on the con- 
 fusion of the rising to communicate the great news, 
 and to tell about Jarvo, waiting in a motor 
 out there in the palace courtyard, by the wall 
 on the side opposite the windows of the banquet 
 
THE END OF THE EVENING 22T 
 
 room. In an auspicious moment Amory looked 
 warily about, thrilling with premonition of his 
 friend's enthusiasm. 
 
 Before he could speak, St. George uttered a 
 startled exclamation, caught at Amory 's arm, 
 sprang forward, and was off up the long room, 
 dragging Amory with him. 
 
 About the dais there was suddenly an appalling 
 confusion. Push of feet, murmurs, a cry and, 
 visible over the heads between, a glistening of 
 gold uniforms closing about the throne seats, 
 flashing back to the long, open windows, disap- 
 pearing against the night . . . 
 
 " What is it ? " cried Amory as he ran. 
 "What is it? " 
 
 " Quick," said St. George only, " I don't know. 
 They've gone with her." 
 , Amory did not understand, but he saw that 
 Olivia's seat was empty; and when he swept the 
 heads for her white veil, it was not there. 
 
 " Who has? " he said. 
 
 St. George swerved to the side of the room 
 toward the windows, and old Malakh stood there, 
 crying out and pointing. 
 
 " The guard, I think," St. George answered, 
 and was over the low sill of a window, run- 
 ning headlong across the courtyard, Amory 
 behind him. " There they go," St. George 
 cried. "Good God, what are we to do? There 
 they go." 
 
228 ROMANCE ISLAND^ 
 
 Amory looked. Down a side avenue — one of 
 those tunnels of shadow that taught the necessity 
 of mystery — a great motor car was speeding, and 
 in the dimness the two men could see the white of 
 Olivia's floating veil. 
 
 At this, Amory wheeled and searched the 
 length of wall across the yard. If only — if only — 
 
 There on the side of the courtyard opposite 
 the windows of the banquet room stood the 
 motor that was that night to go back to Melita. 
 Bolt upright on the seat was Jarvo, and climbing 
 in the tonneau, with his neck stretched toward 
 the confusion of the palace, was Rollo. Jarvo 
 saw Amory, who beckoned; and in an instant 
 the car was beside them and the two men were 
 over the back of the tonneau in a flash. 
 
 " That way," cried St. George, with no time to 
 waste on the miracle of Jarvo's appearance, 
 " that way — there. Where you see the white." 
 
 At a touch the motor plunged away into the 
 fragrant darkness. Amory looked back. Figures 
 crowded the windows of the palace, and streamed 
 from the banquet hall into the courtyard. Men 
 hurried through the hall, and there was clamour 
 of voices, and in the honey-coloured air the great 
 bulk of the palace towered like a faithless sentinel, 
 the alien banners in nameless colours sending 
 streamers into the moon-lit upper spaces. 
 
 On before, down nebulous ways, went the 
 .whiteness of the floating veil. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 BETWEEN-WORIvDS 
 
 Down nebulous ways they went, the thin 
 darkness flowing past them. The sloping avenue 
 ran all the width of the palace grounds, and here 
 among slim-trunked trees faint fringes of the 
 light touched away the dimness in the open 
 spaces and expressed the borders of the dusk. 
 Always the way led down, dipping deeper in 
 the conjecture of shadow, and always before 
 them glimmered the mist of Olivia's veil, an 
 eidolon of love, of love's eternal Vanishing Goal. 
 
 And St. George was in pursuit. So were Amory 
 and Jarvo, and Rollo of the oil-skins, but these 
 mattered very little, for it was St. George whose 
 eyes burned in his pale face and were striving to 
 catch the faintest motion in that fleeing car ahead. - 
 
 " Faster, Jarvo," he said, " we're not gaining 
 on them. I think they're gaining on us. Put 
 ahead, can't you? " 
 
 Amory vexed the air with frantic questionings. 
 " How did it happen? " he said. " Who did it? 
 Was it the guard? What did they do it for? " 
 
 229 
 
230 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 ** It looks to me," said St. George only, peering 
 distractedly into the gloom, "as if all those 
 fellows had on uniforms. Can you see? " 
 
 Jarvo spoke softly. 
 
 "It is true, adon," he said, " they are of the 
 guard. This is what they had planned," he 
 added to Amory. " I feared the harm would be 
 to you. It is the same. Your turn would be 
 the next." 
 
 " What do you mean? "St. George demanded. 
 
 Amory, with some incoherence, told him what 
 Jarvo had come to them to propose, and height- 
 ened his own excitement by plunging into the 
 business of that night and the next, as he had had 
 it from the little brown man's lips. 
 
 " Up the mountain to-morrow night," he con- 
 cluded fervently, " what do you think of that? 
 Do you see us? " 
 
 " Maniac, no," said St. George shortly, "what 
 do we want to go up the mountain for if Miss 
 Holland is somewhere else? Faster, Jarvo, can't 
 you? " he urged. " Why, this thing is built to go 
 sixty miles an hour. We're creeping." 
 
 " Perhaps it's better to start in gentle and work 
 up a pace, sir," observed RoUo inspirationally, 
 " like a man's legs, sir, beggin' your pardon." 
 
 St. George looked at him as if he had first seen 
 him, so that Amory once more explained his 
 presence and pointed to the oil-skins. And 
 St. George said only: 
 
BETWEEN- WORLDS 231 
 
 " Now we're coming up a little — don't you think 
 we're coming up a little? Throw it wide open, 
 Jarvo — now, go! " 
 
 " Wliat are you going to do when you catch 
 them ? ' ' demanded Amory. ' ' We can't lunge into 
 them, for fear of hurting IVIiss Holland. And who 
 knows what devilish contrivance they've got — 
 dum-dum bullets with a poison seal attachment," 
 prophesied Amory darkly. " What are you 
 going to do? " 
 
 " I don't know what we're going to do," said 
 St. George doggedly, " but if we can overtake 
 them it won't take us long to find out." 
 
 Never so slightly the pursuers were gaining. 
 It was impossible to tell whether those in the 
 flying car knew that they were followed, and if 
 they did know, and if Olivia knew, St. George 
 wondered whether the pursuit w^ere to her a new 
 alarm, or wliether she were looking to them for 
 deliverance. If she knew! His heart stood still 
 at the thought — oh, and if they had both known, 
 that morning at breakfast at the Boris, that this 
 was the way the genie would come out of the jar. 
 But how, if he were unable to help her? And how 
 could he help her when these others might have 
 Heaven knew what resources of black art, art of 
 all the colours of the Yaque spectrum, if it came 
 to that? The slim-trunked trees flew past them, 
 and the tender branches brushed their shoulders 
 and hung out their flowers like lamps. Warm 
 
232 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 wind was in their faces, sweet, reverberant 
 voices of the wood-things came chorusing, and 
 ahead there in the dimness, that misty will-o'- 
 the-wisp was her veil, Olivia's veil. St. George 
 would have followed if it had led him between- 
 worlds. 
 
 In a manner it did lead him between-worlds. 
 Emerging suddenly upon a broader avenue their 
 car followed the other aside and shot through a 
 great gateway of the palace wall — a wall built of 
 such massive blocks that the gateway formed a 
 covered passageway. From there, delicately 
 lighted, greenly arched, and on this festal night, 
 quite deserted, went the road by which, the night 
 before, they had entered Med. 
 
 " Now," said St. George between set teeth, 
 " now see what you can do, Jarvo. Everything 
 depends on you." 
 
 Evidently Jarvo had been waiting for this 
 stretch of open road and expecting the other car 
 to take it. He bent forward, his wiry little frame 
 like a quivering spring controlling the motion. 
 The motor leaped at his touch. Away down the 
 road they tore with the wind singing its challenge. 
 Second by second they saw their gain increase. 
 The uniforms of the guards in the car became 
 distinguishable. The white of Olivia's veil 
 merged in the brightness of her gown — was it only 
 the shining of the gold of the uniforms or could 
 St. George see the floating gold of her hair? Ah, 
 
BETWEEN- WORLDS 233' 
 
 wonderful, past all speech it was wonderful to be 
 fleeing toward her through this pale light that was 
 like a purer element than light itself. With 
 the phantom moving of the boughs in the wood 
 on either side light seemed to dance and drip 
 from leaf to leaf — the visible spirit of the haunted 
 green. The unreality of it all swept over him 
 almost stiflingly. Olivia — was it indeed Olivia 
 whom he was following down lustrous ways of a 
 land vague as a star ; or was his pursuit not for 
 her, but for the exquisite, incommunicable Idea, 
 and was he following it through a world forth- 
 fashioned from his own desire? 
 
 Suddenly indistinguishable sounds were in his 
 ears, words from Amory, from Jarvo certain 
 exultant gutturals. He felt the car slacken speed, 
 he looked ahead for the swift beckoning of the 
 veil, and then he saw that where, in the delicate 
 distance, the other motor had sped its way, it 
 now stood inactive in the road before them, and 
 they were actually upon it. The four guards in 
 the motor were standing erect with uplifted faces, 
 their gold uniforms shining like armour. But 
 this was not all. There, in the highway beside 
 the car, the mist of her veil like a halo about her, 
 Olivia stood alone. 
 
 St. George did not reckon what they meant to 
 do. He dropped over the side of the tonneau and 
 ran to her. He stood before her, and all the joy 
 that he had ever known was transcended as she 
 
'234 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 turned toward him. She threw out her hands 
 with a Httle cry — was it gladness, or reUef, or 
 beseeching? He could not be certain that there 
 was even recognition in her eyes before she tot- 
 tered and swayed, and he caught her unconscious 
 form in his arms. As he lifted her he looked with 
 apprehension toward the car that held the guards. 
 To his bewilderment there was no car there. 
 The pursued motor, like a winged thing of the 
 most innocent vagaries, had taken itself off utterly. 
 And on before, the causeway was utterly empty, 
 dipping idly between murmurous green. But at 
 the moment St. George had no time to spend on 
 that wonder. 
 
 He carried Olivia to the tonneau of Jarvo's 
 car, jealous when Rollo lifted her gown's hem 
 from the dust of the road and when Amory 
 threw open the door. He held her in his arms, 
 half kneeling beside her, profoundly regardless 
 where it should please the others to dispose 
 themselves. He had no recollection of hearing 
 Jarvo point the way through the trees to a 
 path that led away, as far from them as a 
 voice would carry, to the Ilex Tower whose key 
 burned in Amory 's pocket, promising radiant, 
 intangible things to his imagination. St. George 
 understood with magnificent unconcern that 
 Amory and Rollo were gone off there to wait 
 for the return of him and Jarvo; he took it for 
 granted that Jarvo had grasped that Olivia must 
 
BETWEEN- WORLDS 235 
 
 be taken back to her aunt and her friends at the 
 palace; and afterward he knew only, for an inde- 
 terminate space, that the car was moving across 
 some dim, heavenly foreground to some dim, 
 ultimate destination in which he found himself 
 believing with infinite faith. 
 
 For this was Olivia, in his arms. St. George 
 looked down at her, at the white, exquisite face 
 with its shadow of lashes, and it seemed to him 
 that he must not breathe, or remember, or hope, 
 lest the gods should be jealous and claim the 
 moment, and leave him once more forlorn. That 
 was the secret, he thought, not to touch away 
 the elusive moment by hope or memory, but just 
 to live it, filled with its ecstasies, borne on the 
 crest of its consciousness. It seemed to him in 
 some intimately communicated fashion, that the 
 moment, the very world of the island, was become 
 to him a more intense object of consciousness 
 than himself. And somehow Olivia was its 
 expression — Olivia, here in his arms, with the 
 stir of her breath and the light, light pressure 
 of her body and the fall of her hair, not only 
 symbols of the sovereign hour, but the hour's 
 realities. 
 
 On either side the phantom wood pressed close 
 about them, and its light seemed coined by goblin 
 fingers. Dissolving wind, persuading little voices 
 musical beyond the domain of music that he 
 knew, quick, poignant vistas of glades where the 
 
236 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 light spent itself in its longed-for liberty of 
 colour, labyrinthine ways of shadow that taught 
 the necessity of mystery. There was something 
 lyric about it all. Here Nature moved on no 
 formal lines, understood no frugality of beauty, 
 but was lavish with a divine and special errantry 
 to a divine and special understanding. And it 
 had been given St. George to move with her 
 merely by living this hour, with Olivia in his 
 arms. 
 
 The sweet of life — the sweet of life and the 
 world his own. The words had never meant so 
 much. He had often said them in exultation, 
 but he had never known their truth: the world 
 was literally his own, under the law. Nothing 
 seemed impossible. His mind went back to the 
 unexplained disappearing of that other motor and, 
 however it had been, that did not seem impossible 
 either. It seemed natural, and only a new door- 
 way to new points of contact. In this amazing 
 land no speculation was too far afield to be 
 the food of every day. Here men understood 
 miracle as the rest of the world understands 
 invention. Already the mere existence of Yaque 
 proved that the space of experience is tran- 
 scended — and with the thought a fancy, elusive 
 and profound, seized him and gripped at his heart 
 with an emotion wider than fear. "What had 
 become of the other car? Had it gone down 
 some road of the wood which the guards knew, 
 
BETWEEN- WORLDS 237 
 
 or . . . The words of Prince Tabnit came back 
 to him as they had been spoken in that wonderful 
 tour of the island. " The higher dimensions are 
 being conquered. Nearly all of us can pass into 
 the fifth at will, ' disappearing,' as you have the 
 word." Was it possible that in the vanishing of 
 the pursued car this had been demonstrated 
 before him? Into this space, inclusive of the 
 visible world and of Yaque as well, had the car 
 passed without the pursuers being able to point to 
 the direction which it had taken? vSt. George 
 smiled in derision as this flashed upon him, and 
 it hardly held his thought for a moment, for his 
 eyes were upon Olivia's face, so near, so near 
 his own . . . Undoubtedly, he thought vaguely, 
 that other motor had simply swerved aside to 
 some private opening of the grove and, from being 
 hard-pressed and almost overtaken, was now well 
 away in safety. Yet if this were so, would they 
 not have taken Olivia with them? But to that 
 strange and unapparent hyperspace they could 
 not have taken her, because she did not under- 
 stand. ". . . just as one," Prince Tabnit had 
 said, ' ' who understands how to die and come to life 
 again would not be able to take with him any one 
 who himself did not understand how to accom- 
 pany him ..." 
 
 Some terrifying and exalting sense swept him 
 into a new intimacy of understanding as he 
 realized glimmeringly what heights and depths 
 
238 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 lay about his ceasing to see that car of the guard. 
 Yet, with OHvia's head upon his arm, all that 
 he theorized in that flash of time hung hardly 
 beyond the border of his understanding. Indeed, 
 it seemed to St. George as if almost — almost 
 he could understand, as if he could pierce 
 the veil and know utterly all the secrets of spirit 
 and sense that confound. " We shall all know 
 when we are able to bear it," he had once heard 
 another say, and it seemed to him now that at 
 last he was able to bear it, as if the sense of the 
 uninterrupted connection between the two worlds 
 was almost a part of his own consciousness. A 
 moment's deeper thought, a quicker flowing of 
 the imagination, a little more poignant projecting 
 of himself above the abyss and he, too, would 
 understand. It came to him that he had almost 
 understood every time that he had looked at 
 Olivia. Ah, he thought, and how exquisite, how 
 matchless she was, and what Heaven beyond 
 Heaven the world would hold for him if only 
 she were to love him. St. George lifted the 
 little hand that hung at her side, and stooped 
 momentarily to touch his cheek to the soft hair 
 that swept her shoulder. Here for him lay the 
 sweet of life — the sweet of the world, ay, and 
 the sweet of all the world's mysteries. This 
 alien land was no nearer the truth than he. 
 His love was the expression of its mystery. 
 They went back through the great arch- 
 
BETWEEN-WORLDS 239 
 
 way, and entered the palace park. Once more 
 the slim-tninked trees flew past them with the 
 fringes of light expressing the borders of the 
 dusk. St. George crouched, half -kneeling, on 
 the floor of the tonneau, his free hand pro- 
 tecting Olivia's face from the leaning branches 
 of heavy-headed flowers. He had been so pas- 
 sionately anxious that she should know that he 
 was on the island, near her, ready to serve 
 her; but now, save for his alarm and anxiety 
 about her, he felt a shy, profound gratitude that 
 the hour had fallen as it had fallen. Whatever 
 was to come, this nearness to her would be his 
 to remember and possess. It had been his supreme 
 hour. Whether she had recognized him in that 
 moment on the road, whether she ever knew 
 what had happened made, he thought, no differ- 
 ence. But if she was to open her eyes as they 
 reached the border of the park, and if she was 
 to know that it was like this that the genie had 
 come out of the jar — the mere notion made him 
 giddy, and he saw that Heaven may have little 
 inner Heaven-courts which one is never too happy 
 to penetrate. 
 
 But Olivia did not stir or unclose her eyes. 
 The great strain of the evening, the terror and 
 shock of its ending, the very relief with which 
 she had, at all events, realized herself in the 
 hands of friends were more than even an island 
 princess could pass through in serenity. And 
 
240 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 when at last from the demesne of enchantment 
 the car emerged in the court of the palace, Olivia 
 knew nothing of it and, as nearly as he could 
 recall afterward, neither did St. George. He 
 understood that the courtyard was filled with 
 murmurs, and that as Olivia was lifted from the 
 car the voice of Mrs. Medora Hastings, in all 
 its excesses of tone and pitch, was tilted in a 
 kind of universal reproving. Then he was aware 
 that Jarvo, beseeching him not to leave the 
 motor, had somehow got him away from all the 
 tumult and the questioning and the crush of the 
 other motors setting tardily off down the avenue 
 in a kind of majestic pursuit of the princess. 
 After that he remembered nothing but the grate- 
 ful gloom of the wood and the swift flight of the 
 car down that nebulous way, thin darkness 
 flowing about him. 
 
 He was to go back to join Amory in some 
 kind of tower, he knew; and he was infinitely 
 resigned, for he remembered that this was in 
 some way essential to his safety, and that it 
 had to do with the ascent of Mount Khalak to-mor- 
 row night. For the rest St. George was certain 
 of nothing save that he was floating once more 
 in a sea of light, with the sweet of the world 
 flowing in his veins; and upon his arm and 
 against his shoulder he could still feel the thrill 
 of the pressure of Olivia's head. 
 
 The genie had come out of the jar — and never, 
 never would he go back. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE LINES LEAD UP 
 
 In the late hours of the next afternoon Rollo, 
 with a sigh, uncoiled himself from the shadow of 
 the altar to the god Melkarth, in the Ilex Temple, 
 and stiffly rose. Vicissitudes were not for Rollo, 
 who had not fathomed the joys of adaptability; 
 and the savour of the sweet herbs which, from 
 Jarvo's wallet, he had that day served, was for- 
 gotten in his longing for a drop of tarragan 
 vinegar and a bulb of garlic with which to dress 
 the herbs. His lean and shadowed face wore an 
 expression of settled melancholy. 
 
 " Sorrow's nothing," he sententiously observed. 
 " It's trouble that does for a man, sir." 
 
 St. George, who lay at full length on a mossy 
 sill of the king's chapel counting the hours of his 
 inaction, continued to look out over the glistening 
 tops of the ilex trees. 
 
 "Speaking of trouble," he said, "what would yoil 
 say, Rollo, to getting back to the yacht to-night, 
 instead of going up the mountain with us? " 
 
 241 
 
242 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Rollo dropped his eyes, but his face brightened 
 under, as it were, his never-hfted mask. 
 
 " Oh, sir," he said humbly, " a person is always 
 willing to do whatever makes him the most 
 useful." 
 
 " Little Cawthorne and Bennietod," went on 
 St. George, " ten to one will take to the trail 
 to-night, if they haven't already. They'll be 
 coming to Med and reorganizing the police force, 
 or raising a standing army or starting a subway. 
 You'd do well to drop down, and give them some 
 idea of what's happened, and I fancy you'd 
 better all be somewhere about on the day after 
 to-morrow, at noon. Not that there will be any 
 wedding at that time," explained St. George care- 
 fully, " although there may be something to see, 
 all the same. But you might tell them, you know, 
 that Miss Holland is due to marry the prince 
 then. Can you get back to the yacht alone? " 
 
 Rollo hadn't thought of that, and his mask 
 fell once more into its lines of misery. 
 
 " I don't know, sir," he said doubtfully, " most 
 men can go up a steep place all right. It's comin' 
 down that's hard on the knees. And if I was 
 to try it alone, sir " 
 
 Jarvo made a sign of reassurance. 
 
 " That is not weU," he said, " you would be 
 dashed to pieces. Ulfin, one of the six, will wait 
 for us to-night on the edge of the grove. He can 
 conduct the way to the vessel." 
 
THE LINES LEAD UP 243 
 
 " Ah, sir," said Rollo, not without a certain 
 self-satisfaction, " something is always sure to 
 turn up, sir." 
 
 From a tour of the temple Amory came list- 
 lessly back to the king's chapel. There, where 
 the descendants of Abibaal had worshiped until 
 their idols had been refined by Time to a kind of 
 decoration, the Americans and Jarvo had spent 
 the night. They had slept stretched on benches 
 of beveled stone. They had waked to trace the 
 figures in a length of tapestry representing the 
 capture of lo on the coast of Argolis, doubtless 
 woven by an eye-witness. They had bathed in a 
 brook near the entrance where stood the altar 
 for the sacrifice round which the priests and 
 hierodouloi had been wont to dance, and where 
 huge architraves, metopes and tryglyphs, massive 
 as those at Gebeil and Tortosa and hewn from 
 living rock, rose from the fragile green of the wood 
 like a huge arm signaling its eternal " Alas! " 
 They had partaken of Jarvo 's fruit and sweet 
 herbs, and Rollo had served them, standing with 
 his back to the niche where once had looked 
 augustly down the image of the god. And now 
 Amory, with a smile, leaned against a wall where 
 old vines, grown miraculously in crannies, spread 
 their tendrils upon the friendly hieroglyphic scor- 
 ing of the crenelated stone, and summed up his 
 reflections of the night. 
 
 " I've got it," he announced, " I think it was up 
 
244 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 in the Adirondacks, summer before last. I think 
 I was in a canoe when she went by in a launch, 
 with the Chiswicks. Why, do you know, I think 
 I dreamed about Miss Frothingham for weeks." 
 
 St. George smiled suddenly and radiantly, and 
 his smile was for the sake of both Rollo and 
 Amory — Rollo whose sense of the commonplace 
 nothing could overpower, Amory who talked 
 about the Chiswicks in the Adirondacks. Why 
 not? St. George thought happily. Here in the 
 temple certain precious and delicate idols were 
 believed to be hidden in alcoves walled up by 
 mighty stone; and here, Jarvo was telling them, 
 were secret exits to the road contrived by the 
 priests of the temple at the time of their oppres- 
 sion by the worshipers of another god; but yet 
 what special interest could he and Amory have 
 in brooding upon these, or the ancient Phcenicians 
 having " invited to traffic by a signal fire," when 
 they could sit still and remember? 
 
 " To-night," he said aloud, feeling a sudden 
 fellowship for both Amory and Rollo, " to-night, 
 when the moon rises, we shall watch it from the 
 top of the mountain." 
 
 Then he wondered, many hundred times, 
 whether Olivia could possibly have recognized 
 him. 
 
 When the dark had fallen they set out. The 
 ilex grove was very still save for a fugitive wind 
 that carried faint spices, and they took a 
 
THE LINES LEAD UP 245 
 
 winding way among trunks and reached the 
 edge of the wood without adventm-e. There 
 Ulfin and another of the six carriers were wait- 
 ing, as Jarvo had expected, and it was decided 
 that they should both accompany Rollo down to 
 the yacht. 
 
 Rollo handed the oil-skins to St. George and 
 Amory, and then stood crushing his hat in his 
 hands, doing his best to speak. 
 
 " Look sharp, Rollo," St. George advised him, 
 " don't step one foot off a precipice. And tell the 
 people on the yacht not to worry. We shall 
 expect to see them day after to-morrow, some- 
 where about. Take care of yourself." 
 
 "Oh, sir," said Rollo with difficulty, " good- 
 by, sir. I 'ope you'll be successful, sir. A per- 
 son likes to succeed in what they undertake." 
 
 Then the three went on down the glimmering 
 way where, last night, they had pursued the 
 floating pennon of the veil. There were few 
 upon the highway, and these hardly regarded 
 them. It occurred to St. George that they 
 passed as figures in a dream will pass, in the 
 casual fashion of all unreality, taking all things 
 for granted. Yet, of course, to the passers-by 
 upon the road to Med, there was nothing remark- 
 able in the aspect of the three companions. All 
 that was remarkable was the adventure upon 
 which they were bound, and nobody could pos- 
 sibly have guessed that. 
 
246 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Almost a mile lay between them and the point 
 where the ascent of the mountain was to be begun. 
 The road which they were taking followed at the 
 foot of the embankment which girt the island, 
 and it led them at last to a stretch of arbourfes- 
 cent heath, piled with black basaltic rocks. 
 Here, where the light was dim like the glow 
 from light reflected upon low clouds, they took 
 their way among great branching cacti and name- 
 less plants that caught at their ankles. A 
 strange odour rose from the earth, mineral, 
 metallic, and the air was thick with particles 
 stirred by their feet and more resembling ashes 
 than dust. This was a waste place of the island, 
 and if one were to lift a handful of the soil, 
 St. George thought, it was very likely that one 
 might detect its elements; as, here the dust of 
 a temple, here of a book, here a tomb and here 
 a sacrifice. He felt himself near the earth, in 
 its making. He looked away to the sugar-loaf 
 cone of the mountain risen against the star-lit 
 sky. Above its fortress-like bulk with circular 
 ramparts burned the clear beacon of the light on 
 the king's palace. As he saw the light, St. George 
 knew himself not only near the earth but at one 
 with the very currents of the air, partaker of 
 now a hope, now a task, now a spell, and now 
 a memory. It was as if love had made him 
 one with the dust of dead cities and with their 
 eternal spiritual effluence. 
 
THE LINES LEAD UP 247 
 
 At length they crossed the broad avenue that led 
 from the Eurychorus to MeHta, and struck into 
 the road that skirted the mountain; and where 
 a thicket of trees flung bold branches across the 
 way, three figures rose from the ground before 
 them, and Akko stepped forward and saluted, 
 his white teeth gleaming. Immediately Jarvo led 
 the way through a strip of imderbrush at the 
 base of the mountain, and they emerged in a 
 glade where the light hardly penetrated. 
 
 Here were distinguishable the palanquins 
 In which the ascent was to be made. These were 
 like long baskets, upborne by a pole of great 
 flexibility broadening to a wider support beneath 
 the body of the basket and provided with rubber 
 straps through which the arms were passed. 
 When St. George and Amory were seated, 
 Jarvo spoke hesitatingly: 
 
 " We must bandage your eyes, ad6n,'' he said. 
 
 " Oh really, really," protested St. George, " w^e 
 don't understand half we do see. Do let us see 
 what we can." 
 
 " You must be blindfolded, ad6n," repeated 
 Jarvo firmly. 
 
 Amory, passing his arms reflectively through 
 the rubber straps which Akko held for him, spoke 
 cheerfully : 
 
 " I'll go up blindfold," he submitted, " if I can 
 smoke." 
 
 " Neither of us will," said St. George with deter- 
 
248 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 mination. "See here, Jarvo, we are both level- 
 headed. We pledge you our word of honour, in 
 addition, not to dive overboard. Now — ^lead on. " 
 
 " It has never been done," said the little brown 
 man with obstinacy, " you will lose your reason, 
 adon." 
 
 " Ah well now, if we do," said St. George, 
 " pitch us over and leave us. Besides, I think we 
 have. Lead on, please." 
 
 Against the will of the others, he prevailed. 
 The light oil-skins were placed in the baskets, each 
 of which was shouldered by two men, Jarvo 
 bearing the foremost pole of St. George's palan- 
 quin. All the carriers had drawn on long, soft 
 shoes which, perhaps from some preparation in 
 which they had been dipped, glowed with light, 
 illuminating the ground for a little distance at 
 every step. 
 
 " Are you ready, adon? " asked Jarvo and Akko 
 at the same moment. 
 
 " Ready! " cried St. George impatiently. 
 
 " Ready," said Amory languidly, and added 
 one thought more: " I hope for Chillingworth's 
 sake," he said, " that Frothingham is a notar}^ 
 public. We'll have to have somebody's seal at 
 the bottom of all this copy." 
 
 The baskets were lightly lifted. Jarvo gave 
 a sharp command, and all four of the men broke 
 into a rhythmic chant. Jarvo, leading the way, 
 sprang immediately upon the first foothold, 
 
THE LINES LEAD UP 213 
 
 where none seemed to be, and without pause to 
 the next. So perfectly were the men trained that 
 it was as if but one set of muscles were inspir- 
 ing the movements made to the beat of that 
 monotonous measure. In their strong hands the 
 flexible pole seemed to give as their bodies gave, 
 and so lightly did they leap upward that the jar 
 of their alighting was hardly perceptible, as if, as 
 had occurred to St. George as they ascended the 
 lip of the island, gravity were here another mat- 
 ter. So, without pause, save in the rhythm of 
 that strange march music, the remarkable prog- 
 ress was begun. 
 
 St. George threw one swift glance upward and 
 looked down, shudderingly. Beetling above them 
 in the great starlight hung the gigantic pile, 
 wall upon wall of rock hewn with such secret 
 foothold that it was a miracle how any living 
 thing could catch and cling to its forbidding 
 surface. Only lifelong practice of the men, who 
 from childhood had been required to make the 
 ascent and whose fathers and fathers' fathers 
 before them had done the same, could have 
 accounted for that catlike ability to cling to the 
 trail where was no trail. The sensation of the 
 long swinging upward movement was unutterably 
 alien to anything in life or in dreams, and the 
 sheer height above and the momently-deepening 
 chasm below were presences contending for pos- 
 session. 
 
250 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Strange fragrance stole from gum and bark 
 of the decreasing vegetation. Dislodged stones 
 rolled bounding from rock to rock into the abyss. 
 To right and left the way went. There was not 
 even the friendly beacon of the summit to 
 beckon them. It seemed to St. George that their 
 whole safety lay in motion, that a moment's ces- 
 sation from the advance would hurl them all 
 down the sides of the declivity. Since the ascent 
 began he had not ceased to look down; and now 
 as they rose free of the tree-tops that clothed the 
 base of the mountain he could see across the 
 plain, and beyond the bounding embankment of 
 the island to the dark waste of the sea. Some- 
 where out there The Aloha was rocking. Some- 
 where, away to the northwest, the lights of 
 New York harbour shone. Did they, St. George 
 wondered vaguely; and, when he went back, 
 how would they look to him? It seemed to him 
 in some indeterminate fashion that when he saw 
 them again there would be new lines and sides of 
 beauty which he had never suspected, and as if 
 all the world would be changed, included in this 
 new world that he had found. 
 
 Half-way up the ascent a resting-place was con- 
 trived for the carriers. The projection upon 
 which the baskets were lowered was hardly three 
 feet in width. Its edge dropped into darkness. 
 Within reach, leaves rustled from the summit of a 
 tree rooted somewhere in the chasm. The black- 
 
THE LINES LEAD UP 251 
 
 ness below was vast and to be measured only by 
 the memory of that upward course. Gemmed 
 by its lighted hamlets the fair plain of the island 
 lay, with Med and Melita glowing like lamps to 
 the huge dusk. 
 
 " St. George," said Amory soberly, "if it's all 
 true — ^if these people do understand what the 
 
 world doesn't know anything about " 
 
 " Yes," said St. George. 
 
 " It makes a man feel " 
 
 •' Yes," said St. George, " it does." 
 This, they afterward remembered, was all that 
 they said on the ascent. One wonders if two, 
 being met among the " strengthless tribes of the 
 dead," would find much more to say. 
 
 Then they went on, scaling that invisible 
 way, with the twinkling feet of the carriers draw- 
 ing upward like a thread of thin gold which they 
 were to climb. What, St. George thought as 
 the way seemed to lengthen before them, what 
 if there were no end? What if this were some 
 gigantic trick of Destiny to keep him for the rest 
 of his life in mid-air, ceaselessly toiling up, a lat- 
 ter-day Sisyphus, in a palanquin? He had 
 dreamed of stairs in the darkness which men 
 mounted and found to have no summits, and 
 suppose this were such a stair? Suppose, among 
 these marvels that were related to his dreams, he 
 had, as it were, tossed a ball of twine in the air 
 and, like the Indian jugglers, climbed it ? Suppose 
 
252 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 he had built a castle in the clouds and tenanted 
 it with Olivia, and were now foolhardily attempt- 
 ing to scale the air? Ah well, he settled it con- 
 tentedly, better so. For this divine jugglery comes 
 once into every life, and one must climb to the 
 castle with madness and singing if he would 
 attain to the temples that lie on the castle-plain. 
 
 Gradually, as they approached the summit, 
 the ascent became less precipitous. As they 
 neared the cone their way lay over a kind of 
 natural fosse at the cone's base; and, although 
 the mountain did not reach the level of perpetual 
 snow, yet an occasional cool breath from the 
 dark told where in some natural cavern snow 
 had lain undisturbed since the unremembered 
 eruption of the sullen, volcanic peak. Then 
 came a breath of over-powering sweetness from 
 some secret thicket, and something was struck 
 from the feet of the bearers that was like white 
 pumice gravel. St. George no longer looked 
 downward; the plain and the waste of the sea 
 were in a forgotten limbo, and he searched eagerly 
 on high for the first rays of the light that marked 
 the goal of his longing. 
 
 Yet he was unprepared when, swerving 
 sharply and skirting an immense shoulder of 
 rock, Jarvo suddenly emerged upon a broad 
 retaining wall of stone bordering a smooth, moon- 
 lit terrace extending by shallow flights of steps 
 to the white doors of the king's palace itself. 
 
THE LINES LEAD UP 253 
 
 As St. George and Amory freed themselves 
 and sprang to their feet their eyes were drawn 
 to a glory of light shining over the low parapet 
 which surrounded the terrace. 
 
 " Look," cried St. George victoriously, " the 
 moon! " 
 
 From the sea the moon was momently 
 growing, like a giant bubble, and a bright path 
 had issued to the mountain's foot. " See," she 
 would doubtless have said if she could, " I would 
 have shown you the way here all your life if 
 only you had looked properly." But at all 
 events St. George's prophecy was fulfilled : From 
 the top of Mount Khalak they were watching 
 the moon rise. St. George, however, was not 
 yet in the company whose image had pleasantly 
 besieged him when he had prophesied. He 
 turned impatiently to the palace. Jarvo, rest- 
 ing on the stones where he had sunk down, 
 signaled them to go on, and the two needed no 
 second bidding. They set off briskly across the 
 plateau, Amory looking about him with eager 
 curiosity, St. George on the crest of his divine 
 expectancy. 
 
 The palace was set on the west of the gentle 
 slope to which the mountain-top had been arti- 
 ficially leveled. The terrace led up on three 
 sides from the marge of the height to the great 
 portals. Over everything hung that imponder- 
 able essence that vv'as clearer and purer than any 
 
254 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 light — " better than any light that ever shone." 
 In its glamourie, with that far ocean background, 
 the palace of pale stone looked unearthly, a sky 
 thing, with ramparts of air. The principle of the 
 builders seemed not to have been the ancient 
 dictum that " mass alone is admirable," for the 
 great pile was shaped, with beauty of unknown 
 line, in three enormous cylinders, one rising from 
 another, the last magnificently curved to a huge 
 dome on whose summit burned with inconceiv- 
 able brilliance the light which had been a beacon 
 to the longing eyes turned toward it from the 
 deck of The Aloha. In the shadow of the palace 
 rose two high towers, obelisk-shaped from the 
 pure white stone. Scattered about the slope were 
 detached buildings, consisting of marble mono- 
 liths resting upon double bases and crowned with 
 carved cornices, or of truncated pyramids and 
 pyramidions. These had plinths of delicately- 
 coloured stone over which the light diffused so 
 that they looked luminous, and the small blocks 
 used to fill the apertures of the courses shone like 
 precious things. Adjacent to one of the porches 
 were two conical shrines, for images and little 
 lamps; and, near-by, a fallen pillar of immense pro- 
 portions lay undisturbed upon the court of 
 sward across which it had some time shivered 
 down. 
 
 But if the palace had been discovered to be 
 the preserved and transported Temple of Solo- 
 
THE LINES LEAD UP 255 
 
 mon it could not have stayed St. George for one 
 moment of admiration. He was off up the slope, 
 seeing only the great closed portals, and with 
 Amory beside him he ran boldly up the long 
 steps. It was a part of the unreality of the 
 place that there seemed absolutely no sign of 
 life about the King's palace. The windows glowed 
 with the soft light within, but there were no 
 guards, no servants, no sign of any presence. 
 For the first time, when they reached the top of 
 the steps, the two men hesitated. 
 
 " Personally," said Amory doubtfully, " I have 
 never yet tapped at a king's front door. What 
 does one do? " 
 
 St. George looked at the long stone porches, 
 uncovered and girt by a parapet following the 
 curve of the fagade. 
 
 " Would you mind waiting a minute? " he said. 
 
 With that he was off along the balcony to the 
 south — and afterward he wondered why, and if 
 it is true that Fate tempts us in the way that 
 she would have us walk by luring us with 
 unseen roses budding from the air. 
 
 Where the porch abruptly widened to a kind 
 of upper terrace, like a hanging garden set with 
 flowering trees, three high archways opened to 
 an apartment whose bright lights streamed 
 across the grass-plots. St. George felt something 
 tug at his heart, something that urged him forward 
 and caught him up in an ecstasy of triumph and 
 
256 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 hope fulfilled. He looked back at Amory, and 
 Amory was leaning on the parapet, apparently- 
 sunk in reflections which concerned nobody. 
 So St. George stepped softly on until he reached 
 the first archway, and there he stopped, and the 
 moment was to him almost past belief. Within 
 the open doorway, so near that if she had 
 lifted her eyes they must have met his own, was 
 the woman whom he had come across the sea 
 to seek. 
 
 St. George hardly knew that he spoke, for it 
 was as if all the world were singing her name. 
 
 "Olivia!" he said. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE ISLE OF HEARTS 
 
 The room in which St. George was looking was 
 long and lofty and hung with pale tapestries. 
 White pillars supporting the domed white ceiling 
 were wound with garlands. The smoke from a 
 little brazen tripod ascended pleasantly, and 
 about the windows stirred in the faint wind dra- 
 peries of exceeding thinness, woven in looms 
 stilled centuries ago. 
 
 Olivia was crossing before the windows. She 
 wore a white gown strewn with roses, and she 
 seemed as much at home on this alien mountain- 
 top as she had been in her aunt's drawing-room 
 at the Boris. But her face was sad, and there 
 was not a touch of the piquancy which it had 
 worn the night before in the throne-room, nor of 
 its delicious daring as she had sped past him in the 
 bigYaque touring car. Save for her, the room 
 was deserted; it was as if the prince had come to 
 the castle and found the Sleeping Princess the 
 only one awake. 
 
 257 
 
258 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 If in that supreme moment St. George had 
 leaped forward and taken her in his arms no one 
 — no one, that is, in the fairy-tale of what was 
 happening — would greatly have censured him. 
 But he stood without for a moment, hardly daring 
 to believe his happiness, hardly knowing that her 
 name was on his lips. 
 
 He had spoken, however, and she turned 
 quickly, her look uncertainly seeking the doorway, 
 and she saw him. For a moment she stood 
 still, her eyes upon his face; then with a little 
 incredulous cry that thrilled him with a sudden 
 joyous hope that was like belief, she came swiftly 
 toward him. 
 
 St. George loved to remember that she did that. 
 There was no waiting for assurance and no fear; 
 only the impulse, gloriously obeyed, to go toward 
 him. 
 
 He stepped in the room, and took her hands 
 in his and looked into her eyes as if he would 
 never turn away his own. In her face was a 
 dawning of glad certainty and welcome which he 
 could not doubt. 
 
 " You," she cried softly, " you. How is it 
 possible? But how is it possible? " 
 
 Her voice trembled a little with something so 
 sweet that it raced through his veins with magic. 
 
 " Did you rub the lamp? " he said. " Because 
 I couldn't help coming." 
 
 She looked at him breathlessly. 
 
THE ISLE OF HEARTS 259 
 
 " Have you," he asked her gravely, " eaten of 
 the potatoes of Yaque? And are you going to 
 say, ' Off with his head'? And can you tell me 
 what is the population of the island? " 
 
 At that they both laughed — the merry, irre- 
 pressible laugh of youth which explains that the 
 world is a very good place indeed and that one 
 is glad that one belongs there. And the memory 
 of that breakfast on the other side of the world, 
 of their happy talk about what would happen if 
 they two were impossibly to meet in Yaque came 
 back to them both, and set his heart beating and 
 flooded her face with delicate colour. In her 
 laugh was a little catching of the breath that was 
 enchanting. 
 
 " Not yet," she said, " your head is safe till 
 you tell me how you got here, at all events. Now 
 tell me — oh, tell me. I can't believe it until you 
 tell me." 
 
 She moved a little away from the door. 
 
 '* Come in," she said shyly, " if you've come 
 all the way from America you must be very 
 tired." 
 
 St. George shook his head. 
 
 " Come out," he pleaded, " I want to stand on 
 top of a high mountain and show you the whole 
 world." 
 
 She went quite simply and without hesitation 
 — because, in Yaque, the maddest things would 
 be the truest — and when she had stepped from 
 
260 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 the low doorway she looked up at him in the 
 tender light of the garden terrace. 
 
 " If you are quite sure," she said, " that you 
 will not disappear in the dark? " 
 
 St. George laughed happily. 
 
 " I shall not disappear," he promised, " though 
 the world were to turn round the other 
 way." 
 
 They crossed the still terrace to the parapet 
 and stood looking out to sea with the risen moon 
 shining across the waters. The light wind stirred 
 in the cedrine junipers, shaking out perfume; the 
 great fairy pile of the palace rose behind them; 
 and before them lay the monstrous moon-lit 
 abyss than whose depths the very stars, warm 
 and friendly, seemed nearer to them. To the big 
 young American in blue serge beside the little 
 new princess who had drawn him over seas the 
 dream that one is always having and never quite 
 remembering was suddenly come true. No won- 
 der that at that moment the patient Amory was 
 far enough from liis mind. To St. George, looking 
 down upon Olivia, there was only one truth and 
 one joy in the universe, and she was that truth 
 and that joy. 
 
 " I can't believe it," he said boyishly. 
 
 " Believe — what ?" she asked, for the delight 
 of hearing him say so. 
 
 " This — me — most of all, you! " he answered. 
 
 " But you must believe it, " she cried anxiously, 
 " or maybe it will stop being." 
 
THE ISLE OE HEARTS 261. 
 
 '* I will, I will, I am now! " promised St. George 
 in alarm. 
 
 Whereat they both laughed again in sheer light- 
 heartedness. Then, resting his broad shoulders 
 against a prism of the parapet, St. George looked 
 down at her in infinite content. 
 
 " You found the island," she said; " what is 
 still more wonderful you have come here — but 
 here — to the top of the mountain. Oh, did you 
 bring news of my father? " 
 
 St. George would have given everything save 
 the sweet of the moment to tell her that he did. 
 
 " But now," he added cheerfully, and his 
 smile disarmed this of its over-confidence, " I've 
 only been here two days or so. And, though 
 it may look easy, I've had my hands full climbing 
 up this. I ought to be allowed another day or 
 two to locate your father." 
 
 " Please tell me how you got here," Olivia 
 demanded then. 
 
 St. George told her briefly, omitting the yacht's 
 ownership, explaining merely that the paper had 
 sent him and that Jarvo and Akko had pointed 
 the way and, save for that journey down nebulous 
 ways in the wake of her veil the night before, 
 sketching the incidents which had followed his 
 arrival upon the island. 
 
 " And one of the most agreeable hours I've 
 bad in Yaque," he finished, " was last night, 
 when you were chairman of the meeting. That 
 was magnificent." 
 
262 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " You were there! " cried Olivia, " I thought — " 
 
 " That you saw me? " St. George pressed 
 eagerly. 
 
 " I think that I thought so," she admitted. 
 
 " But you never looked at me," said St. 
 George dolefully, " and I had on a forty-two 
 gored dress, or something." 
 
 "Ah," Olivia confessed, " but I had thought 
 so before when I knew it couldn't be you." 
 
 St. George's heart gave a great bound. 
 
 " When before? " he wanted to know ecstati- 
 cally. 
 
 " Ah, before," she explained, " and then after- 
 ward, too." 
 
 " When afterward? " he urged. 
 
 (Smile if you like, but this is the way the happy 
 talk goes in Yaque as you remember very well, 
 if you are honest.) 
 
 " Yesterday, when I was motoring, I thought — " 
 
 " I was. You did," St. George assured her. 
 " I was in the prince's motor. The procession 
 was temporarily tied up, you remember. Did 
 you really think it was I? " 
 
 But this the lady passed serenely over. 
 
 " Last night," she said, " when that terrible 
 thing happened, who was it in the other motor? 
 Who was it, there in the road when I — was it 
 you? Was it? " she demanded, 
 
 " Did you think it was I? " asked St. George 
 simply. 
 
THE ISLE OF HEARTS 263 
 
 " Afterward— when I was back in the palace— 
 I thought I must have dreamed it," she answered, 
 " and no one seemed to know, and / didn't know. 
 But I did fancy— you see, they think father has 
 taken the treasure," she said, " and they 
 thought if they could hide me somewhere and let 
 it be known, that he would make some sign." 
 
 "It was monstrous," said St. George; "you 
 are really not safe here for one moment. Tell 
 me," he asked eagerly, "the car you were in— 
 what became of that? " 
 
 " I meant to ask you that," she said quickly. 
 " I couldn't tell, I didn't know whether it turned 
 aside from the road, or whether they dropped me 
 out and went on. Really, it was all so quick 
 that it was almost as if the motor had stopped 
 being, and left me there." 
 
 " Perhaps it did stop being— in this dimension," 
 
 St. George could not help saying. 
 
 At this she laughed in assent. 
 
 " Who knows," she said, " what may be true 
 
 of us — 710US autres in the Fourth Dimension? In 
 
 Yaque queer things are true. And of course you 
 
 never can tell " 
 
 At this St. George turned toward her, and his 
 eyes compelled hers. 
 
 "Ah, yes, you can," he told her, " yes, you can." 
 Then he folded his arms and leaned against the 
 stone prisms again, looking down at her. Evi- 
 dently the magician, whoever he was, did not 
 
264 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 mind his saying that, for the palace did not crumble 
 or the moon cease from shining on the white 
 walls. 
 
 " Still," she answered, looking toward the sea, 
 " queer things are true in Yaque. It is queer 
 that you are here. Say that it is." 
 
 " Heaven knows that it is," assented St. George 
 obediently. 
 
 Presently, realizing that the terrace did not 
 intend to turn into a cloud out-of-hand, they set 
 themselves to talk seriously, and St. George had 
 not known her so adorable, he was once more 
 certain, as when she tried to thank him for his 
 pursuit the night before. He had omitted to 
 mention that he had brought her back alone to 
 the Palace of the Litany, for that was too exquis- 
 ite a thing, he decided, to be spoiled by leaving 
 out the most exquisite part. Besides, there was 
 enough that was serious to be discussed, in all 
 conscience, in spite of the moon. 
 
 " Tell me," said St. George instead, " what 
 has happened to you since that breakfast at the 
 Boris. Remember, I have come all the way from 
 New York to interview you. Mademoiselle the 
 Princess." 
 
 So Olivia told him the story of the passage in 
 the submarine which had arrived in Yaque two 
 days earlier than The Aloha; of the first trip up 
 Mount Khalak in the imperial airship; of Mrs. 
 Hastings' frantic fear and her utter refusal ever 
 
THE ISLE OF HEARTS 265 
 
 to descend; and of what she herself had done 
 since her arrivah This included a most practical 
 account of effort that delighted and amazed St. 
 George. No wonder Mrs. Hastings had said that 
 she always left everything " executive " to Olivia. 
 For Olivia had sent wireless messages all over 
 the island offering an immense reward for infor- 
 mation about the king, her father; she had assigned 
 forty servants of the royal household to engage 
 in a personal search for such information and to 
 report to her each night; she had ordered every 
 house in Yaque, not excepting the House of the 
 Litany and the king's palace itself, to be searched 
 from dungeon to tower; and, as St. George already 
 knew, she had brought about a special meeting 
 of the High Council at noon that day. 
 
 " It was very little," said the American princess 
 apologetically, " but I did what I could." 
 
 " What about the meeting of the High Council ? ' ' 
 asked St. George eagerly; " didn't anything come 
 of that? " 
 
 "Nothing," she answered, " they were like 
 adamant. I thought of offering to raise the 
 Hereditary Treasure by incorporating the island 
 and selling the shares in America. Nobody could 
 ever have found what the shares stood for, but 
 that happens every day. Half the corporations 
 must be capitalized chiefly in the Fourth Dimen- 
 sion. That is all," she added wearily, " save that 
 day after to-morrow I am to be married." 
 
266 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 "That," St. George explained, "is as you like. 
 For if your father is on the island we shall have 
 found him by day after to-morrow, at noon, if 
 we have to shake all Yaque inside out, like a 
 paper sack. And if he isn't here, we simply 
 needn't stop." 
 
 Olivia shook her head. 
 
 " You don't know the prince," she said. "I 
 have heard enough to convince me that it is quite 
 as he says. He holds events in the hollow of his 
 hand." 
 
 " Amory proposed," said St. George, '* that we 
 sit up here and throw pebbles at him for a time. 
 And Amory is very practical." 
 
 Olivia laughed — her laugh was delicious and 
 alluring, and St. George came dangerously 
 near losing his head every time that he heard it. 
 
 " Ah," she cried, " if only it weren't for the 
 prince and if we had news of father, what a 
 heavenjy, heavenly place this would be, would 
 it not? " 
 
 "It would, it would indeed," assented St. George, 
 and in his heart he said, " and so it is." 
 
 " It's like being somewhere else," she said, 
 looking into the abyss of far waters, " and when 
 you look down there — and when you look up, 
 you nearly know. I don't know what, but you 
 nearly know. Perhaps you know that ' here ' is 
 the same as ' there,' as all these people say. But 
 whatever it is, I think we might have come 
 
THE ISLE OF HEARTS 267 
 
 almost as near knowing it in New York, if we had 
 only known how to try." 
 
 " Perhaps it isn't so much knowing," he said, 
 "as it is being where you can't help facing 
 mystery and taking the time to be amazed. 
 Although," added St. George to himself, " there 
 are things that one finds out in New York. In 
 a drawing-room, at the Boris, for instance, over 
 muffins and tea." 
 
 " It will be delightful to take all this back to 
 New York," Olivia vaguely added, as if she meant 
 the fairy palace and the fairy sea. 
 
 " It will," agreed St. George fervently, and he 
 couldn't possibly have told whether he meant the 
 mystery of the island or the mystery of that hour 
 there with her. There was so little difference. 
 
 " Suppose," said Olivia whimsically, " that we 
 open our eyes in a minute, and find that we are 
 in the prince's room in McDougle Street, and that 
 he has passed his hand before our faces and made 
 us dream all this. And father is safe after all." 
 
 " But it isn't all a dream," St. George said 
 softly, " it can't possibly all be a dream, you 
 know." 
 
 She met his eyes for a moment. 
 
 " Not your coming away here," she said, 
 " if the rest is true I wouldn't want that to be a 
 dream. You don't know what courage this will 
 give us all." 
 
 She said " us all," but that had to mean merely 
 
268 ROMANCE IvSLAND 
 
 " US," as well. St. George turned and looked over 
 the terrace. What an Arabian night it was, he 
 was saying to himself, and then stood in a sudden 
 amazement, with the uncertain idea that one of 
 the Schererazade magicians had answered that 
 fancy of his by appearing. 
 
 A little shrine hung thick with vines, its ancient 
 stone chipped and defaced, stood on the terrace 
 with its empty, sightless niche turned toward the 
 sea. Leaning upon its base was an old man 
 watching them. His eyes under their lowered 
 brows were peculiarly intent, but his look was 
 perfectly serene and friendly. His stuff robe 
 hung in straight folds about his singularly erect 
 figure, and his beard and hair were not all grey. 
 But he was very old, with incredibly brown and 
 wrinkled flesh, and his face was vacant, as if the 
 mind were asleep. 
 
 As he looked, St. George knew him. Here on 
 the top of this mountain was that amazing old 
 man whom he had last seen in the banquet hall 
 at the Palace of the Litany — that old Malakh 
 for whom Olivia had so unexplainably interceded. 
 
 " What is that man doing here? " St. George 
 asked in surprise. 
 
 "He is a mad old man, they said," Olivia 
 told him, " down there they call him Malakh — 
 that means ' salt ' — ^because they said he always 
 weeps. We had stopped to look at a metallurgist 
 yesterday — he had some zinc and some metals 
 
THE ISLE OF HEARTS 269 
 
 cut out like flowers, and he was making them 
 show phosphorescent colours in his little dark 
 alcove. The old man was watching him and try- 
 ing to tell him something, but the metallurgist 
 was rude to him and some boys came by and 
 jostled him and pushed him about and taunted 
 him — and the metallurgist actually explained to 
 us that every one did that way to old Malakh. 
 So I thought he was better off up here," con- 
 cluded Olivia tranquilly. 
 
 St. George was silent. He knew that Olivia 
 was like this, but everything that proved anew 
 her loveliness of soul caught at his heart, 
 
 " Tell me," he said impulsively, " what made 
 you let him stay last night, there in the banquet 
 hall? " 
 
 She flushed, and shook her head with a depre- 
 catory gesture. 
 
 " I haven't an idea," she said gravely, " I 
 think I must have done it so the fairies wouldn't 
 prick their feet on any new sorrow. One has to 
 be careful of the fairies' feet." 
 
 St. George nodded. It was a charming reason 
 for the left hand to give the right, and he was not 
 deceived. 
 
 " Look at him," said St. George, almost rev- 
 erently, "he looks like a shade of a god that 
 has come back from the other world and found 
 his shrine dishonoured." 
 
 Some echo of St. George's words reached the old 
 
270 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 man and he caught at it, smiling. It was as if he 
 had just been thinking what he spoke. 
 
 " There are not enough shrines," he said 
 gently, " but there are far too many gods. You 
 will find it so." 
 
 Something in his words stirred St. George 
 strangely. There was about the old creature an 
 air of such gentleness, such supreme repose and 
 detachment that, even in that place of quiet, his 
 presence made a kind of hush. He was old and 
 pallid and fragile, but there lingered within him, 
 while his spirit lingered, the perfume of all fine 
 and gentle things, all things of quietude. When 
 he had spoken the old man turned and moved 
 slowly down the ways of strange light, between 
 the fallen temples builded to forgotten gods, and 
 he seemed like the very spirit of the ancient 
 mountain, ignorant of itself and knowing all 
 truth. 
 
 " How strange," said St. George, looking after 
 him, " how unutterably strange and sad." 
 
 "That is good of you," said Olivia. "Aunt 
 Dora and Antoinette thought I'd gone quite off 
 my head, and Mr. Frothingham wanted to know 
 why I didn't bring back some one who could have 
 been called as a witness. " 
 
 " Witness," St. George echoed; " but the whole 
 place is made of witnesses. Which reminds me: 
 what is the sentence? " 
 
 " The sentence? " she wondered. 
 
THE ISLE OF HEARTS 271 
 
 "The potatoes of Yaque," he reminded her, 
 ** and my head? " 
 
 " Ah well," said Olivia gravely, " inasmuch as 
 the moon came up in the east to-night instead 
 of the west, I shall be generous and give you one 
 day's reprieve." 
 
 " Do you know, I thought the moon came up 
 in the east to-night," cried St. George joyfully. 
 
 It was half an hour afterward that Amory's 
 languid voice from somewhere in the sky broke 
 in upon their talk. As he came toward them 
 across the terrace St. George saw that he was 
 miraculously not alone. 
 
 Afterward Amory told him what had happened 
 and what had made him abide in patience and 
 such wondrous self-effacement. 
 
 When St. George had left him contemplating 
 the far beauties of the little blur of light that was 
 Med, Mr. Toby Amory set a match to one of his 
 jealously expended store of Habanas and added 
 one more aroma to the spiced air. To be stand- 
 ing on the doorstep of a king's palace, confidently 
 expecting within the next few hours to assist 
 in locating the king himself was a situation war- 
 ranting, Amory thought, svich fragrant celebra- 
 tion, and he waited in comparative content. 
 
 The moon had climbed high enough to cast 
 a great octagonal shadow on the smooth court, 
 and the Habana was two-thirds memory when. 
 
272 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 immediately back of Amory, a long windo\^ 
 opened outward, releasing an apparition which 
 converted the remainder of the Habana into a 
 fiery trail ending out on the terrace. It was a 
 girl of rather more than twenty, exquisitely petite 
 and pretty, and wearing a ruffley blue evening 
 gown whose skirt was caught over her arm. She 
 stopped short when she saw Amory, but without 
 a trace of fear. To tell the truth, Antoinette 
 Frothingham had got so desperately bored with- 
 indoors that if Amory had worn a black mask 
 or a cloak of flame she would have welcomed 
 either. 
 
 For the last two hours Mrs. Medora Hastings 
 and Mr. Augustus Frothingham had sat in a 
 white marble room of the king's palace, playing 
 chess on Mr. Frothingham 's pocket chess-board. 
 Mr. Frothingham, who loathed chess, played it 
 when he was tired so that he might rest and 
 when he was rested he played it so that he might 
 exercise his mind — on the principle of a cool 
 drink on a hot day and a hot drink on a cool day. 
 Mrs. Hastings, who knew nothing at all about 
 the game, had entered upon the hour with all 
 the suave complacency with which she would 
 have attacked the making of a pie. Mrs. Hastings 
 had a secret belief that she possessed great apti- 
 tude. 
 
 Antoinette Frothingham, the lawyer's daugh- 
 ter, had leaned on the high casement and 
 
THE ISLE OF HEARTS 273 
 
 looked o\er the sea. The window was narrow, 
 and deep in an embrasure of stone. To be twenty 
 and to be leaning in this palace window wearing 
 a pale blue dinner-gown manifestly suggested 
 a completion of the picture; and all that evening 
 it had been impressing her as inappropriate that 
 the maiden and the castle tower and the very 
 sea itself should all be present, with no possibility 
 of any knight within an altitude of many 
 hundred feet. 
 
 " The dear little ponies' heads! " Mrs. Hastings 
 had kept saying. " What a poetic game chess is, 
 Mr. Frothingham, don't you think? That's what 
 I always said to poor dear Mr. Hastings — at least, 
 that's what he always said to me : ' Most games 
 are so needless, but chess is really up and down 
 poetic' " 
 
 Mr. Frothingham made all ready to speak and 
 then gave it up in silence. 
 
 " Um," he had responded liberally. 
 
 "I'm sure," Mrs. Hastings had continued 
 plaintively, " neither he nor I ever thought that 
 I would be playing chess up on top of a volcano 
 in the middle of the ocean. It's this awful feeling," 
 Mrs. Hastings had cried querulously, " of being 
 neither on earth nor under the water nor in Heaven 
 that I object to. And nobody can get to us." 
 
 " That's just it, Mrs. Hastings," Antoinette had 
 observed earnestly at this juncture. 
 
 " Um," said Mr. Frothingham, then, " not at 
 
274 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 all, not at all. We have all the advantages of 
 the grave and none of its discomforts." 
 
 Whereupon Antoinette, rising suddenly, had 
 slipped out of the white marble room altogether 
 and had found the knight smoking in loneliness 
 on the very veranda. 
 
 Amory put his cap under his arm and bowed. 
 
 " I hope," he said, " that I haven't frightened 
 you." 
 
 He was an American ! Antoinette's little heart 
 leaped. 
 
 " I am having to wait here for a bit," explained 
 Amory, not without vagueness. 
 
 Miss Frothingham advanced to the veranda 
 rail and contrived a shy scrutiny of the intruder. 
 
 " No," she said, " you didn't frighten me in 
 the least, of course. But — do you usually do 
 your waiting at this altitude? " 
 
 " Ah, no," answered Amory with engaging can- 
 dour, " I don't. But I — happened up this way." 
 Amory paused a little desperately. In that soft 
 light he could not tell positively whether this 
 was Miss Holland or that other figure of silver 
 and rose which he had seen in the throne room. 
 The blue gown was not interpretative. If she 
 was Miss Holland it would be very shabby of him 
 to herald the surprise. Naturally, St. George 
 would appreciate doing that himself. "I'm look- 
 ing about a bit," he neatly temporized. 
 
 Antoinette suddenly looked away over the ter- 
 
THE ISLE OF HEARTS 275 
 
 race as her eyes met his, smiling behind their 
 pince-nez. Amory was good to look at, and he 
 had never been more so than as he towered above 
 her on the steps of the king's palace. Who was 
 he — but who was he ? Antoinette wondered 
 rapidly. Had a warship arrived ? Was Yaque 
 taken? Or had — she tm^ned eyes, round with 
 sudden fear, upon Amory. 
 
 " Did Prince Tabnit send you? " she demanded. 
 
 Amory laughed. 
 
 "No, indeed," he said. Amory had once 
 lived in the South, and he accented the "no" very 
 takingly. " I came myself," he volunteered. 
 
 " I thought," explained Antoinette, " that 
 maybe he opened a door in the dark, and you 
 walked out. It is rather funny that you should 
 be here." 
 
 " You are here, you know," suggested Amory 
 doubtfully. 
 
 " But I may be a cannibal princess," Antoinette 
 demurely pointed out. It was not that her 
 astonishment was decreasing; but why — moder- 
 nity and the democracy spoke within her — waste 
 the possibilities of a situation merely because it 
 chances to be astonishing ? Moments of mystery 
 are rare enough, in all conscience; and when 
 they do arrive all the world misses them by 
 trying to understand them. Which is manifestly 
 ungrateful and stupid. They do these things 
 better in Yaque. 
 
27G ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 "You maybe," agreed Amory evenly, "though 
 I don't know that I ever met a desert island 
 princess in a dinner frock. But then, I am a 
 beginner in desert islands." 
 
 " Are you an American? " inquired Antoinette 
 earnestly. 
 
 Amory looked up at the frowning fagade of the 
 king's palace, and he could have found it in his 
 heart to believe his own answer. 
 
 "I'm the ghost," he confessed, " of a poor 
 beggar of a Phoenician who used to make water- 
 jars in Sidon. I have been condemned to 
 plow the high seas and explore the tall moun- 
 tains until I find the Pitiful Princess. She 
 must be up at the very peak, in distress, 
 and I " 
 
 Amory stopped and looked desperately about 
 him. Would St. George never come? How was 
 he, Amory, to be accountable for what he told 
 if he were left here alone in these extraordi- 
 nary circumstances? 
 
 Then Antoinette lightly clapped her hands. 
 
 "A ghost ! " she exclaimed with pleasure. " Miss 
 Holland hoped the place was haunted. A Phoe- 
 nician ghost with an Alabama accent." 
 
 She had said " Miss Holland hoped." 
 
 " Aren't you— aren't you Miss Holland? " 
 demanded Amory promptly, a joyful note of 
 uncertainty in his voice. 
 
 Antoinette shook her head. 
 
THE ISLE OF HEARTS 277 
 
 "No," she said, "though I don't know why 
 I should tell you that." 
 
 From Amory's soul rolled a burden that left 
 him treading air on Mount Khalak. She was 
 not Miss Holland. What did he care how long 
 St. George stayed away? 
 
 " I am Tobias Amory," he said, " of New 
 York. Most people don't know about the Sidon- 
 ian ghost part. But I've told you because I 
 thought, perhaps, you might be the Pitiful 
 Princess." 
 
 Antoinette's heart was beating pleasantly. Of 
 New York! How— oh, how did he get here? 
 Was there, then, a wishing-stone in that window 
 embrasure where she had been sitting, and had 
 the knight come because she had willed it? How 
 much did he know? How much ought she to 
 tell? Nothing whatever, prudently decided the 
 lawyer's daughter. 
 
 "I've had, I'm almost certain, the pleasure 
 of seeing you before," imparted Amory pleasantly, 
 adjusting his pince-nez and looking down at her. 
 She was so enchantingly tiny and he was such 
 a giant. 
 
 " In New York? " demanded Antoinette. 
 
 " No," said Amory, " no. Do desert island 
 princesses get to New York occasionally, then? 
 No, I think I saw you in Yaque. Yesterday. 
 In a silver automobile. Did I? " 
 
 Antoinette dimpled. 
 
278 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " We frightened them all to death," she recalled. 
 " Did we frighten you? " 
 
 *' So much," admitted Amory, " that I took 
 refuge up here." 
 
 " Where were you? " Antoinette asked curi- 
 ously. Really, he was very amusing — this big 
 courtly creature. How agreeable of Olivia to 
 stay away. 
 
 " Ah, tell me how you got here," she impetu- 
 ously begged. " Desert island people don't see 
 people from New York every day." 
 
 " Well then, O Pitiful Princess," said the Shade 
 from Sidon, " it was like this — " 
 
 It was easy enough to fleet the time carelessly, 
 and assuredly that high moon-lit world was meant 
 to be no less merry than the golden. Whoever 
 has chanced to meet a delightful companion on 
 some silver veranda up in the welkin knows this 
 perfectly well; and whoever has not is a dull 
 creature. But there are delightful folk who are 
 wont to suspect the dullest of harbouring some 
 sweet secret, some sense of " those sights which 
 alone (says the nameless Greek) make life 
 worth enduring," and ^this was akin to such a 
 sight. 
 
 After a time, at Antoinette's conscientious sug- 
 gestion, they strolled the way that St. George had 
 taken. And to Olivia and the missing adventurer 
 over by the parapet came Amory 's soft query: 
 
 " St George, may I express a friendly concern?" 
 
THE ISLE OF HEARTS 279 
 
 *' Ah, come here, Toby," commanded St. George 
 happily, " her Highness and I have been dis- 
 cussing matters of state." 
 
 "Antoinette!" cried Olivia in amazement. 
 From time immemorial royalty has perpetually 
 been surprised by the behaviour of its ladies-in- 
 waiting. 
 
 " I've been remembering a verse," said Amory 
 when he had been presented to Olivia, " may I 
 say it ? It goes : 
 
 '"I'll speak a story to you, 
 Now listen while I try: 
 I met a Queen, and she kept house 
 A-sitting in the sky.'" 
 
 " Come in and say it to my aunt," Olivia 
 applauded. "Aunt Dora is dying of ennui up 
 here." 
 
 They crossed the terrace in the hush of the 
 tropic night. Through the fairy black and silver 
 the four figures moved, and it was as if the king's 
 palace — ^that sky thing, with ramparts of air — 
 had at length found expression and knew a way to 
 answer the ancient glamourie of the moon. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 A VIGIIv 
 
 Upon Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Augustus Froth- 
 ingham, drowsing over the pocket chess-board, 
 the sound of footsteps and men's voices in the 
 corridor acted with electrical effect. Then the 
 door was opened and behind Olivia and Antoinette 
 appeared the two visitors who seemed to have 
 fallen from the neighbouring heavens. The two 
 chess-pretenders looked up aghast. If there were 
 a place in the world where chaperonage might be 
 relaxed the uninformed observer would say that 
 it would be the top of Mount Khalak. 
 
 " Mercy around us ! " cried Mrs. Medora Hastings, 
 *' if it isn't that newspaper man! He's probably 
 come over here to cable it all over the front page 
 of every paper in New York. Well," she added 
 complacently, as if she had brought it all about, 
 " it seems good to see some of your own race. 
 How did you get here? Some trick, I suppose? " 
 
 " My dear fellows," burst out Mr. Augustus 
 Frothingham fervently, "thank God! I'm not, 
 ordinarily, unequal to my situations, but I confess 
 
 280 
 
A VIGIL 281 
 
 to you, as I would not to a client, that I don't 
 object to sharing this one. How did you come?" 
 
 " It's a house-party! " said Antoinette ecstati- 
 cally. 
 
 Amory looked at her in her blue gown in the 
 light of the white room, and his spirits soared 
 heavenward. Why should St. George have an 
 idea that he controlled the hour? 
 
 From a tumult of questioning, none of which 
 was fully answered before Mrs. Hastings put 
 another query, the lawyer at length elicited the 
 substance of what had occurred. 
 
 " You came up the side of the mountain, 
 carried by four of those frightful natives? " 
 shrilled Mrs. Hastings. " Olivia, think. It's a 
 wonder they didn't murder you first and throw 
 you over afterward, isn't it, Olivia? Oh, and my 
 poor dear brother. To think of his lying some- 
 where all mangled and bl " 
 
 Emotion overcame Mrs. Hastings. Her tor- 
 toise-shell glasses fell to her lap and both her 
 side-combs tinkled melodiously to the tiled floor. 
 
 " This reminds m.e," said Mr. Frothingham, 
 settling back and finding a pencil with which to 
 emphasize his story, " this reminds me very much 
 of a case that I had on the June calendar " 
 
 In half an hour St. George and Amory saw that 
 all serious consideration of their situation must 
 be accomplished alone with Olivia ; for in that time 
 Mr. Frothingham had been reminded of two 
 
282 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 more cases and Mrs. Hastings had twice been 
 reduced to tears by the picture of tne possible fate 
 of her brother. Moreover, there presently 
 appeared supper — a tray of the most savoury 
 delicacies, to produce which Olivia had slipped 
 away and, St. George had no doubt, said over 
 some spell in the kitchens. Supper in the white 
 marble room of the king's palace was almost as 
 wonderful as muffins and tea at the Boris. 
 
 There were Olivia in her gown of roses on one 
 side of the table and Antoinette on the other 
 and between them the hungry and happy adven- 
 turers. Across the room under a tall silver 
 vase that might have been the one proposed by 
 Achilles at the funeral games for Patroclus 
 (" that was the work of the ' skilful Sidonians ' " 
 St. George recalled with a thrill), Mrs. Hastings 
 and Mr. Frothingham were conscientiously finish- 
 ing their chess, since the lawyer believed in com- 
 pleting whatever he undertook, if for nothing 
 more than a warning never to undertake it 
 again. Manifestly the little ivory kings and 
 queens and castles were in league with all the 
 other magic of the night, for the game prolonged 
 itself unconscionably, and the supper party found 
 it far from difficult to do the same. St. 
 George looked at Olivia in her gown of roses, 
 and his eyes swept the high white walls of the 
 room with its frescoes and inscriptions, its broken 
 statues and defaced chests of stone and ancient 
 
A VIGIL 283 
 
 armour, and so back to Olivia in her gown 
 of roses, with her little ringless hands touch- 
 ing and lifting among the alien dishes as 
 she ministered to him. What a dear little gown 
 of roses and what beautiful hands, St. George 
 thought ; and as for the broken statues and the 
 inscriptions and the contents of the stone chests, 
 nobody had paid any attention to them for so 
 long that they could hardly have missed his 
 regard. Nor Amory's. For Amory was in the 
 midst of a reminiscent reference to the Chiswicks, 
 in the Adirondacks, and to Antionette Fro thing- 
 ham in a launch. 
 
 At last they all were aware that the chess-board 
 was being closed and Mrs. Hastings had risen. 
 
 " I suppose," she was saying, " that they have 
 an idea here, the poor deluded creatures, that 
 it is very late. But I tell Olivia that we are so 
 much farther east it can't be very late in New 
 York at this minute, and I intend to go to bed 
 by my watch as I always do, and that is New 
 York time. If I were in New York I wouldn't 
 be sleepy now, and I'm no different here, am I? 
 I don't think people are half independent enough." 
 
 Mrs. Hastings stepped round a stone god, 
 almost faceless, that stood in a little circular 
 depression in the floor. 
 
 " Olivia, where," she inquired, patting the 
 bobbing, ticking jet on her gown, " where do 
 you think that frightful, mad, old man is? " 
 
284 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " I heard him cross the corridor a little while 
 ago," Olivia answered. " I think he went to his 
 room." 
 
 " I must say, Olivia," said Mrs. Hastings with 
 a damp sigh, " that you are very selfish where I 
 am concerned — in this matter." 
 
 " Ah," said Olivia, " please, Aunt Dora. He 
 is far too feeble to harm any one. And he's away 
 there on the second floor." 
 
 " I'm sure he's a murderer," protested Mrs. 
 Hastings. " He has the murderer's eye. Mr. 
 Hastings would have said he has. We all sleep 
 on the ground floor here," she continued plain- 
 tively, " because we are so high up anyway that 
 I think the air must be just as pure as it would 
 be up stairs. I always leave my window up the 
 width of my handkerchief -box." 
 
 As they went out to the great corridor Olivia 
 spoke softly to St. George. 
 
 " Look up," she said. 
 
 He looked, and saw that the vast circular 
 chamber was of incalculable height, extending 
 up to the very dome of the palace, and shaping 
 itself to the lines of the topmost of the three 
 huge cones. It was a great well of light, playing 
 over strange frescoes of gods and daemons, of 
 constellations and of beasts, and exquisite 
 with all the secret colours of some other way 
 of vision. As high as the eye could see, the 
 precious metals upon the skeleton of the open 
 
A VIGIL 285 
 
 roof shone in the bright light that was set 
 there — the light on the summit of the king's 
 palace. 
 
 St. George turned from the glory of it and 
 looked into her eyes. 
 
 " ' A new Heaven and a new earth,' " he said; 
 but he did not mean the dome of light nor yet the 
 splendour of the palace. 
 
 Manifestly, there is no use in being asleep 
 when one can dream rather better awake. St. 
 George wandered aimlessly between his room and 
 Amory's and took the time to reflect that when a 
 man looks the way Amory did he might as well 
 have Cupids painted on his coat. 
 
 " St. George," Amory said soberly, " is this 
 the way you've been feeling all the way here? 
 Is this what you came for? Then, on my soul, 
 I forgive you everything. I would have climbed 
 ten mountains to meet Antoinette Frothingham." 
 
 " I've been watching you, you son of Dixie," 
 said St. George darkly; " don't you lose your 
 head just when you need it most." 
 
 " I have a notion yours is gone," defended 
 Amory critically, " and mine is only going." 
 
 " That's twice as dangerous," St. George wisely 
 opined; " besides — mine is different." 
 
 " So is mine," said Amory, " so is everybody's." 
 
 St. George stepped through the long window to 
 the terrace. Amory didn't care whether anybody 
 
286 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 listened; he simply longed to talk, and St, George 
 had things to think about. He crossed the ter- 
 race to the south, and went back to the very spot 
 where he and Olivia had stood ; and there, because 
 the night would have it no other way, he stretched 
 along the broad wall among the vines, and lit his 
 pipe, and lay looking out at sea. Here he was, 
 liberated from the business of " buzzing in a 
 comer, trifling with monosyllables," set upon a 
 field pleasant with hazard and without paths, 
 to move in the primal experiences where words 
 themselves are born. Better and more intimate 
 names for everything seemed now almost within 
 his ken. 
 
 He had longed unspeakably to go pilgriming, 
 and he had forthwith been permitted to leave the 
 world behind with its thickets and thresholds, its 
 hesitations and confusions, its marching armies, 
 breakfasts, friendships and the like, and to live 
 on the edge of what will be. He thought of his 
 mother, in her black gowns and Roman mosaic 
 pins with a touch of yellow lace at her throat, 
 listening to the bishop as he examined the dicta 
 of still cloisters, and he told himself that he knew 
 a heresy or two that were like belief. His mother 
 and the bishop at Tubingen and on the Baltic! 
 Curiously enough, they did not seem very 
 remote. He adored his mother and the bishop, 
 and so the thought of them was a part of this 
 fairy tale. All pleasant thoughts whether of 
 
A VIGII. 287 
 
 adventure or impression boast kinship, perhaps 
 have identity. And the name of that identity 
 was Olivia. So he " drove the night along " on 
 the leafy parapet. 
 
 He was not far from asleep, nor perhaps from the 
 dream of the Roman emperor who believed the sea 
 to have come to his bedside and spoken with him, 
 when something — he was not sure whether it was 
 a voice or a touch — startled him awake. He rose 
 on his elbow and looked drowsily out at the glori- 
 fied blackness — as if black were no longer absence 
 of colour but, the veil of negative definitions having 
 been pierced, were found to be a mystic union of 
 colour and more inclusive than white. The very 
 dark seemed delicately vocal and to " fill the waste 
 with sound" no less than the wash of the waves. 
 St. George awoke deliciously confused by a return- 
 ing sense of the sweet and the joy of the night. 
 
 " 'This was the loneliest beach between two 
 seas,' " there flitted through his mind, " * and 
 strange things had been done there in the ancient 
 ages.' " He turned among the vines, half listen- 
 ing. " And in there is the king's daughter," he 
 told himself, " and this is certainly * the strangest 
 thing that ever befell between two seas.' And I 
 have a great mind to look up the old woman of 
 that tale who must certainly be hereabout, 
 dancing ' widdershins.' " 
 
 Then, like a bright blade unsheathed in a quiet 
 chamber, a cry of great and unmistakable fear 
 
288 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 rang out from the palace — a woman's cry, uttered 
 but once, and giving place to a silence that was 
 even more terrifying. In an instant St. George 
 was on his feet, running with all his might. 
 
 " Coming! " he called, " where are you — where 
 are you? " And his heart pounded against his 
 side with the certainty that the voice had been 
 Olivia's. 
 
 It was unmistakably Olivia's voice that replied 
 to him. 
 
 " Here! " she cried clearly, and St. George 
 followed the sound and dashed through the long 
 open window of the room next that in which he 
 had first seen her that night. 
 
 " Here," she repeated, " but be careful. Some 
 one is in this room." 
 
 " Don't be afraid," he cried cheerily into the 
 dark. " It's all right," which is exactly what he 
 would have said if there had been about dragons 
 and real shades from Sidon. 
 
 The room was now in darkness, and in the dim 
 light cast by the high moon he could at first 
 discern nothing. He heard a silken rustling and 
 the tap of slippered feet. The next instant the 
 apartment was quick with light, and in the 
 curtained entrance to an inner room, Olivia, in a 
 brown dressing-gown, her hair vaguely bright 
 about her flushed face, stood confronting 
 him. 
 
 Between them, his thin hand thrown up, palm 
 
A VIGIL 289 
 
 outward, to protect his eyes from the sudden light, 
 was the old man whom St. George had last seen by 
 the shrine on the terrace. 
 
 St. George was prepared for a mere procession 
 of palace ghosts, but at this strange visitor he 
 stared for an uncomprehending moment. 
 
 " What are you doing here? " he said wonder- 
 ingly to him; " what in the world are you doing 
 here? " 
 
 The old man looked uncertainly about him, 
 one hand spread against the pillar behind him, 
 the other fumbling at his throat. 
 
 " I think," he answered almost indist!nguish- 
 ably, *' I think that I meant to sit here — to sit 
 in the room beyond, where the mock stars shine." 
 
 Olivia uttered an exclamation. 
 
 " How could he possibly know that? " she said. 
 
 " But what does he mean? " asked St. George. 
 
 She crossed swiftly to a portiere hanging by 
 slender rings from the full height of the lofty 
 room, and at her bidding St. George followed her. 
 She pushed aside the curtain, revealing a huge 
 cave of the dark, a room whose walls were sunk 
 in shadow. But overhead the ceiling was con- 
 stellated in stars, so that it seemed to St. George 
 as if he were looking into a nearer heaven, homing 
 the far lights that he knew. The Pleiades, 
 Orion, and the Southern Cross, blazing down with 
 inconceivable brilliance, were caught and held 
 captive in the cup of this nearer sky^ 
 
290 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 "It is like this at night," Olivia said, " but 
 we see nothing in the daytime, save the vague 
 outlines of here and there a star. But how could 
 he have known? There is no other door save 
 this." 
 
 The old man had followed them and stood, 
 his eyes fixed on the shining points. 
 
 "It is done well," he said softly, " it makes 
 one feel the firmament." 
 
 St. George, thrilling with the strangeness of 
 what he saw, and the strangeness of being there 
 with Olivia and this weird old man of the mountain, 
 turned toward him almost fearfully. How did 
 he know, indeed? 
 
 " Ah well," he said, striving to reassure her, 
 " I've no doubt he has wandered in here 
 some evening, while you were at dinner. No 
 doubt " 
 
 He stopped abruptly, his eyes fixed on the 
 old man's hand. For as he lifted it St. George 
 had thought that something glittered. Without 
 hesitation he caught the old man's arm about the 
 wrist, and turned his hand in his own palm. 
 In the thin fingers he found a small sealed tube, 
 filled with something that looked like particles 
 of nickel. 
 
 " Do you mind telling me what that is? ** 
 asked St. George. 
 
 Old Malakh's eyes, liquid and brown and very 
 peaceful, met his own without rebuke. 
 
A VIGIL 291 
 
 " Do you mean the gem? " he asked gently. 
 " It is a very beautiful ruby." 
 
 Then St. George saw upon the hand that held 
 the sealed tube a ring of matchless workmanship, 
 set with a great ruby that smouldered in the 
 shadow where they stood. Olivia looked at 
 St. George with startled eyes. 
 
 " He was not wearing this when we first saw 
 him," she said. " I haven't seen him wearing 
 it at all." 
 
 St. George confronted the old man then and 
 spoke with some determination. 
 
 "Will you please tell us," he said, "what 
 there is in this tube, and how you came by this 
 ring? " 
 
 Old Malakh looked down reflectively at his 
 hand, and back to St. George's face. It was 
 wonderful, the air of courtliness and urbanity 
 and delicate breeding which persisted through age 
 and infirmity and the fallow mind. 
 
 " I wish that I might tell you," he said humbly, 
 *' but I have only little lights in my head, instead 
 of words. And when I say them, they do not 
 mean — what they shine. Do you not see? That 
 is why every one laughs. But I know what the 
 lights say." 
 
 St. George looked at Olivia helplessly. 
 
 " Will you tell me where his room is? "he said, 
 " and I'll go back with him. I don't know 
 what to make of this, quite, but don't be fright- 
 
292 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 ened. It's all right. Didn't you say he is on 
 the second floor? " 
 
 " Yes, but don't go alone with him,'* begged 
 Olivia suddenly, " let me call some of the 
 servants. We don't know what he may do." 
 
 St. George shook his head, smiling a little in 
 sheer boyish delight at that " we." " We " is a 
 very wonderful word, when it is not put to 
 unimportant uses by kings, editors and the 
 like. 
 
 " I'd rather not, thank you," he said. " I'll 
 have a talk with him, I think." 
 
 " His room is at the top of the stair, on the 
 left," said Olivia reluctantly, " but I wish " 
 
 " We shall get on all right," St. George assured 
 her, " and don't let this worry you, will you? 
 I was smoking on the terrace. I'll be therefor 
 a while yet. Good night," he said from the 
 doorway. 
 
 " Good night," said Olivia. " Good night — and, 
 oh, I thank you." 
 
 St. George's expectation of having a talk with 
 the old man was, however, unfounded. Old 
 Malakh led the way to his room — a great place 
 of carven seats and a frowning bed-canopy 
 and high windows, and doors set deep in stone; 
 and he begged St. George to sit down and per- 
 mitted him to examine the sealed tube filled with 
 little particles that looked like nickel, and spoke 
 with gentle irrelevance the while. At the 
 
A VIGIL 298 
 
 last St, George left him, feeling as if he were 
 committing not so much an indignity as a social 
 solecism when he locked the door upon the lonely 
 creature, using for the purpose a key-like imple- 
 ment chained to the lock without and having a 
 ring about the size of the iron crown of the 
 Lombards. 
 
 " Good night," old Malakh told him court- 
 eously, " good night. But yet all nights are 
 good — save the night of the heart." 
 
 St. George went back to the terrace. For 
 hours he paced the paths of that little upper 
 garden or lay upon the wall among the pungent 
 vines. But now he forgot the iridescent dark and 
 the companion-sea and the high moon and the 
 king's palace, for it was not these that made 
 the necromancy of the night. It was permitted 
 him to watch before the threshold while Olivia 
 slept, as lovers had watched in the youth of the 
 world. Whatever the morrow held, to-night had 
 been added to yesternight. Not until the dawn 
 of that morrow whitened the sky and drew from 
 the vapourous plain the first far towers of Med, 
 the King's City, did St. George say good night 
 to her glimmering windows. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 GLAMOURIE 
 
 There is a certain poster, all stars and poppies 
 and deep grass ; and over these hangs a new moon 
 which must surely have been ciit by fairy scissors, 
 for it looks as much like a cake or a cowslip as it 
 looks like a moon. But withal it sheds a light 
 so eery and strangely silver that the poster 
 seems, in spite of the poppies, to have been 
 painted in Spring- wind. 
 
 " Never," said some chance visitors vehemently, 
 " have I seen such a moon as that! " 
 
 " But ah, sir, and ah, madame," was the 
 answer — it is not recorded whether the poster 
 spoke or whether some one spoke for it — "wouldn't 
 you like to? " 
 
 Now, therefore, concerning the sweet of those 
 hours in the king's palace the Vehement may be 
 tempted to exclaim that in life things never 
 happen like that. Ah — do they not so ? You have 
 only to go back to the days when young love and 
 young life were yours to recall distinctly that the 
 most impossible things were every-day occur- 
 
 294 
 
GLAMOURIE 295 
 
 rences. What about the time that you went 
 down one street instead of up another and that 
 changed the entire course of your days and 
 brought you two together? What about the 
 song, the June, the letter that touched the world 
 to gold before your eyes and caught you up in a 
 place of clouds? Remembering that magic, it is 
 quite impossible to assert that any charming 
 thing whatever would not have happened. Is 
 there not some wonderland in every life? And is 
 not the ancient citadel of Love-upon-the-Heights 
 that common wonderland? One must believe in 
 all the happiness that one can. 
 
 But if the Most Vehement — who are as thick as 
 butterflies — still remain unconvinced and persist 
 that they never heard of things fallen out thus, 
 there is left this triumph : 
 
 "Ah, sir, or ah, niadame, wouldn't you like to?" 
 
 A fugitive wind rollicking in from sea next 
 morning swept through the palace and went on 
 around the world; and thereafter it had an 
 hundred odourous ways of attracting attention, 
 which were merely its own tale of what pleasant 
 things it had seen and heard on high. 
 
 For example, that breakfast. A cloth had been 
 laid at one end of the long stone table whereat, 
 since the days of Abibaal, brother to Hiram, friend 
 to David, kings had breakfasted and banqueted, 
 and this cloth had now been set with the ancient 
 
296 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 plate of the palace — dishes that looked like helmets 
 and urns and discs. Here Olivia and Antoinette, 
 in charming print frocks, made a kind of tea in 
 a kind of biblical samovar and served it in vessels 
 that resembled individual trophies of the course. 
 And here St. George and Amory praised the 
 admirable English muffins which some one had 
 taught the dubious cook to make ; and Mr. Augus- 
 tus Frothingham tip-fingered his way about his 
 plate among alien fruits and queer-shaped cakes. 
 " Are they cookies or are they manna? " Amory 
 wondered, " for they remind me of coriander 
 seeds." And here Mrs. Hastings, who always 
 awoke a thought impatient and became ultra- 
 complacent with no interval of real sanity, wist- 
 fully asked for a soft-boiled egg and added 
 plaintively : 
 
 "Though I dare say the very hens in Yaque 
 lay something besides eggs — pineapples, very 
 likely." 
 
 " I suppose," speculated Amory, " that when 
 we get perfectly intuitionized we won't have to 
 eat either one because we'll know beforehand 
 exactly how they both taste." 
 
 "A reductio ad ahsurdum, my young friend," 
 said the lawyer sternly; " the real purpose of 
 eating will remain for ever unchanged." 
 
 Later, while Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Frothing- 
 ham went out on the terrace in the sun and 
 wished for a morning paper ("I miss the weather 
 
GLAMOURIE 297 
 
 report so," complained Mrs. Hastings) the four 
 young people with Jar^o and Akko for guides set 
 out to explore the palace. For St. George had 
 risen from his two hours' sleep with some clearly- 
 defined projects, and he meant first to go over 
 every niche and corner of the great pile where 
 one — say a king — might be hidden with twenty 
 other kings, and no one be at all the wiser. 
 
 What a morning it was! When the rollicking 
 wind got to that part of the story it must have 
 told about it in such intimating perfumes that 
 even the unimaginative were constrained to sit 
 idle, " thinking delicate thoughts." There never 
 was a fairer temple of romance, a very temple of 
 Young Love's Plaisaunce; and since the coming 
 of St. George and Amory all the cavernous 
 chambers and galleries were become homes of 
 hope that the king would be found and all would 
 yet be well. 
 
 To the main part of the palace there were storey 
 after storey, all octagons and pentagons and 
 labyrinths, so that incredulity and amazement 
 might increase with every step. How they had 
 ever raised those massive blocks of stone to that 
 great height no one can guess unless, indeed, 
 Amory 's theory were correct and the palace had 
 originally been built upon level ground and had 
 had its surroundings blasted neatly away to make a 
 mountain. At all events there were the walls of the 
 great airy rooms made of the naked stone, exqui- 
 
298 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 sitely beveled and chiseled, and frescoed with the 
 planetary deities — Kloti, the Moon with her 
 chariot drawn by white bulls, the Sun and his four 
 horses, with his emblem of a column in the form 
 of a rising flame — types taken from the heavens 
 and from the abyss. There were roofs of sound 
 fir and sweet cedar, carven cornices, cave-like 
 window embrasures with no glass, and little cir- 
 cular rooms built about shrines in which sat 
 broken images of Baal the sun god, of a sandaled 
 Astarte, and a ravening Melkarth, with the lion's 
 skin. 
 
 From a great upper corridor there went a 
 stairway, each deep step of which was placed 
 on the back of a stone lion of increasing size, 
 until the tallest lion's head extended close to 
 the painted ceiling, and there were comfortable 
 benches cut in his gigantic paws. Many of the 
 rooms were without furnishing, some were filled 
 with vague, splendid stuff mouldering away, and 
 others with most luxuriously-devised ministries to 
 beauty and comfort. The palace was curiously 
 and wonderfully an habitation of more than two 
 thousand years ago, furnished with a taste and 
 luxury in advance of this moment's civilization 
 of the world. The heart of that elder world 
 beat strangely in one of the upper chambers 
 where they came upon a little work-shop, strewn 
 with unknown metals and tools and empty cru- 
 cibles, and in their midst a rectangular metallic 
 
GLAMOURIE 299 
 
 plate partly traced with a device of boughs, appear- 
 ing, in one light, slightly fluorescent. 
 
 " It is the work of the Princess Simyra, ad6n," 
 said Jarvo. " She was the daughter of King 
 Thabion, and when she died what she had touched 
 in this room was left unmoved. But it was very 
 many years ago — I have forgotten. Every one 
 has forgotten." 
 
 They went down among the very roots 
 of the palace, three full storeys below the surface 
 of the summit. Jarvo went before, lighting the 
 way, and they threaded vaulted corridors and 
 winding passages, and emerged at last in a silent, 
 haunted chamber whose stones had been hewn 
 and sunken there, before Issus. This was the 
 chamber of the tombs of the kings, and its floor 
 echoed to their footsteps, now hollowly, now with 
 ringing clearness. Three sides of the mighty hall 
 were lined with loculi or niches, each as deep as 
 the length of a man. About the floor stood stone 
 sarcophagi and beneath the long flags kings were 
 sleeping, each with his abandoned name graven 
 on the stones, washed year-long by the dark. In 
 the room's centre was a lofty cylindrical tomb, 
 mounted by four steps, and this was the resting- 
 place of King Abibaal, the younger son of King 
 Abibaal of Tyre, and the brother to King Hiram, 
 who ruled in Tyre when the Phoenicians who 
 settled Yaque, or Arqua, first passed the Straits 
 of Gibraltar and gained the open sea. (" Dear 
 
300 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 me," said Mrs. Hastings when they told her, 
 " I was at Mount Vernon once, and the Wash- 
 ingtons' tombs there impressed me very deeply, 
 but they were nothing to these in point of age, 
 were they? ") Sunken in the wall was a tomb 
 of white marble hewn in a five-faced pyramidion, 
 where slept Queen Mitygen, who ruled in Yaque 
 while Alexander was king of Persia. There was 
 said to have been buried with her a casket of 
 love-letters from Alexander, who may have known 
 Yaque and probably at one time visited it and, 
 in that case, was entertained in the very palace. 
 And if this is true the story of his omission to 
 conquer the island may one day divert the 
 v/orld. 
 
 Jarvo bent before a low tomb whose stone was 
 delicately scored with winged circles. 
 
 " Perhaps," he said, " you will recall the 
 accounts of the kidnapped Egyptian priestesses 
 sold to the Theoprotions by Phoenician mer- 
 chants in tlie heroic age of Greece? They were 
 not all sold. Here lie the bones of four, given 
 royal burial because of their holy office." 
 
 Nothing was unbelievable — nothing had been 
 unbelievable for so long that these four had 
 almost learned that everything is possible. Which, 
 if you come to think of it, and no matter how 
 absurdly you learn it, is a thing immeasurably 
 worth realizing in this world of possibilities. It 
 is one of our two magics. 
 
GLAMOURIK 301 
 
 " And this," Jarvo said softly, pausing before 
 a vacant niche opposite the tomb of King Abibaal , 
 " this will be the receptacle for the present king 
 of Yaque, his Majesty, King Otho, by the grace 
 of God." 
 
 Olivia suddenly looked up at St. George, her 
 face pale in the ghostly light. There it had been, 
 waiting for them all the while, the sense of the 
 vivid personal against the vague eternal. But 
 her involuntary appeal to him, slight as it was, 
 thrilled St. George with tenderness as vivid as 
 this tragic element itself. 
 
 They went back to the sun and the sweet 
 messengering air above, and crossed a little 
 vacant grassy court on the north side of the 
 mountain. Here they saw that the palace climbed 
 down the northern slope from the summit, and 
 literally overhung the precipice where the sup- 
 ports were made fast by gigantic girders run 
 in the living rock. A little observatory was 
 built below the edge of the mountain, and this 
 box of a place had a glass floor, and one felt like 
 a fly on the sky as one stood there. It was said 
 that a certain king of Yaque, sometime in the 
 course of the Punic Wars, had thrown himself 
 from this observatory in a rage because his court 
 electrician had died, but how true this may be 
 it is impossible to say because so little is known 
 about electricity. Below the building lay quite 
 the most wonderful part of the king's palace. 
 
302 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Here in the long north rooms, hermetically 
 quiet, was the heart of the treasure of the ancient 
 island. Here, saved inexplicably from the wreck 
 of the past, were a thousand testimonies to that 
 lost and but half-guessed art of the elder world. 
 Beautiful things, made in the days when King 
 Solomon built the Temple at Jerusalem, lined the 
 walls, and filled the stone shelves, together with 
 curios of that later day when Phoenicia stood 
 first in knowledge of the plastic and glyptic arts. 
 Workers in gold and ivory, in gems and talismans, 
 in brass and fine linen and purple had done 
 the marvels which those courtier adventurers 
 brought with them over the sea, and to these, 
 from year to year, had been added the treasure 
 of private chests — necklaces and coronals and 
 hair-loops, bottles and vases of glass coloured 
 with metallic oxides, and patterned aggry-beads, 
 now sometimes found in ancient tombs on the 
 Ashantee coasts. Beneath an altar set with cen- 
 sers and basins of gold was a chest brought from 
 Amathus, its ogive lid carved with bigce or two- 
 horsed chariots, and it was in this chest, Jarvo 
 told them, that the Hereditary Treasure had been 
 kept. The chamber walls were covered with 
 bas-reliefs in the ill -proportioned and careful 
 carving of the Phoenician artists not yet under 
 Greek influence, and all about were set the wonder- 
 ful bronzes, such as Tyrian artificers made for the 
 Temple. The other chambers gave still deeper 
 
GLAMOURIK 303 
 
 utterance to days remote, for it was there that the 
 king's library had been collected in case after 
 case, filled with parchment rolls preserved and 
 copied from age to age. What might not be 
 there, they wondered — annals, State documents, 
 the Phcenician originals of histories preserved 
 elsewhere only in fragments of translation or 
 utterly lost, the secrets of science and magic 
 known to men the very forms of whose names 
 have perished ; and not only the longed-for poems 
 of Sido and Jopas, but of who could tell how 
 many singing hearts, lyric with joy and love and 
 still voiceful here in these strange halls? These 
 were chambers such as no one has ever entered, 
 for this was the vexing of no unviolated tomb 
 and no buried city, but the actual return to the 
 Past, watching lonely on the mountain. 
 
 " Clusium," said Amory softly. " I had actually 
 wanted to go to the cemetery at Clusium, to see 
 some inscriptions! " 
 
 " No, you didn't, Toby," said St. George pleas- 
 antly, " you wanted to go somewhere and you 
 called it Clusium. You wanted an adventure and 
 you thought Clusium was the name of it." 
 
 " I know," said Amory shamelessly, " and there 
 are no end of names for it. But it's always the 
 same thing Excepting this.'' 
 
 " Excepting this," St. George repeated fervently 
 as they turned to go; and if, in singing of that 
 morning, the rollicking wind sang that, it must 
 
304 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 have breathed and trembled with a chorus of 
 faint voices from every shelf in the room, — ^voices 
 that of old had thrilled with the same meaning 
 and woke now to the eternal echo. 
 
 Woke now to the eternal echo — an echo that 
 touched delicately through the events of that 
 afternoon and laid strange values on all that 
 happened. Otherwise, if they four were not all 
 a little echo-mad, how was it that in the shadow 
 of doubt, in the face of danger, and near the 
 inextinguishable mystery they yet found time for 
 the little, wing-like moments that never hold his- 
 tory, because they hold revelation. There were, 
 too, some events; but an event is a clumsy thing 
 at best, unless it has something intangible about 
 it. The delicious moments are when the 
 intangibilities prevail and pervade and possess. 
 In the king's palace there must have been shrines 
 to intangibilities — as there should be everywhere — 
 for they seemed to come there, and belong. 
 
 The mere happenings included, for example, 
 a talk that St, George had with Mr. Augustus 
 Frothingham on the terrace after luncheon, in 
 which St. George laid before the lawyer a plan 
 which he had virtually matured and of which he 
 himself thought very well. Thought so well, 
 because of its possibilities, that his face was 
 betrayingly eager as he told about it. It was, 
 briefly, that inasmuch as four of the six men who 
 could scale the mountain were now on its summit, 
 
GLAMOURIE 305 
 
 and inasmucli as all the airships were there also, 
 now, therefore, they, the guests on the island 
 of Yaque, were in a perfectly impregnable position 
 — counting out Fifth Dimension contingencies, 
 which of course might include appearings as well 
 as disappearings— and why shouldn't they stay 
 there, and let the ominous noon of the following 
 day slip by unmarked? And when the lawyer 
 said, " But, my dear fellow," as he was bound to 
 say, St. George answered that down there in Med 
 there would be, by noon of the following day, two 
 determined persons who, if Jarvo would get word 
 to them, would with perfect certainty find Mr. 
 Otho Holland, the king, if he were on the island. 
 And when " Well, but my dear fellow " occurred 
 again, St. George replied with deference that he 
 knew it, but although he never had managed an 
 airship he fancied that perhaps he might help 
 with one; and down there in the harbour was a 
 yacht waiting to sail for New York, and therefore 
 no one need even set foot on the island who didn't 
 wish. And Mr. Frothingham laid one long hand 
 on each coat-lapel and threw back his head until 
 his hair rested on his collar, and he looked at the 
 palace— that Titan thing of the sky with ramparts 
 of air— and said, " Nothing in all my experi- 
 ence " and St. George left him, deep in thought. 
 
 On the way back he chanced upon Mrs. Hast- 
 ings, seated on a bench of lapidescent wood in the 
 portico — and a Titanic portico it looked by day — 
 
306 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 and, having sent for the palace chef, she was 
 attempting to write down the recipe for the salad 
 of that day's luncheon, although it was composed 
 chiefly of fowls now extinct everywhere except- 
 ing in Yaque. 
 
 " But my poultry man will get them for me," 
 she urged with determination ; " I have only to 
 tell him the name of what I want, and he can 
 always produce it in tins, nicely labeled." 
 
 Later, St. George came upon old Malakh, 
 leaning on the terrace wall, looking out to sea 
 and stood close beside him, marveling at the pallor 
 and the thousand wrinkles of the man's strange 
 face. The face was stranger by day than it had 
 been by night — ^this St. George had felt when he 
 went that morning to release him, and the old 
 man leaned from the frowning bed-hangings 
 to bid him a gentle good morning. Could he be, 
 St. George now wondered vaguely, a citizen of the 
 fifteenth or twentieth dimension, and, there, did 
 they live to his incredible age? Then he noticed 
 that the old man was not wearing the ruby ring. 
 
 " I wear it only when I wish to see it shine, sir," 
 old Malakh answered, and St. George marveled 
 at that courteous " sir," and at other things. 
 
 To everything that he asked him the old man 
 returned only his urbane, unmeaning replies, 
 touched with their melancholy symbolism. When 
 St. George left him it was in the hope that Olivia 
 would consent to have him sent down the moun- 
 
GLAMOURIE 307 
 
 tain, although St. George himself was half inclined 
 to agree with Amory's " But, really, I would far 
 rather talk with one madman with this madman's 
 manners than to sup with uncouth sanity ' ' and 
 " After all, if he should murder us, probably no one 
 could do it with greater delicacy." And Olivia 
 had no intention of sending old Malakh back 
 to Med. " How could one possibly do that?" 
 she wanted to know, and there was no oracle. 
 
 All the while the world of intangibilities 
 was growing, growing as only that world can grow 
 from the abysmal silence of life that went 
 before. St. George was saying to himself that at 
 last the Here and the Now were infinitely desirable ; 
 and as for the fear for the morrow, what was 
 that beside the promise of the days beyond? 
 At noon they all climbed the Obelisk Tower 
 with its ceiling of carved leaves above carved 
 leaves, and the real heavens a little farther up. 
 They leaned on the broad wall, cut by mock 
 bastions and faced the glory of the sunny, tremb- 
 ling sea, starred with the dipping wings of gulls. 
 Blue sky, blue sea, eyes that saw looks that eyes 
 did not know they gave — ah, what a day it was I 
 When the rollicking wind told about that, down 
 on the dun earth, surely it echoed their young 
 courage, their young belief in the futiu'e, the 
 incorruptibility of their understanding that the 
 future was theirs, under the law. For the wind 
 always teaches that. The wind is the supreme 
 
308 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 believer, and one has only to take a walk in it at 
 this moment to know the truth. Yet in spite of 
 the wind, in spite of their high security, in spite of 
 the little wing-like moments that hold not history 
 but revelation, they were aU going down the 
 hours beneath the pendent sword of " To-morrow, 
 at noon." 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 BENEATH THE SUREACE 
 
 Up came the dusk to the doors of the 
 king's palace— a hurry of grey banners flowing 
 into the empty ways where the sun had 
 been. Upon this high dominion Night could 
 not advance unheralded, and here the Twi- 
 light messengered her coming long after the dark 
 lay thick on the lowland and on the toiling 
 
 water. 
 
 St. George, leaning from Amory's window, 
 looked down on the shadows rising in exquisite 
 hesitation, as if they came curling from the 
 lighted censer of Med. There is no doubt at all, 
 Olivia had said gravely, that the dusk is patterned, 
 if only one could see it— figured in unearthly 
 flowers, in wandering stars, in upper-air sprites, 
 grey-winged, grey-bodied, so that sometimes 
 glimpsing them one fancies them to be little 
 living goblins. He smiled, remembering her words, 
 and glanced over his shoulder down the long room 
 where the other light was now beginning to creep 
 about, first expressing, then embracing the cham- 
 
 309 
 
310 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 ber dusk. It seemed precisely the moment when 
 something delicate should be caught passing from 
 gloom to radiance, to be thankfully remembered. 
 But only many- winged colours were visible, 
 though he could hear a sound like little murmurous 
 speech in the dusky roof where the air had a 
 recurrent fashion of whispering knowingly. 
 
 Indeed, the air everywhere in the palace had 
 a fashion of whispering knowingly, for it was a 
 place of ghostly draughts and blasts creeping 
 through chambers cleft by yawning courts and 
 open corridors and topped by that skeleton dome. 
 And as St. George turned from the window he 
 saw that the door leading into the hall, urged 
 by some nimble gust, imaginative or prying, 
 had swung ajar. 
 
 St. George mechanically crossed the room to 
 close the door, noting how the pale light warmed 
 the stones of that cave-like corridor. With his 
 hand upon the latch his eyes fell on something 
 crossing the corridor, like a shadow dissolving 
 from gloom to gloom. Well beyond the open 
 door, stealing from pillar to pillar in the dimness 
 and moving with that swiftness and slyness which 
 proclaim a covert purpose as effectually as would 
 a bell, he saw old Malakh. 
 
 Now St. George was in felt-soled slippers and 
 he was coatless, because in the adjoining room 
 Jarvo, with a heated, helmet-like apparatus, was 
 attempting to press his blue serge coat. In 
 
BENEATH THE SURFACE 311 
 
 that room too was Amory, catching glimpses of 
 himself in a mirror of polished steel, but within 
 reach, on the divan where Jarvo had just laid 
 it, was Amory 's coat; and St. George caught that 
 up, slipped it on, and was off down the corridor 
 after the old man, moving as swiftly and slyly 
 as he. St. George had no great faith in him or 
 in what he might know, but the old man puzzled 
 him, and mystification is the smell of a pleasant 
 powder. 
 
 The palace was very still. Presumably, Mrs. 
 Hastings and Mr. Frothingham were already at 
 chess in the drawing-room awaiting dinner. St. 
 George heard a snatch of distant laughter, in 
 quick little lilts like a song, and it occurred to 
 him that its echo there was as if one were to pin 
 a ruffle of lace to the grim stones. Some one 
 answered the laugh, and he heard the murmiu-ous 
 touching of soft skirts entering the corridor as 
 he dived down the ancient dark of one of the 
 musty passages. There the silence was resumed. 
 In the palace it was as though the stillness were 
 some living sleeper, waking with protests, thank- 
 ful for the death of any echo. 
 
 No one was in the gallery. St. George, step- 
 ping softly, followed as near as he dared to that 
 hurrying figure, flitting down the dark. A still 
 narrower hallway connected the main portion of 
 the palace with a shoulder of the south wing, and 
 into this the old man turned and skirted familiarly 
 
312 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 the narrow sunken pool that ran the length of 
 the floor, drawing the light to its glassy surface 
 and revealing the shadows sent clustering to the 
 indistinguishable roof. 
 
 Midway the gallery sprang a narrow stairway, 
 let in the wall and once leading to the ancient 
 armoury, but now disused and piled with rubbish. 
 Old Malakh went up two steps of this old stair- 
 way, turned aside, and slipped away so swiftly 
 that his amazed pursuer caught no more than 
 an after-flutter of his dun-coloured garments. 
 St. George, his softly-clad feet making no noise 
 upon the stones, bounded forward and saw, 
 through a triangular aperture in the stones, and 
 set so low that a man must crouch upon the 
 step to enter, a yawning place of darkness. 
 
 He might very well have been taking his life 
 in his hands, for he could have no idea whether 
 the aperture led to the imperial dungeons or 
 to the imperial rain-water cistern; but St. George 
 instantly bent and slipped down into that dark- 
 ness, thick with the dust of the flight of the old 
 man. With the distinctly pleasurable sensation of 
 being still alive he found himself standing upright 
 upon an uneven floor of masonry. He thrust 
 out his arms and touched sides of mossy rock. 
 Then just before him a pale flame flickered. The 
 old man had kindled a little taper that hardly 
 did more than make shallow hollows in the 
 darkness through which he moved. 
 
BENEATH THE SURFACE 313 
 
 It was easy to follow now, and St. George went 
 (breathlessly on past the rudely-hewn walls and 
 giant pillars of that hidden way. He might have 
 been lost with ease in any of the lower processes 
 of the palace which they had that morning visited ; 
 but he could not be deceived about the chambers 
 which he had once seen, and this subterranean 
 course was new to him. Was it, he wondered, 
 new to Olivia, and to Jarvo? Else why had it 
 been omitted in that morning's search? And 
 was this strange guide going on at random, or 
 did he know — something? A suspicion leaped to 
 St. George's mind that made his heart beat. 
 The king — might he be down here after all, and 
 might this weird old man know where ? His 
 own consciousness became chiefly conjecture, and 
 every nerve was alert in the pursuit; not the less 
 because he realized that if he were to lose this 
 strange conductor who went on before, either in 
 secure knowledge or in utter madness, he him- 
 self might wander for the rest of his life in that 
 nether world. 
 
 Past grim latchless doors sealing, with appro- 
 priate gestures, their forgotten secrets, past out- 
 lying passages winding into the heart of the 
 mountain, past niches filled with shapeless crumb- 
 ling rubbish they hurried — ^the mad old man and 
 his bewildered pursuer. Twice the way turned, 
 gradually narrowing until two could hardly have 
 passed there, and at last apparently terminated in 
 
314 ROMANCE ISLAND ' 
 
 a short flight of steps. Old Malakh mounted with 
 difficulty and St. George, waiting, saw him stand- 
 ing before a blank stone wall. Immediately and 
 without effort the old man's scanty strength 
 served to displace one of the wall's huge stones 
 which hung upon a secret pivot and rolled noise- 
 lessly within. He stepped through the aperture, 
 and St. George sprang behind him, watched his 
 moment to cross the threshold, crouched in the 
 leaping shadow of the displaced stone and looked 
 ■ — looked with the undistinguishing amazement 
 that a man feels in the panorama of his dreams. 
 The room was small and low and set with a 
 circular bench, running about a central pillar. 
 On the table was a confusion of things brilliantly 
 phosphorescent, emitting soft light, and mingled 
 with bulbs, coils and crucibles lying in a litter of 
 egg-shells, feathers, ivorj^ and paper. But it was 
 not these that held St. George incredulous; it 
 was the fire that glowed in their midst — a fire 
 that leaped and trembled and blazed inextin- 
 guishable colour, smouldering, sparkling, tossing 
 up a spray of strange light, lambent with those 
 wizard hues of the pennons and streamers float- 
 ing joyously from the dome of the Palace of the 
 Litany — the fire from the subject hearts of a 
 thousand jewels. There could be no doubting 
 what he saw. There, flung on the table from the 
 mouth of a carven casket and harbouring the 
 captive light of ages gone, glittered what St. 
 
BENEATH THE SURFACE 815 
 
 George knew would be the gems of the Heredi- 
 tary Treasure of the kings of Yaque. 
 
 But for old Malakh to know where the jewels 
 were — that was as amazing as was their discovery. 
 St. George, breathing hard in his comer, watched 
 the long, fine hands of the old man trembling 
 among the delicate tubes and spindles, lingering 
 lovingly among the stones, touching among the 
 necklaces and coronals of the dead queens whose 
 dust lay not far away. It was as if he were sum- 
 moning and discarding something shining and 
 imponderable, like words. The contents of the 
 casket which all Yaque had mourned lay scat- 
 tered in this secret place of which only this strange, 
 mad creature, a chance pensioner at the palace, 
 had knowledge. 
 
 Suddenly the memory of Balator's words smote 
 St. George with new perception. " He walks 
 the streets of Med," Balator had told him at the 
 banquet, " saying ' Melek, Melek,' which is to say 
 ' king,' and so he is seeking the king. But he is 
 mad, and he weeps; and therefore they pretend 
 to believe that he says, ' Malakh,' which is to say 
 ' salt,' and they call him that, for his tears." 
 
 Could old Malakh possibly know something of 
 the king? The hope returned to St. George 
 insistently, and he watched, spending his thought 
 in new and extravagant conjecture, his mental 
 vision blurring the details of that heaped-up, 
 glistening confusion; and on the opposite side of 
 
316 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 the table the old man lifted and laid down that 
 rainbow stuff of dreams, delighting in it, speaking 
 softly above it. Had he been the king's friend, 
 St. George was asking — but why did no one know 
 anjdihing of him? Or had he been an enemy who 
 had done the king violence — ^but how was that 
 possible, in his age and feebleness? Mystifying 
 as the matter was, St. George exulted as much 
 as he marv^eled; for it would be his, at all events, 
 to place the jewels in Olivia's hands and clear 
 her father's name; he longed to step out of the 
 dark and confront the old man and seize the 
 casket out of hand, and he would probably 
 have done so and taken his chances at getting 
 back to the upper world, had he not been chained 
 to his comer by the irresistible hope that the old 
 man knew something more — something about the 
 king. And while he wondered, reflecting that 
 at any cost he must prevent the replacing of the 
 pivotal stone, he saw old Malakh take up his taper, 
 turn away from the table, and open a door which 
 the room's central pillar had cut from his view. 
 He was around the table in an instant. The 
 open door revealed three stone steps which the 
 old man was ascending, one at a time. Following 
 him cautiously St. George heard a door grate 
 outward at the head of the stair, saw the taper 
 move forward in darkness, and the next moment 
 found himself standing in the room of the tombs 
 of the kings of Yaque. And he saw that the 
 
BENEATH THE SURFACE 317 
 
 panel which had swung inward to admit them 
 was set low in the monolithic tomb of King 
 Abibaal himself. 
 
 Old Malakh had crossed swiftly to the wall 
 opposite the tomb, and stood before the vacant 
 niche which was to be occupied, as Jarvo had 
 announced, by " His Majesty, King Otho, by the 
 grace of God." There, setting aside his taper, 
 the old man stretched his arms upward to the 
 empty shelf and with a gesture of inconceivable 
 weariness bowed his head upon them and stood 
 silent, the leaping candle-light silvering his hair. 
 
 " Upon my soul," thought St George with 
 finality, " he's murdered him. Old Malakh has 
 murdered the king, and it's driven him crazy, " 
 
 With that he did step out of the dark, and he 
 laid his hand suddenly upon the old man's 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Malakh," he said, " what have you done with 
 the king? " 
 
 The old man lifted his head and turned toward 
 St. George a face of singular calm. It was as if 
 so many phantoms vexed his brain that a strange 
 reality was of little consequence. But as his 
 eyes met those of St. George a sudden dimness 
 came over them, the lids fluttered and dropped, 
 and his lips barely formed his words: 
 
 "The king," he said. "I did not leave the 
 king. It was the king who somehow went away 
 and left me here " 
 
318 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 He threw out his hands blindly, tottered and 
 swayed from the wall; and St. George received 
 him as he fell, measuring his length upon the 
 stones before King Otho's future tomb. 
 
 St. George caught down the light and knelt 
 beside him. Death seemed to have come "press- 
 ing within his face," and breathing hardly dis- 
 quieted his breast. St. George fumbled at the 
 old man's robe, and beneath his fingers the heart 
 fluttered never so faintly. He loosened the cloth 
 at the withered tliroat, passed his hand over the 
 still forehead, and looked desperately about him. 
 
 The other inmates of the palace were, he 
 reflected, about two good city blocks from him; 
 and he doubted if he could ever find his unaided 
 way back to them. Mechanically, though he knew 
 that he carried no flask, he felt conscientiously 
 through his pockets — a habit of the boy in per- 
 plexity which never deserts the man in crises. 
 In the inside pocket of the coat that he was 
 wearing — Amory's coat — his fingers suddenly 
 closed about something made of glass. He seized 
 it and drew it forth. 
 
 It was a little vase of rock-crystal, ornamented 
 with gold medallions, covered with exquisite and 
 precise engraving of great beauty and variety 
 of design — gryphons, serpents, winged discs, men 
 contending with lions. St. George stared at it 
 uncomprehendingly. In the press of events of 
 the last eight-and-forty hours Amory had quite 
 
BENEATH THE SURFACE 319^ 
 
 forgotten to mention to him the prince's intended 
 gift of wine, almost three thousand years old, 
 sealed in Phoenicia. 
 
 St. George drew the stopper. In an instant an 
 odour, spicy, penetrating, delicious, saluted him 
 and gave life to the dead air of the room. For 
 a moment he hesitated. He knew that the flask 
 had not been among Amory's belongings and 
 that he himself had never seen it before. But 
 the odour was, he thought, unmistakable, and so 
 powerful that already he felt as if the liquor 
 were racing through his own veins. He touched 
 it to his lips; it was like a full draught of some 
 marvelous elixir. Sudden confidence sat upon St. 
 George, and thanking his guiding stars for the 
 fortunate chance, he unhesitatingly set the flask 
 to the old man's lips. 
 
 There was a long-drawn, shuddering breath, a 
 fluttering of the eyelids, a movement of the 
 limbs, and after that old Malakh lay quite still 
 upon the stones. Once more St. George thrust 
 his hand within the bosom of the loose robe, 
 and the heart was beating rapidly and regularly 
 and with amazing force. In a moment deep 
 breaths succeeded one another, filling the breast 
 of the unconscious man; but the eyelids did not 
 unclose, and St. George took up the taper and 
 bent to scan the quiet face. 
 
 St. George looked, and sank to his knees and 
 looked again, holding the light now here, now 
 
320 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 there, and peering in growing bewilderment. 
 What he saw he was wholly unable to define. 
 It was as if a mask were slowly to dissolve and 
 yet to lie upon the features which it had covered, 
 revealing while it still made mock of concealing. 
 Colour was in the lips, colour was stealing into 
 the changed face. The changed face — changed, 
 St. George could not tell how; and the longer he 
 looked, and though he rubbed his eyes and 
 turned them toward the dark and then looked 
 again, moving the taper, he could neither explain 
 nor define what had happened. 
 
 He set the candle on the floor and sprang 
 away from the quiet figure, searching the dark. 
 The great silent place, with its shoulders of 
 sarcophagi jutting from the gloom was black 
 save for the little ring of pallid light about that 
 prostrate form. St. George sent his hand to 
 his forehead, and shook himself a bit, and 
 straightened his shoulders with a smile. 
 
 " It must be the stuff you've tasted," he 
 addressed himself solemnly. " Heaven knows 
 what it was. It's the stuff you've tasted." 
 
 Though he had barely touched his lips to the 
 rock-crystal vase St. George's blood was pounding 
 through his veins, and a curious exhilaration 
 filled him. He looked about at the rims and 
 corners of the tombs caught by the light, and he 
 laughed a little — though this was not in the 
 least what he intended — ^because it passed through 
 
BENEATH THE SURFACE 321 
 
 his mind that if King Abibaal and Queen Mitygen, 
 for example, might be treated with the contents 
 of the mysterious vase they would no doubt 
 come forth, Abibaal with memories of the Queen 
 of Sheba in his eyes, and Queen Mitygen with 
 her casket of Alexander 's letters . Then St . George 
 went down on his knees again, and raised the old 
 man's head until it rested upon his own breast, and 
 he passed the candle before his face, his hand trem- 
 bling so that the light flickered and leaped up. 
 
 This time there was no mistaking. The tis- 
 sues of old Malakh's ashen face and throat and 
 pallid hands were undergoing some subtle trans- 
 figuration. It was as if new blood had come 
 encroaching in their veins. It was as if the mus- 
 cles were become firm and full, as if the wrinkled 
 skin had been made smooth, the lips grown fresh, 
 as if — the word came to St. George as he stared, 
 spell-stricken — as if youth had returned. 
 
 St. George slipped down upon the stones and 
 sat motionless. There was a little blue, forked 
 vein on the man's forehead, and upon this he 
 fastened his eyes, mechanically following it down- 
 ward and back. Lines had crossed it, and there 
 had been a deep cleft between the eyes, but 
 these had disappeared, leaving the brow almost 
 smooth. The cheeks were now tinged with colour, 
 and the throat, where he had pulled aside the robe, 
 showed firm and white. Mechanically St. George 
 passed his hand along the inert arm, and it was no 
 
322 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 more withered than his own — the arm of no grey- 
 beard, but of a man in the prime of life. What 
 did it mean — what did it mean? St. George 
 waited, the blood throbbing in his temples, a 
 mist before his eyes. What did it mean? 
 
 The minutes dragged by and still the uncon- 
 scious man did not stir or unclose his eyes. From 
 time to time St. George pressed his hand to the 
 heart, and found it beating on rhythmically, 
 powerfully. When he found himself sitting 
 with, averted head, as if he were afraid to look 
 back at that changing face, a fear seized him that 
 he had lost his reason and that what he imagined 
 himself to see was a phase of madness. So 
 he left the old man's side and sturdily tramped 
 away into the huge dark of the room, resolutely 
 explaining to himself that this was all very natural ; 
 the old man had been ill, improperly nourished, 
 and the powerful stimulant of the wine had 
 partly restored him. But even while he went 
 over it St. George knew in his heart that what 
 had happened was nothing that could be so 
 explained, nothing that could be explained at all 
 by anything within his ken. 
 
 His footsteps echoed startlingly on the stones, 
 and the chill breath of the place smote his face as 
 he moved. He stumbled on a displaced tile and 
 pitched forward upon a jagged corner of sarcoph- 
 agus, and reeled as if at a blow from some arm of 
 the darkness. The taper rays struck a length of 
 
BENEATH THE SURFACE 323 
 
 wall before him, minting from the gloom a sheet 
 of pale orchids clinging to the unclean rock. 
 St. George remembered a green slope, spangled 
 with crocuses and wild strawberries, coloured 
 like the orchids but lying under free sky, in 
 free air. It seemed only a trick of Chance that 
 he was not now lying on that far slope, wherever 
 it was, instead of facing these ghost blooms in 
 this ghost place. Back there, where the light 
 glimmered beside the tomb of King Abibaal, 
 nobody could tell what awaited him. If the man 
 could change like this, might he not take on 
 some shape too hideous to bear in the silence? 
 St. George stood still, suddenly clenching his 
 hands, trying to reach out through the dark and 
 to grasp — himself, the self that seemed slipping 
 away from him. But was he mad already, he 
 wondered angrily, and hurried back to the far 
 flickering light, stumbling, panting, not daring 
 to look at the figiure on the floor, not daring 
 not to look. 
 
 He resolutely caught up the candle and peered 
 once more at the face. As steadily and swiftly 
 as change in the aspect of the sky the face had 
 gone on changing. St. George had followed to 
 the chamber an old tottering man ; the figure before 
 him was a man of not more than fifty years. 
 
 St. George let fall the candle, which flickered 
 down, upright in its socket; and he turned away, 
 his hand across his eyes. Since this was mani- 
 
324 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 festly impossible he must be mad, something in 
 the stuff that he had tasted had driven him 
 mad. He felt strong as a lion, strong enough 
 to lift that prostrate figure and to carry it through 
 the winding passages into the midst of those 
 above stairs, and to beg them in mercy to tell him 
 how the man looked. What would she say? 
 He wondered what Olivia would say. Dinner 
 \70vXd be over and they would be in the drawing- 
 room — Olivia and Amory and Antoinette Froth- 
 ingham; already the white room and the lights 
 and Antoinette's laughter seemed to him of 
 another world, a world from which he had irre- 
 vocably passed. Yet there they were above, 
 the same roof covering them, and they did not 
 know that down here in this place of the dead he, 
 St. George, was beyond all question going mad. 
 With a cry he pulled off Amory 's coat, flung it 
 over the unconscious man, and rushed out into 
 the blackness of the corridor. He would not take 
 the light — the man must not die alone there in the 
 dark — and besides he had heard that the mad 
 could see as well in the dark as in the light. Or 
 was it the blind who could see in the dark? No 
 doubt it was the blind. However, he could find 
 his way, he thought triumphantly, and ran on, 
 dragging his hand along the slippery stones of the 
 v/all — he could find his way. Only he must call 
 out, to tell them who it was that was lost. So 
 he called himself by name, aloud and sternly, and 
 
BENEATH THE SURFACE 325' 
 
 after that he kept on quietly enough, serene in 
 the conviction that he had regained his self-con- 
 trol, fighting to keep his mind from returning to 
 the face that changed before his eyes, like the 
 appearances in the puppet shows. But sud- 
 denly he became conscious that it was his own 
 name that he went shouting through the passages ; 
 and that was openly absurd, he reasoned, since if 
 he wanted to be found he must call some one else's 
 name. But he must hurry — hurry — hurry; no 
 one could tell what might be happening back 
 there to that face that changed. 
 
 "Olivia!" he shouted, " Amory! Jarvo — oh, 
 Jarvo! Rollo, you scoundrel " 
 
 Whereat the memory that Rollo was somewhere 
 on a yacht assailed him, and he pressed on, 
 blindly and in silence, until glimmering before 
 him he saw a light shining from an open door. 
 Then he rushed forward and with a groan of 
 relief threw himself into the room. Oppo- 
 site the door loomed the grim sarcophagus of 
 King Abibaal, and beside it on the floor lay the 
 figure with the face that changed. He had gone 
 a circle in those tortuous passages, and this was 
 the room of the tombs of the kings. 
 
 He dragged himself across the chamber toward 
 the still form. He must look again; no one 
 could tell what might have happened. He pulled 
 down the coat and looked. And there was surely 
 nothing in the delicate, handsome, English-looking 
 
3^6 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 face upturned to his to give him new horror. It 
 was only that he had come down here in the wake 
 of a tottering old creature, and that here in his 
 place lay a man who was not he. Which was 
 manifestly impossible. 
 
 Mechanically St, George's hand went to the 
 man's heart. It was beating regularly and pow- 
 erfully, and deep breaths were coming from the 
 full, healthily-coloured lips. For a moment St. 
 George knelt there, his blood tingling and pricking 
 in his veins and pulsing in his temples. Then he 
 swayed and fell upon the stones. 
 
 When St. George opened his eyes it was ten 
 o'clock of the following morning, though he felt 
 no interest in that. There was before him a 
 great rectangle of light. He lifted his head 
 and saw that the light appeared to flow 
 from the interior of the tomb of King Abibaal. 
 The next moment Amory's cheery voice, pitched 
 high in consternation and relief, made havoc 
 among the echoes with a background of 
 Jarvo's smooth thanksgiving for the return of 
 adon. 
 
 St. George, coatless, stiff from the hours on 
 the mouldy stones, dragged himself up and 
 turned his eyes in fear upon the figure beside 
 him. It flashed hopefully through his mind that 
 perhaps it had not changed, that perhaps he had 
 dreamed it all, that perhaps . . . 
 
BENEATH THE SURFACE 327 
 
 By his first glance that hope was dispelled. 
 From beneath Amory's coat on the floor an arm 
 came forth, pushing the coat aside, and a man 
 slenderly built, with a youthful, sensitive face and 
 somewhat critically-drooping lids, sat up leisurely 
 and looked about him in slow surprise, kindling 
 to distinct amusement. 
 
 " Upon my soul," he said softly, " what an 
 admission — what an admission! I can not have 
 made such a night of it in years." 
 
 Upon which Jarvo dropped unhesitatingly to 
 his knees. 
 
 " Melek! Melek!" he cried, prostrating him- 
 self again and again. "The King! The King! 
 The gods have permitted the possible." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 A MORNING VISIT 
 
 In an upper room in the Palace of the 
 Litany, fair with all the burnished devices of the 
 early light, Prince Tabnit paced on that morning 
 of mornings of his marriage day. Because 
 of his great happiness the whole world seemed 
 to him like some exquisite intaglio of which this 
 day was the design. 
 
 The room, " walled with soft splendours of 
 Damascus tiles," was laid with skins of forgotten 
 animals and was hung with historic tapestries dyed 
 by ancient fingers in the spiral veins of the Murex. 
 There were frescoes uniting the dream with its 
 actuality, columns carved with both lines and 
 names of beauty, pilasters decorated with chain 
 and checker-work and golden nets. A stairway 
 led to a high shrine where hung the crucified 
 Tyrian sphinx. The room was like a singing 
 voice summoning one to delights which it described. 
 But whatever way one looked all the lines neither 
 pointed nor seemed to have had beginning, but 
 being divorced from source and direction expressed 
 
 328 
 
A MORNING VISIT 329 
 
 merely beauty, like an altar • ' where none cometh 
 to pray." 
 
 Prince Tabnit, in his trailing robe of white 
 embroidered by a thousand needles, looked so 
 akin to the room that one suspected it of having 
 produced him, Athena-wise, from, say, the great 
 black shrine. When he paused before the shrine he 
 seemed like a child come to beseech some last word 
 concerning the Riddle, rather than a man who 
 believed himself to have mastered all wisdom 
 and to have nailed the world-sphinx to her cross. 
 
 "Surely there is a vein for the silver 
 And a place for the gold where they fine it. 
 Iron is taken out of the earth 
 And brass is moulton out of the stone. 
 Man setteth an end to darkness 
 And searcheth out all perfection: 
 The stones of darkness and of the shadow of death," 
 
 he was repeating softly. "So it is," he added, 
 •* ' and searcheth to the farthest bound.' Have 
 I not done so? And do I not triumph? " 
 
 Then the youth who had once admitted St. 
 George and his friends to that far-away house in 
 McDougle Street — with the hokey-pokey man out- 
 side the door — entered with the poetry of defer- 
 ence; and if, as he bent low, there was a lift and 
 droop of his eyelids which tokened utter bewilder- 
 ment, not to say agitation, he was careful that 
 the prince should not see that. 
 
 " Her Highness, the Princess of Yaque, Mrs. 
 Hastings, Mr. Augustus Frothingham and Miss 
 
330 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Frothingham ask audience, your Highness," he 
 announced clearly. 
 
 Prince Tabnit turned swiftly. 
 
 " Whom do you say, Matten?" he questioned 
 and when the boy had repeated the names, 
 meditated briefly. He was at a loss to fathom 
 what this strange visit might portend; beyond 
 doubt, he reflected (in a world which was an intag- 
 lio of his own designing) it portended nothing at 
 all. He hastened forward to wait upon them and 
 paused midway the room, for the highest tribute 
 that a Prince of the Litany could pay to another 
 was to receive him in this chamber of the Crucified 
 Sphinx. 
 
 " Conduct them here, Matten," he commanded, 
 and took up his station beside an hundred- 
 branched candlestick made in Curium. There he 
 stood when, having been led down corridors of 
 ivory and through shining anterooms, Mrs. 
 Hastings and Olivia and Antoinette appeared 
 on the threshold of the chamber, followed by 
 Mr. Frothingham. As the prince hastened for- 
 ward to meet them with sweepings of his gown 
 embroidered by a thousand needles and bent 
 above their hands uttering gracious words, 
 assuredly in all the history of Med and of the 
 Litany the room of the Crucified Sphinx had 
 never presented a more peculiar picture. 
 
 Into that tranquil atmosphere, dream-pervaded, 
 Mrs. Medora Hastings swept with all the certainty 
 
A MORNING VISIT 881 
 
 of an opinion bludgeoning the frail security of 
 a fact. She had refused to have her belongings 
 sent to the apartments in the House of the Litany 
 placed that day at her disposal, preferring to 
 dress for the coronation before she descended 
 from Mount KJialak. She was therefore in a 
 robe of black samite, trimmed with the ftir of 
 a whole chapter of extinct animals, and bangles 
 and pendants of jewels bobbed and ticked all 
 about her. But on her head she wore the bonnet 
 trimmed with a parrot, set, as usual, frightfully 
 awry. Beside her, with all the timidity of 
 charming reality in the presence of fantasy, 
 came Olivia and Antoinette — Olivia in a walking 
 frock of white broadcloth, with an auto coat of 
 hunting pink, and a cap held down by yards of 
 cloudy veiling; Antoinette in a blue cloth gown, 
 and about them both — stout little boots and 
 suede gloves and smart shirt-waists — such an 
 air of actuality as this chamber, prince and 
 Sphinx and tradition and all, could not approach. 
 Mr. Augustus Frothingham had struck his 
 usual incontestable middle-groimd by appearing 
 in the blue velvet of a robe of State, over which 
 he had slipped his light covert top-coat, and he 
 carried his immaculate top-hat and a silver- 
 headed stick. 
 
 " Prince Tabnit," said Mrs. Medora Hastings 
 '.Tithout ceremony, " what have they done with 
 that poor young man? Ask him, Olivia," she 
 
332 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 besought, sinking down upon a chair of verd 
 antique and extending a limp, plump hand to 
 the niece who always did everything executive. 
 
 Olivia was very pale. She had hardly slept, 
 night-long. Alarm at the inexplicable disap- 
 pearance of St. George at dinner-time the day 
 before and at the discovery that old Malakh was 
 nowhere about had, by morning, deepened to 
 unreasoning fear among them all. And then 
 Olivia, knowing nothing of what had taken place 
 in the room of the tombs, had resolved upon a 
 desperate expedient, had bundled into an airship 
 her almost prostrate aunt, Mr. Frothingham and 
 his excited little daughter, and had borne down 
 upon the Palace of the Litany two hours before 
 noon. Amory, frantic with apprehension, had 
 stayed behind with Jarvo, certain that St. George 
 could not have left the mountain. But now 
 that Olivia stood before the prince it required 
 but a moment to convince her that Prince Tabnit 
 really knew nothing of St. George's whereabouts. 
 Indeed, since his gift of Phoenician wine, sealed 
 three thousand years ago, and the immediate 
 evanishment of the two Americans, his Highness 
 had no longer vexed his thought with them, and 
 he was genuinely amazed to know that (in a 
 world which was an intaglio of his own designing) 
 these two had actually spent yesterday at the 
 king's palace on Mount Khalak. He perceived 
 that he must give them more definite attention 
 
A MORNING VISIT 833 
 
 than his half-idle device of the wine — intended 
 as that had been as a mere hyperspatial practical 
 joke, not in the least irreconcilable with his 
 office of host. 
 
 " Mr. St. George came to Yaque to help me 
 find my father," Olivia was concluding earnestly, 
 " and if anything has happened to him, Prince 
 Tabnit, I alone am responsible." 
 
 The prince reflected for a moment, his eyes fixed 
 upon the hundred-branched candlestick. Then : 
 
 " Mr. St. George's disappearance," he said, 
 " has prevented a still more unpleasant catas- 
 trophe." 
 
 " Catastrophe! " repeated Mrs. Hastings, quite 
 without tucking in her voice at the comers, " I 
 have thought of no other word since I got to 
 be royalty." 
 
 " A world experience, a world experience, dear 
 Madame," contributed Mr. Frothingham, his 
 hands laid trimly along his blue velvet lap. 
 
 " But that doesn't make it any easier to bear, 
 no matter what anybody says," retorted the lady. 
 
 " Inasmuch," pursued Prince Tabnit with infi- 
 nite regret, " as these Americans have, as you 
 say, assisted in the search for your father, the 
 king, they have most unfortunately violated that 
 ancient law which provides that no State or 
 satrapy shall receive aid, whether of blood or of 
 bond, from an alien. The Royal House alone is 
 exempt." 
 
334 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 " And the penalty," demanded Olivia fearfully. 
 " Is there a penalty? What is that, Prince Tab- 
 nit? " 
 
 The voice of the prince was never more mellow. 
 
 ** Do not be alarmed, I beg," he hastened his 
 reassurance. " Upon the return of Mr. St. George, 
 he and his friend will simply be set adrift in a 
 rudderless airship, an offering to the great idea 
 of space." 
 
 Mrs. Hastings swayed toward the prince in her 
 chair of verd antique, and her voice seemed to 
 become brittle in the air. 
 
 " Oh, is that what you call being ahead of 
 the time," she demanded shrilly, " getting 
 behind science to behave like Nero? And for 
 my part I don't see anything whatever about the 
 island that is ahead of the times. You haven't 
 even got silk shoe-laces. I actually had to use a 
 cloth-of-gold sandal strap to lace my oxfords, 
 and when I lost a cuff-link I was obliged to make 
 shift with two sides of one of Queen Agothonike's 
 ear-rings that I foimd in the museum at the palace. 
 And that isn't all," went on the lady, wrong 
 kindling wrong, " what do you do for paper 
 and envelopes? There is not a quire to be found 
 in Med. They offered me wireless blanks — an 
 ultra form that Mr. Hastings would never have 
 considered in good taste. And how about visit- 
 ing cards? I tried to have a plate made, and 
 they showed me a wireless apparatus for flashing 
 
A MORNING VISIT 
 
 from the doorstep the name of the visitor — an 
 electrical entrance which Mr. Hastings would 
 have considered most inelegant. Ahead of the 
 times, with your rudderless airships 1 I have 
 always said that the electric chair is a way to be 
 barbarous and good form at the same time, and 
 that is what I think about Yaque! " 
 
 Mr. Frothingham's hands worked forward con- 
 vulsively on his blue velvet knees. 
 
 " My dear Madame," he interposed earnestly, 
 '• the history of criminal jurisprudence, not to 
 mention the remarkable essay of the Marquis 
 Beccaria — proves beyond doubt that the extirpa- 
 tion of the offender is the only possible safety 
 for the State " 
 
 Olivia rose and stood before the prince, her eyes 
 meeting his. 
 
 " You will permit this sentence? " she asked 
 steadily. ' 'As head of the House of the Litany, you 
 will execute it, Prince Tabnit? " 
 
 "Alas! " said the prince humbly, " it is custom- 
 ary on the day of the coronation to set adrift 
 all offenders. I am the servant of the State." 
 
 " Then, Prince Tabnit, I can not marry you." 
 
 At this Mrs. Hastings looked blindly about for 
 support, and Mr. Frothingham and Antoinette 
 flew to her side. In that moment the lady had 
 seen herself, prophetically, in black samite and 
 her parrot bonnet, set adrift in the penitential 
 airship with her rebellious niece. 
 
336 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 For a moment Prince Tabnit hesitated: he 
 looked at Olivia, who was never more beautiful than 
 as she defied him; then he walked slowly toward 
 her, with sweep and fall of his garments embroid- 
 ered by a thousand needles. Antoinette and her 
 father, ministering to Mrs. Hastings, heard only 
 the new note that had crept into his voice, a thrill, 
 a tremour 
 
 " Olivia! " he said. 
 
 Her eyes met his in amazement but no fear. 
 
 " In a land more alien to me than the sun," 
 said the prince, " I saw you, and in that moment 
 I loved you. I love you more than the life 
 beyond life upon which I have laid hold. I 
 brought you to this island to make you my wife. 
 Do you understand what it is that I offer you? " 
 
 Olivia was silent. She was trembling a little 
 at the sheer enormity of the moment. Suddenly, 
 Prince Tabnit seemed to her like a name that she 
 did not know. 
 
 " Will you not understand what I mean? " he 
 besought with passionate earnestness. " Can I 
 make my words mean nothing to you? Do you 
 not see that it is indeed as I say — that I have 
 grasped the secret of life within life, beyond life, 
 transcending life, as his understanding transcends 
 the man? The wonder of the island is but the 
 alphabet of wisdom. The secrets of life and death 
 and being itself are in my grasp. The hidden 
 things that come near to you in beauty, in 
 
A MORNING VISIT 337 
 
 dream, in inspiration are mine and my people's. 
 All these I can make yours— I offer you life of a 
 fullness such as the people of the world do not 
 dream. I will love you as the gods love, and as 
 the gods we will live and love— it may be for ever. 
 Nothing of high wisdom shall be unrevealed to 
 us. We shall be what the world will be when 
 it nears the close of time. Come to me— trust me 
 —be beside me in all the wonder that I know. 
 But above all, love me, for I love you more than 
 life, and wisdom, and mystery! " 
 
 Olivia imderstood, and she believed. The mys- 
 tery of life had always been more real to her than 
 its commonplaces, and all her years she had 
 gone half -expecting to meet some one, unheralded, 
 to whom all things would be clear, and who should 
 make her know by some secret sign that this was 
 so, and should share with her. She had no doubt 
 whatever that Prince Tabnit spoke the truth- 
 just as the daughter of the river-god Inachus 
 knew perfectly that she was being wooed by a 
 voice from the air. Indeed, the world over, 
 lovers promise each other infinite things, and are 
 infinitely believed. 
 
 "I do understand you, Prince Tabnit," 
 Olivia said simply, " I do understand something 
 of what you offer me. I think that these things 
 were not meant to be hidden from men always, 
 so I can even believe that you have all that you 
 say. But— there is something more." 
 
338 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Olivia paused — and swiftly, as if some little 
 listening spirit had released the picture from the 
 air, came the memory of that night when she 
 had stood with St. George on that airy rampart 
 beside the wall of blossoming vines. 
 
 " There is sor^ething more," she repeated, 
 "when two love each other very much I think 
 that they have everything that you have said, 
 and more." 
 
 He looked at her in silence. The stained light 
 from some high window caught her veil in meshes 
 of rose and violet — fairy colours, witnessing the 
 elusive, fairy, invincible truth of what she said. 
 
 " You mean that you do not love me? " said 
 the prince gently. 
 
 "I do not love you, your Highness," said 
 Olivia, " and as for the wisdom of which you 
 speak, that is worse than useless to you if you 
 can do as you say with two quite innocent men." 
 She hesitated, searching his face. " Is there no 
 way," she said, "that I, the daughter of your 
 king, can save them? I will appeal to the 
 people! " 
 
 The prince met her eyes steadily, adoringly. 
 
 " It would avail nothing," he said, " they are 
 at one with the law. Yet there is a way that 
 I can help you. If Mr. St. George returns, as he 
 must, he and his friends shall be set adrift with 
 due ceremony — but in an imperial airship, with 
 a man secretly in control. By night they can 
 
A MORNING VISIT 339 
 
 escape to their yacht. This I will do — upon one 
 condition." 
 
 " Oh — what is that? " she asked, and for all 
 the reticence of her eagerness, her voice was a 
 betrayal. 
 
 Prince Tabnit turned to the window. Below, 
 in the palace grounds, and without, in the Kury- 
 chorus, a thousand people awaited the opening of 
 the palace doors. They filled the majestic 
 avenue, poured up the shadowed alleys that taught 
 the necessity of mystery, were grouped beneath 
 the honey-sweet trees; and above their heads, 
 from every dome and column in the fair city, 
 flowed and streamed the joyous, wizard, name- 
 less colours of the pennons blown heavenward 
 against the blue. They were come, this strange, 
 wise, elusive people, to her marriage. 
 
 The prince was smiling as he met her eyes; 
 for the world was always the exquisite intaglio, 
 and to-day was its design. 
 
 " They know," he said simply, " what was to 
 have been at noon to-day. Do you not under- 
 stand my condition?" 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 IN THE HALIv OF KINGS 
 
 Somewhat before noon the great doors of the 
 Palace of the Litany and of the Hall of Kings 
 were thrown open, and the people streamed in 
 from the palace grounds and the Eurych6rus. 
 Abroad among them — elusive as that by which 
 we know that a given moment belongs to dawn, 
 not dusk — was the sense of questioning, of un- 
 rest, of expectancy that belongs to the dawn 
 itself. Especially the youths and maidens — who, 
 besides wisdom, knew something of spells — waited 
 with a certain wistfulness for what might be, for 
 Change is a kind of god even to the immortals. 
 But there were also those who weighed the 
 departures incident to the coming of the strange 
 people from over-seas; and there were not lacking 
 conservatives of the old regime to shake wise 
 heads and declare that a barbarian is a barbarian, 
 the world over. 
 
 All that rainbow multitude, clad for festival, 
 rose with the first light music that stole, winged 
 and silken, from hidden cedar alcoves, and some 
 
 340 
 
IN THE HALL OF KINGS 841 
 
 minutes past the sounding of the hour of noon 
 the chamfered doors set high in the south wall 
 of the Hall of Kings were swung open, and at 
 the head of the stair appeared Olivia. 
 
 She was alone, for the custom of Yaque required 
 that the island princesses should on the day of 
 their recognition first appear alone before their 
 people in token of their mutual faith. From the 
 wardrobes at the castle Olivia had chosen the 
 coronation gown of Queen Mitygen herself. It 
 was of fine lace woven in a single piece, and it 
 lay in a foam of shining threads traced with pure 
 lines of shadow. On her head were a jeweled 
 coronal and jeweled hair-loops in the Phoenician 
 fashion, once taken from a king's casket and sent 
 secretly, upon the decline of Assyrian ascend- 
 ancy, to be bartered in the marts of Coele-Syria. 
 Chains of jewels, in a noon of colour, lay about 
 her throat, as once they lay upon the shoulders 
 of the dead queens of Yaque and, before them, 
 of the women of the elder dynasties long since 
 recorded in indifferent dust. Girdling her waist 
 was a zone of rubies that burned positive in the 
 tempered light. With all her delicacy, Olivia 
 was like her rubies— vivid, graphic, delineated not 
 by light but by line. 
 
 The members of the High Council rustled in 
 their colour and white, and flashed their golden 
 stars; the Golden Guards (save the apostate few 
 who were that day sentenced to be set adrift) 
 
342 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 were filling the stairway like a bank of butter- 
 cups; and Olivia's women, led by Antoinette in 
 a gown of colours not to be lightly denominated, 
 were entering by an opposite door. In the raised 
 seats near the High Council, Mrs. Hastings and 
 Mr. Frothingham leaned to wave a sustaining 
 greeting. Until that high moment Mrs. Medora 
 Hastings had been by no means certain that 
 Olivia would appear at all, though she openly 
 nourished the hope that " everything would go 
 off smoothly. " ("I don't care much for foreigners 
 and never have," she confided to Mr. Frothing- 
 ham, " still, I was thinking while I was at break- 
 fast, after all, to the prince we are the foreigners. 
 There is something in that, don't you think? 
 And then the dear prince — he is so very meta- 
 physical! ") 
 
 Upon the beetling throne Olivia took her place, 
 and her women sank about her like tiers of 
 sunset clouds. She was so little and so beau- 
 tiful and so unconsciously appealing that when 
 Prince Tabnit and Cassyrus and the rest of the 
 court entered, it is doubtful if an eye left Olivia, 
 to homage them. But Prince Tabnit was the last 
 to note that, for he saw only Olivia; and the 
 world — the world was an intaglio of his own 
 designing. 
 
 With due magnificence the preliminary cere- 
 monies of the coronation proceeded — ^musty neces- 
 sities, like oaths and historical truths, being mingled 
 
IN THE HALL OF KINGS 343 
 
 with the most delicate observances, such as the 
 naming of the former princesses of the island , from 
 Adija, daughter of King Abibaal, to Olivia, 
 daughter of King Otho; and such as counting 
 the clouds for the misfortunes of the regime. This 
 last duty fell to the office of the lord chief -chan- 
 cellor, and from an upper porch he returned 
 quickening with the intelligence that there was 
 not a cloud in the sky, a state of the heavens 
 known to no coronation since Babylon was 
 ruled by Assyrian viceroys. The lord chief- 
 chancellor and Cassyrus themselves brought 
 forth the crown — a beautiful crown, shining 
 like dust-in-the-sun — and Cassyrus, in a voice 
 that trumpeted, rehearsed its history: how it had 
 been made of jewels brought from the coffers 
 of Amasis and Apries, when King Nebuchad- 
 nezzar wrested Phoenicia from Egypt, and, too, 
 of all manner of precious stones sent by Queen 
 Atossa, wife of Darius, when the Crotoniat Demo- 
 cedes, with two triremes and a trading vessel, 
 visited Yaque before they went to survey Hellenic 
 shores, with what disastrous result. And Olivia, 
 standing in the queen's gown, listened without 
 hearing one word, and turned to have her veil 
 lifted by Antoinette and the daughter of a peer 
 of Yaque; and she knelt before the people while 
 the lord chief-chancellor set the crown on her 
 bright hair. It was a picture that thrilled the 
 lord chief-chancellor himself — who was a wor- 
 
344 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 shiper of beauty, and a man given to angling 
 in the lagoon and making metric translations of 
 the inscriptions. 
 
 Then it was in the room as if a faint flame 
 had been breathed upon and had upleaped 
 in a thousand ways of expectancy, and as if a 
 secret sign had been set in the lift and dip of 
 the music — the music that was so like the great 
 chamber with its lift and dip of carven line. The 
 thrill with which one knows the glad news of an 
 unopened letter was upon them all, and they 
 heard that swift breath of an event that stirs 
 before its coming. When Olivia's women fell 
 back from the dais with wonder and murmur, 
 the murmur was caught up in the great hall, and 
 ran from tier to tier as amazement, as incredulity, 
 and as thanksgiving. 
 
 For there, beside the beetling throne, was 
 standing a man, slenderly built, with a youthful, 
 sensitive face and critically- drooping lids, and 
 upon them all his eyes were turned in faint 
 amusement warmed by an idle approbation. 
 
 ' ' Perfect — perfect . Quite perfect , " he was say- 
 ing below his breath. 
 
 Olivia turned. The next moment she stood 
 with outstretched arms before her father; and 
 King Otho, in his long, straight robe, encrusted 
 with purple amethysts, bent with exquisite 
 courtesy above his daughter's hands. 
 
 " My dear child," he murmured. " the picture 
 
IN THE HALL OF KINGS -845 
 
 that you make entirely justifies my existence, 
 but hardly my absence. Shall we ask his Highness 
 to do that? " 
 
 It mattered little who was to do that so long as 
 it was done. For to that people, steeped in dream, 
 risen from the crudity of mere events to breathe in 
 the rarer atmosphere of their significance, here 
 was a happening worthy their attention, for it had 
 the dignity of mystery. Even Mrs. Medora 
 Hastings, billowing toward the throne with cries, 
 was less poignantly a challenge to be heard. 
 Upon her the king laid a tranquillizing hand and, 
 with a droop of eyelids in recognition of Mr. 
 Frothingham, he murmured: "Ah, Medora — 
 Medora! Delight in the moment — but do not 
 embrace it," while beside him, star-eyed, Olivia 
 stood waiting for Prince Tabnit to speak. 
 
 To Olivia, trembling a little as she leaned 
 upon his arm, King Otho bent with some word, 
 at which she raised to his her startled face, and 
 turned from him uncertainly, and burned a 
 heavenly colour from brow to chin. Then, her 
 father's words being insistent in her ear, and her 
 own heart being tumultuous with what he had 
 told her, she turned as he bade her, and, following 
 his glance, slipped beneath a shining curtain that 
 cut from the audience chamber the still seclusion 
 of the King's Alcove, a chamber long sacred to 
 the sovereigns of Yaque. 
 
 Confused with her wonder and questioning, 
 
346 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 hardly daring to understand the import of her 
 father's words, Olivia went down a passage set 
 between two high white walls of the palace, open 
 to-day to the upper blue and to the floating 
 pennons of the dome. Here, prickly-leaved plants 
 had shot to the cornices with uncouth contorting 
 of angled boughs, and in their inner green ruffle- 
 feathered birds looked down on her with the 
 uncanny interest of myriapods. She caught about 
 her the lace of her skirts and of her floating veil, 
 and the way echoed musically to the touch of 
 her little sandals and was bright with the 
 shining of her diadem. And at the end of the 
 passage she lifted a swaying curtain of soft dyes 
 and entered the King's Alcove. 
 
 The King's Alcove laid upon one the delicate 
 demands of calm open water — for its floor of 
 white transparent tiles was cunningly traced with 
 the reflected course of the carven roof, and one 
 seemed to look into mirrored depths of disappear- 
 ing line between spaces shaped like petals and 
 like chevrons. In the King's Alcove one stood 
 in a world of white and one's sight was exquisitely 
 won, now by a niche open to a blue well of sea and 
 space, now by silver plants lucent in high case- 
 ments. And there one was spellbound with this 
 mirroring of the Near which thus became the 
 Remote, until one questioned gravely which was 
 " there " and which was " here," for the real was 
 extended into vision, and vision was quickened^ 
 
IN THE HALL OF KINGS 347 
 
 to the real, and nothing lay between. But to 
 Olivia, entering, none of these things was clearly 
 evident, for as the curtain of many dyes fell 
 behind her she was aware of two figures — but the 
 one, with a murmured word which she managed 
 somehow to answer without an idea what she 
 said or what it had said either, vanished down 
 the way that she had come. And she stood there 
 face to face with St. George. 
 
 He had risen from a low divan before a small 
 table set with figs and bread and a decanter of 
 what would have been bordeaux if it had not 
 been distilled from the vineyards of Yaque, He 
 was very pale and haggard, and his eyes were 
 darkly circled and still fever-bright. But he 
 came toward her as if he had quite forgotten that 
 this is a world of danger and that she was a 
 princess and that, little more than a week ago, her 
 name was to him the unknown music. He came 
 toward her with a face of unutterable gladness, 
 and he caught and crushed her hands in his and 
 looked into her eyes as if he could look to the 
 distant soul of her. He led her to a great 
 chair hewn from quarries of things silver and 
 unremembered, and he sat at her feet upon a 
 bench that might have been a stone of the altar 
 of some forgotten deity of dreams, at last wor- 
 shiped as it should long have been worshiped 
 by all the host that had passed it by. He looked 
 j,ip in her face, and the room was like a place 
 
'348 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 of Open water where heaven is mirrored in earth, 
 and earth reflects and answers heaven. 
 
 St. George laughed a little for sheer, inex- 
 tinguishable happiness. 
 
 " Once," he said, " once I breakfasted with you^ 
 on tea and — if I remember correctly — gold and 
 silver muffins. Won't you breakfast with me 
 now? " 
 
 Olivia looked down at him, her heart still 
 clamourous with its anxiety of the night and of 
 the morning. 
 
 " Tell me where you can have been," she said 
 only; " didn't you know how distressed we would 
 be? We imagined everything — in this dreadful 
 
 place. And we feared everything, and we " 
 
 but yet the " we " did not deceive St. George; 
 how could it with her eyes, for all their avoidings, 
 so divinely upon him? 
 
 " Did you," he said, " ah — did you wonder? 
 I wish I knew!" 
 
 " And my father — ^where did you find him? " 
 she besought. " It was you? You found him, did 
 you not? " 
 
 St. George looked down at a fold of her gown 
 that was fallen across his knee. How on earth 
 was he ever to move, he wondered vaguely, if 
 the slightest motion meant the withdrawing of 
 that fold. He looked at her hand, resting so 
 near, so near, upon the arm of the chair; and 
 last he looked again into her face; and it seemed 
 
IN THE HALL OF KINGS 349 
 
 wonderful and before all things wonderful, not 
 that she should be here, jeweled and crowned, 
 but that he should so unbelievably be here with 
 her. And yet it might be but a moment, as time 
 is measured, until this moment would be swept 
 away. His eyes met hers and held them. 
 
 " Would you mind," he said, " now — just for 
 a little, while we wait here — not asking me that? 
 Not asking me anything? There will be time 
 enough in there — when they ask me. Just for now 
 I only want to think how wonderful this is." 
 
 She said : ' ' Yes, it is wonderful — unbelievable," 
 but he thought that she might have meant the 
 white room or her queen's robe or any one of 
 all the things which he did not mean. 
 
 " /«$• it wonderful to you? " he asked, and he 
 said again: " I wish — I wish I knew! " 
 
 He looked at her, sitting in the moon of 
 her laces and the stars of her gems, and the 
 sense of the immeasurableness of the hour came 
 upon him as it comes to few; the knowledge that 
 the evanescent moment is very potent, the world 
 where the siren light of the Remote may at 
 any moment lie quenched in some ashen present. 
 To him, held momentarily in this place 
 that was like shoreless, open water, the present 
 was inestimably precious and it lay upon St. 
 George like the delicate claim of his love itself. 
 What the next hour held for them neither could 
 know, and this universal uncertainty was for him 
 
350 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 crystallized in an instant of high wisdom; over 
 the little hand lying so perilously near, his own 
 closed suddenly and he crushed her fingers to his 
 lips. 
 
 " Olivia — dear heart," he said, " we don't 
 know what they may do — what will happen — oh, 
 may I tell you now ?" 
 
 There was no one to say that he might not, 
 for the hand was not withdrawn from his. And 
 so he did tell her, told her all his heart as he had 
 known his heart to be that last night on The 
 Aloha, and in that divine twilight of his arriving 
 on the island, and in those hours beside the airy 
 ramparts of the king's palace, and in the vigil 
 that followed, and always — always, ever since he 
 could remember, only that he hadn't known that 
 he was waiting for her, and now he knew — now 
 he knew. 
 
 " Must you not have known, up there in the 
 palace," he besought her, "the night that I got 
 there? And yesterday, all day yesterday, you 
 must have known — didn't you know? I love 
 you, Olivia. I couldn't have told you, I couldn't 
 have let you know, only now, when we can't 
 know what may come or what they may do — 
 oh, say you forgive me. Because I love you — I 
 love you." 
 
 She rose swiftly, her veil floating about her, 
 silver over the gold of her hair; and the light 
 caught the enchantment of the gems of the strange 
 
IN THE HALL OF KINGS 351 
 
 crown they had set upon her head, and she looked 
 down at him in almost unearthly beauty. He 
 stood before her, waiting for the moment 
 when she should lift her eyes. And the eyes were 
 lifted, and he held out his arms, and straight 
 to them, regardless of the coronation laces of 
 Queen Mitygen, went Olivia, Princess of Yaque. 
 He put aside her shining hair, as he had put it 
 aside in that divine moment in the motor in the 
 palace wood; and their lips met, in that world 
 that was like the shoreless open sea where 
 earth reflects heaven, and heaven comes down. 
 
 They sat upon the white-cushioned divan, and 
 St. George half knelt beside her as he had knelt 
 that night in the fleeing motor, and there were an 
 hundred things to say and an hundred things to 
 hear. And because this fragment of the past 
 since they had met was incontestably theirs, 
 and because the future hung trembling before 
 them in a mist of doubt, they turned happy, 
 hopeful eyes to that future, clinging to each 
 other's hands. The little chamber of translucent 
 white, where one looked down to a mirrored 
 dome and up to a kind of sky, became to them a 
 place bounded by the touch and the look and the 
 voice of each other, as every place in the 
 world is bounded for every heart that beats. 
 
 " Sweetheart," said St. George presently, " do 
 you remember that you are a princess, and I'm 
 merely a kind of man? " 
 
352 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Was it not curious, he thought, that his lips 
 did not speak a new language of their own 
 accord? 
 
 " I know," corrected Olivia adorably, " that 
 I'm a kind of princess. But what use is that when 
 it only makes trouble for us? " 
 
 " Us " — " makes trouble for us." St. George 
 wondered how he could ever have thought that 
 he even guessed what happiness might be when 
 " trouble for us " was like this. He tried to say 
 so, and then: 
 
 " But do you know what you are doing? " he 
 persisted. " Don't you see — dear, don't you see 
 that by loving me you are giving up a world that 
 you can never, never get back? " 
 
 Olivia looked down at the fair disordered hair 
 on his temples. It seemed incredible that she 
 had the right to push it from his forehead. But 
 it was not incredible. To prove it Olivia 
 touched it back. To prove that that was not 
 incredible, St. George turned until his lips brushed 
 her wrist. 
 
 " Don't you know, don't you, dear," he pressed 
 the matter, " that very possibly these people here 
 have really got the secret that all the rest of the 
 world is talking about and hoping about and 
 dreaming they will sometime know? " 
 
 Olivia heard of this likelihood with delicious 
 imperturbability. 
 
 " I know a secret," she said, just above her 
 breath, " worth two of that.". 
 
IN THE HALL OF KINGS 353 
 
 "You'll never be sorry — never? " he urged 
 wistfully, resolutely denying himself the entire 
 bliss of that answer. 
 
 "Never," said Olivia, "never. Shall yoa?" 
 
 That was exceptionally easy to make clear, and 
 thereafter he whimsically remembered something 
 else: 
 
 " You live in the king's palace now," he 
 reminded her, " and this is another palace where 
 you might live if you chose. And you might be 
 a queen, with drawing-rooms and a poet laureate 
 and all the rest. And in New York — in New York, 
 perhaps we shall live in a flat." 
 
 " No," she cried, " no, indeed! Not ' perhaps,' 
 I insist upon a flat." She looked about the room 
 with its bench brought from the altar of a forgot- 
 ten deity of dreams, with its line and colour dis- 
 solving to mirrored point and light — the mystic 
 union of sight with dream — and she smiled 
 at the divine incongruity and the divine 
 resemblance. " It wouldn't be so very differ- 
 ent — a flat," she said shyly. 
 
 Wouldn't it — wouldn't it, after all, be so very 
 different? 
 
 " Ah, if you only think so, really, " cried 
 St. George. 
 
 " But it will be different, just different 
 enough to like better," she admitted then. " You 
 know that I think so," she said. 
 
 " If only you knew how much I think so," 
 he told her, " how I have thought so, day 
 
354 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 and night, since that first minute at the Boris. 
 Olivia, dear heart — when did you think so 
 first " 
 
 She shook her head and laid her hands upon his 
 and drew them to her face. 
 
 " Now, now — now! " she cried, " and there 
 never was any time but now." 
 
 " But there will be — there will be," he said, his 
 lips upon her hair. 
 
 After a time — for Time, that seems to have no 
 boundaries in the abstract, is a very fiend for 
 bounding the divine concrete — after a time 
 Amory spoke hesitatingly on the other side of the 
 curtain of many dyes. 
 
 "St. George," he said, "I'm afraid they want 
 you. Mr. Holland — the king, he's got through 
 playing them. He wants you to get up and give 
 'em the truth, I think." 
 
 "Come in — come in, Amory," St. George said 
 and lifted the curtain, and " I beg your pardon," 
 he added, as his eyes fell upon Antoinette in a 
 gown of colours not to be lightly denominated. 
 She had followed Olivia from the hall, and had 
 met Amory midway the avenue of prickly trees, 
 and they had helpfully been keeping guard. 
 Now they went on before to the Hall of 
 Kings, and St. George, remembering what must 
 happen there, turned to Olivia for one crowning 
 moment. 
 
 " You know," she said fearfully, " before father 
 
IN THE HALL OF KINGS 355 
 
 came the prince intended the most terrible things 
 — to set you and Mr. Amory adrift in a rudderless 
 airship " 
 
 St. George laughed in amusement. The poor 
 prince with his impossible devices, thinking to 
 harm him, St. George — now. 
 
 " He meant to marry you, he thought," he said, 
 " but, thank Heaven, he has your father to answer 
 to — and me! " he ended jubilantly. 
 
 And yet, after all, Heaven knew what possi- 
 bilities hemmed them round. And Heaven knew 
 what she was going to think of him when she 
 heard his story. He turned and caught her to 
 him, for the crowning moment. 
 
 " You love me — you love me," he said, " no 
 matter what happens or what they say — no 
 matter what? " 
 
 She met his eyes and, of her own will, she drew 
 his face down to hers. 
 
 " No matter what," she answered. So they 
 went together toward the chamber which they 
 had both forgotten. 
 
 When they reached the Hall of Kings they 
 heard King Otho's voice — suave, mellow, of 
 perfect enunciation: 
 
 " vSome one," the king was concluding," who 
 
 can tell this considerably better than I. And it 
 seems to me singularly fitting that the recognition 
 of the part eternally played by the ' possible ' 
 be temporarily deferred while we listen to — I 
 
356 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 dislike to use the word, but shall I say — the 
 facts." 
 
 It seemed to St. George when he stood beside 
 the dais, facing that strange, eager multitude with 
 his strange unbelievable story upon his lips — the 
 story of the finding of the king — as if his own 
 voice were suddenly a part of all the gigantic 
 incredibility. Yet the divinely real and the 
 fantastic had been of late so fused in his con- 
 sciousness that he had come to look upon both as 
 the normal — which is perhaps the only sane view. 
 But how could he tell to others the monstrous 
 story of last night, and hope to be believed? 
 
 None the less, as simply as if he had been nar- 
 rating to Chillingworth the high moment of a 
 political convention, St. George told the people 
 of Yaque what had happened in that night in 
 the room of the tombs with that mad old Malakh 
 whom they all remembered. It came to him as 
 he spoke that it was quite like telling to a field 
 of flowers the real truth about the wind of which 
 they might be supposed to know far more than 
 he; and yet, if any one were to tell the truth 
 about the wind who would know how to listen? 
 He was not amazed that, when he had done, the 
 people of Yaque sat in a profound silence which 
 might have been the silence of innocent amaze- 
 ment or of utter incredulity. 
 
 But there was no mistaking the face of Prince 
 Xabnit. Its cool tolerant amusement suddenly 
 
IN THE HALL OE KINGS 857 
 
 sent the blood pricking to St, George's heart and 
 filled him with a kind of madness. What he 
 did was the last thing that he had intended. He 
 turned upon the prince, and his voice went cutting 
 to the farthest corner of the hall : 
 
 " Men and women of Yaque," he cried, " I 
 accuse your prince of the knowledge that can take 
 from and add to the years of man at will. I 
 accuse him of the deliberate and criminal use of 
 that knowledge to take King Otho from his 
 throne!" 
 
 St. George hardly knew what effect his words 
 had. He saw only Olivia, her hands locked, 
 her lips parted, looking in his face in anguish; 
 and he saw Prince Tabnit smile. Prince Tabnit 
 sat upon the king's left hand, and he leaned and 
 whispered a smiling word in the ear of his sovereign 
 and turned a smiling face to Olivia upon her 
 father's right. 
 
 " I know something of your American news- 
 papers, your Majesty," the prince said aloud, 
 " and these men are doing their part excellently, 
 excellently." 
 
 ' ' What do you mean, your Highness? ' ' demanded 
 St. George curtly. 
 
 " But is it not simple? " asked the prince, still 
 smiling. ' ' You have contrived a sensation for the 
 great American newspaper. No one can doubt." 
 
 King Otho leaned back in the beetling throne. 
 
 " Ah, yes," he said, "it is true. Something 
 
358 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 has been contrived. But — ^is the sensation of 
 his contriving, Prince? " 
 
 OHvia stood silent. It was not possible, it was 
 not possible, she said over mechanically. For 
 St. George to have come with this story of a 
 potion — a drug that had restored youth to her 
 father, had transformed him from that mad old 
 Malakh 
 
 " Father! " she cried appealingly, " don't you 
 remember — don't you know? " 
 
 King Otho, watching the prince, shook his head, 
 smiling. 
 
 " At dawn," he said, " there are few of us to 
 be found remaining still at table with Socrates. 
 I seem not to have been of that number." 
 
 " Olivia! " cried St. George suddenly. 
 
 She met his eyes for a moment, the eyes that 
 had read her own, that had given message for 
 message, that had seen with her the glory of a 
 mystic morning willingly relinquished for a diviner 
 dawn. Was she not princess here in Yaque? 
 She laid her hand upon her father's hand; the 
 crown that they had given her glittered as she 
 turned toward the multitude. 
 
 " My people," she said ringingly, " I believe 
 that that man speaks the truth. Shall the prince 
 not answer to this charge before the High Council 
 now — here — ^before you all? " 
 
 At this King Otho did something nearly per- 
 ceptible with his eyebrows. " Perfect. Perfect. 
 
IN THE HALL OF KINGS 359 
 
 Quite perfect," he said below his breath. The 
 next instant the eyelids of the sovereign drooped 
 cons'derably less than one would have supposed 
 possible. For from every part of the great 
 chamber, as if a storm long-pent had forced the 
 walls of the wind, there came in a thou- 
 sand murmurs — soft, tremulous, definitive — ^the 
 answering voice to Olivia's question: 
 " Yes. Yes. Yes . . . " 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 OUT OF THE HAIvI. OF KINGS 
 
 In Prince Tabnit's face there was a curious 
 change, as if one were suddenly to see hieroglyphics 
 upon a star where before there had been only 
 shining. But his calm and his magnificent way 
 of authority did not desert him, as so grotesque 
 a star would still stand lonely and high in the 
 heavens. He spoke, and upon the multitude fell 
 instant silence, not the less absolute that it har- 
 boured foreboding. 
 
 " Whatever the people would say to me," said 
 the prince simply, " I will hear. My right hand 
 rests in the hand of the people. In return I 
 decree allegiance to the law. Your princess 
 stands before you, crowned. This most fortunate 
 return of his Majesty, the King, can not set at 
 naught the sacred oath which has just left her 
 lips. Henceforth, in council and in audience, her 
 place shall be at his Majesty's right hand, as 
 was the place of that Princess Athalme, daughter 
 of King Kab, in the dynasty of the fall of Rome. 
 Is it not, therefore, but the more incumbent upon 
 
 360 
 
OUT OF THE HALL OF KINGS 361 
 
 your princess to own her allegiance to the law 
 of the island by keeping her troth with me — that 
 troth witnessed and sanctioned by you yourselves ? 
 This ceremony concluded I will answer the 
 demands of the loyal subjects whose interests 
 alone I serve. For we obey that which is higher 
 than authority — the law, bom in the Begin- 
 ning " 
 
 Prince Tabnit's voice might almost have taken 
 his place in his absence, it was so soft, so fine of 
 texture, no more consciously modulated than is 
 the going of water or the way of a wing. It was 
 difficult to say whether his words or, so to say, 
 their fine fabric of voice, begot the silence 
 that followed. But all eyes were turned upon 
 Olivia. And, Prince Tabnit noting this, before 
 she might speak he suddenly swept his flowing 
 robes embroidered by a thousand needles to a 
 posture of humility before his sovereign. 
 
 " Your Majesty," he besought, " I pray your 
 consent to the bestowal upon my most unworthy 
 self of the hand of your daughter, the Princess 
 Olivia." 
 
 King Otho leaned upon the arm of his carven 
 throne. Against its strange metal his hand was 
 cameo -clear. 
 
 " For the king," he was remembering softly, 
 " 'the Pyrenees, or so he fancied, ceased to exist.' 
 For another ' the mountains of Daphne are every- 
 Vvhere.' Each of us has his impossible dreary 
 
362 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 to prove that he is an impossible creature. Why 
 not I? To be normal is the cry of all the hob- 
 goblins . . . And what does the princess say? " 
 he asked aloud. 
 
 ' ' Her Highness has already given me the great 
 happiness to plight me her troth," said Prince 
 Tabnit. 
 
 King Otho's eyebrows flickered from their 
 parallel of repose. 
 
 " In Yaque or in America," he murmured, "the 
 Americans do as the Americans do. None of 
 us is mentioned in Deuteronomy, but what is 
 the will of the princess?" the American Sover- 
 eign asked. 
 
 Mrs. Hastings, seated near the dais, heard; and 
 as she turned, a rhinestone side-comb slipped from 
 her hair, tinkled over the jewels of her corsage 
 and shot into the lap of a member of the High 
 Council. He, never having seen a side-comb, 
 fancied that it might be an infernal machine 
 which he had never seen either, and, palpitating, 
 flashed it to the guardian hand of Mr. Frothingham. 
 At the same moment : 
 
 " Ah, why, Otho," said Mrs. Hastings audibly, 
 " we had two ancestors at Bannockburn! " 
 
 " Bannockburn! " argued Mr. Augustus Froth- 
 ingham, below the voice, "Bannockburn. But 
 what, my dear Mrs. Hastings, is Bannockburn 
 beside the Midianites and the Moabites and the 
 Hittites and the Ammonites and the Levites? " 
 
OUT OF THE HALL OP KINGS m'S 
 
 In this genealogical moment the prince leaned 
 toward Olivia. 
 
 " Choose," he said significantly, but so softly 
 that none might hear, "oh, my beloved, 
 choose!" 
 
 The faces of the great assembly blurred and 
 wavered before Olivia, and the low hum of the 
 talk in the room was relative, like the voices of 
 passers-by. She looked up at the prince and 
 away from him in mute appeal to something that 
 ought to help her and would not. For Olivia was 
 of those who, never having seen the face of Destiny 
 very near, are accustomed to look upon nothing 
 as wholly irrevocable ; and — for one of her graces — 
 she had the feminine expectation that, if only 
 events can be sufficiently postponed, something 
 will intervene; which is perhaps a heritage of the 
 gentlest women descended from Homeric days. 
 If the island was so historic, little Olivia may have 
 said, where was the interfering goddess? She 
 looked unseeingly toward St. George and toward 
 her father, and the sense of the bitter actuality of 
 the choice suddenly wounded her, as the Actual 
 for ever wounds the woman and the dream. 
 
 Then suddenly, above the stir of expectation of 
 the people, and the associate bustling of the High 
 Council there came a vague confusion and tramp- 
 ling from outside, and the far outer doors of the 
 hall were thrown open with a jar and a breath, 
 vibrant as a murmur. There was a cry, the 
 
364 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 determined resistance of some of the Golden 
 Guard, and shouts of expostulation and warning 
 as they were flung aside by a powerful arm. 
 In the disorder that followed, a miraculously- 
 familiar figure — that familiarity and strangeness 
 are both miracles ought to explain certain mys- 
 teries—was beside St. George and a thankful 
 voice said in his ear: 
 
 " Mr. St. George, sir, for the mercy of Heaven, 
 sir — come back to the yacht. No person can tell 
 what may happen ten minutes ahead, sir! ^' 
 
 The oracle of this universal truth was 
 Rollo, palpitating, his immaculate coat stained 
 with earth, earth-stains on his cheeks, and his 
 breast labouring in an excitement which only 
 anxiety for his master could effect. But 
 St. George hardly saw him. His eyes were fixed 
 on some one who stood towering before the dais, 
 like the old prints of the avenging goddesses. 
 Clad in the hideous stripes which boards of direc- 
 tors consider de rigueur for the soul that is to be 
 won back to the normal, stood the woman Elissa, 
 who, by all counts of Prince Tabnit, should have 
 been singing a hymn with Mrs. Manners and 
 Miss Bella Bliss Utter in the Bitley Reform- 
 atory, in Westchester County, New York. 
 
 " Stop! " she cried in that perfect English which 
 is not only a rare experience but a pleasant 
 adventure, " what new horror is this? " 
 
 To Prince Tabnit 's face, as he looked at her, 
 
OUT OF THE HALL OF KINGS 365 
 
 came once more that indefinable change — only this 
 time nearer and more intimately explainable, 
 as if something ethereal, trained to delicate lines, 
 like smoke, should suddenly shape itself to a 
 menace. St. George saw the woman step close to 
 the dais, he saw Olivia's eyes questioning him, and 
 in the hurried rising of the peers and of the High 
 Council he heard Rollo's voice in his ear: 
 
 "It's a gr'it go, sir," observed Rollo respect- 
 fully, " the woman has things to tell, sir, as 
 people generally don't know. She's flew the 
 coop at the place she was in — it seems she's been 
 shut up some'eres in America, sir; an' she got 'old 
 of the capting of a tramp boat o' some kind — one 
 o' them boats as smells intoxicating round the 
 'atches — an' she give 'im an' the mate a 'andful 
 o' jewelry that she'd on 'er when she was took in 
 an' 'ad some ways contrived to 'ang on to, an' I'm 
 blessed hif she wasn't able fer to steer fer the 
 island, sir — we took 'er aboard the yacht only this 
 mornin' with 'er 'air down her back, an' we've 
 brought 'er on here. An' she says — men can 
 be gr'it beasts, sir, an' no manner o' mistake," 
 concluded Rollo fervently. 
 
 And a little hoarse voice said in St. George's 
 ear: 
 
 " Mr. St. George, sir — we ain't late, are we? 
 We been flirtin' de ger-avel up dat ka-liff since 
 de car-rack o' day." 
 
 And there was Bennietod, with an edge of 
 
366 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 an old horse pistol showing beneath his cuff; 
 and, round-eyed and alert as a bird newly alighted 
 on a stranger sill, Little Cawthorne stood; and the 
 sight put strength into St. George, and so did 
 Little Cawthorne 's words : 
 
 " I didn't know whether they'd let us in or not," 
 he said, " unless we had on a plaited d^collette^ 
 with biases down the back. ' ' 
 
 Clearly and confidently in the silent room rang 
 the voice of the woman confronting Prince Tabnit, 
 and her eyes did not leave his face. St. George 
 was struck with the change in her since that day 
 in the Reformatory chapel. Then she had been 
 like a wild, alien thing in dumb distress; now she 
 was unchained and native. Her first words 
 explained why, in the extreme dilemma in which 
 St. George had last seen her, she had yet remained 
 mute. 
 
 " I release myself," she cried, " from my oath 
 of silence, though until to-day I have spoken only 
 to those who helped me to come back to you — 
 my master. Have you nothing to say to me? 
 Has the time seemed long? Is it a weary while 
 since I left you to do your will and murder the 
 woman whom you were now about to make your 
 wife? " 
 
 A cry of horror rose from the people, and then 
 stillness came again. 
 
 " Take the woman away," said Prince Tabnit 
 only, " she is speaking madness." 
 
OUT OF THE HALL OB KINGS 367 
 
 " I am speaking the truth," said the woman 
 clearly. '* I was of Melita — there are those here 
 who will know my face. And it is not I alone 
 who have served the State. I challenge you, 
 Tabnit — ^here, before them all ! Where are Gerya 
 and Ibera, Cabulla and Taura? Have not their 
 people, weeping, besought news of them in vain? 
 And what answer have you given them? " 
 
 Murmurs and sobs rose from the assembly, 
 stilled by the tranquil voice of the prince. 
 
 " Where are they? " he repeated gently, his 
 voice vibrant in its rise and fall, its giving of 
 delicate values. " But the people know where 
 they are. They have attained to the perfect life 
 and died the perfect death. For I have raised 
 them to the supreme estate." 
 
 Prince Tabnit, with uplifted face, sat motion- 
 less, looking out over the throng from beneath 
 lowered lids; then his eyes, confident and a little 
 mocking, returned to the woman. But they had 
 for her no terror. She turned from him, con- 
 fronting the pale, eager faces of the people; and 
 in her beauty and distinction she was like Olivia's 
 women, crowded beside the dais. 
 
 " Men and women of Yaque," cried Elissa, 
 " I will tell you to what ' supreme estate ' these 
 friends whom you seek have long been raised. 
 For here in Med and in Melita yoU will find many 
 of those whom you have mourned as dead — 
 you will find them as you yourselves have met 
 
368 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 and passed them, it may have been countless 
 times, on your streets of Yaque — not young and 
 beautiful as when they left you, but men and 
 women of incredible age. Withered, shaken by 
 palsy, infirm, they creep upon their lonely 
 ways or go at will to drag themselves unrecog- 
 nized along your highways, as helpless as the 
 dead themselves. They number scores, and they 
 are those who have displeased your prince by 
 some little word, some little wrong, or, more than 
 these, by some thwarting of the way of his ambi- 
 tion: Oblo, who disappeared from his place as 
 keeper at the door; Ithobal, satrap of Melita; 
 young Prince Kaal — ay, and how many more? 
 You do not understand my words? I say that 
 your prince has knowledge of some secret, 
 accursed drug that can call back youth or 
 make actual age — age, do you understand — ^just 
 as we of Yaque bring both flowers and fruit 
 to swift maturity!" 
 
 Olivia uttered a little cry, not at the grotesque 
 horror of what the woman had said but at the 
 miracle of its unconscious support of the story 
 and theory of St. George. And St. George heard; 
 and suddenly, because another had voiced his 
 own fantastic message, its incredibility and 
 unreality became appalling, and yet he felt 
 infinitely reconciled to both because he interpreted 
 aright that little muffled exclamation from Olivia. 
 What did it matter — oh, what did it matter 
 
OUT OF THE HALL OF KINGS 369 
 
 whether or not the reality were grotesque? 
 What seems to be happening is always the reality, 
 if only one understands it sufficiently. And at 
 all events there had been that hour in the 
 King's Alcove. At last, as he weighed that hour 
 against the fantasy of all the rest, St. George 
 understood and lived the divine madness of all 
 great moments, the madness that realizes one 
 star and is content that all the heavens shall 
 march unintelligibly past so long as that single 
 shining is not dimmed. 
 
 But King Otho was riding no such grifhn with 
 sun-gold wings. King Otho was genuinely and 
 personally interested in the woman's words. He 
 turned to Prince Tabnit with animation. 
 
 " Really, Prince," he said, " is it so? Pray 
 do not deny it unless there is no other way, for 
 I am before all things interested. It is far more 
 important to me that you tell me as much as you 
 can tell, than that you deny or even disprove it." 
 
 Prince Tabnit smiled in the eagerly interested 
 face of his sovereign, and rose and came to the 
 edge of the dais, his garments embroidered by a 
 thousand needles touching and floating about him ; 
 and it was as if he reached those before him by 
 a kind of spiritual magnetism, not without sub- 
 limity. 
 
 " My people," he said — and his voice had all 
 the tenderness that they knew so well — " this is 
 some conspiracy of those to whom we have shown 
 
370 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 the utmost hospitality. I would have shielded 
 your king, for he was also my sovereign and I 
 owed him allegiance. But now that is no 
 longer possible, and the time is come. Know 
 then, oh my people of Yaque, that which my 
 loyalty has led me wrongfully to conceal: that 
 in the strange disappearance and return of your 
 sovereign, King Otho, he who will may trace the 
 loss of that which the island has mourned with- 
 out ceasing. I accuse your king — he is no longer 
 mine — of being now in possession of the Hereditary 
 Treasure of Yaque." 
 
 Then St. George came back with a thrill to 
 actuality. In the press of the events of this 
 morning, after his awakening in the room of the 
 tombs, he had completely forgotten the soft fire 
 of gems that had burned beneath the hands of 
 old Malakh in that dark chamber under King 
 Abibaal's tomb. He and Amory and Jarvo had, 
 with the king, left the chamber by the upper 
 passages, and Amory and Jarvo knew nothing of 
 the jewels. Yet St. George was certain that he 
 could not have been mistaken, and he listened 
 breathlessly for what the king would say. 
 
 King Otho, with a smile, nodded in perfect 
 imperturbability. 
 
 " That is true," he said, *' I had forgotten all 
 about it." 
 
 They waited for him to speak, the people in 
 amazed silence, Mrs. Medora Hastings saying 
 
OUT OF THE HALL OF lUNGS 371 
 
 unintelligible things in whispers, for which she 
 had a genius. 
 
 " It is true," said King Otho, " that I am 
 responsible for the disappearance of the Hered- 
 itary Treasure. You will find it at this moment 
 in a basement dungeon of the palace on Mount 
 Khalak. On the very day, three months ago, 
 that I dined with your prince I had made a dis- 
 covery of considerable importance to me, namely, 
 that the little island of Yaque is richer in most 
 of the radio-active substances than all the rest 
 of the world. The discovery gave me keener 
 pleasure than I had known in years — I had sus- 
 pected it for some time after I found the nocti- 
 lucous stars on the ceiling of my sitting-room at 
 the palace. And in the work-shop of the Princess 
 Simyra I came upon a quantity of metallic uran- 
 ium, and a great many other things which I 
 question the taste of taking the time to describe. 
 But my experiments there with the very perfect 
 gems of your admirable collection had evidently 
 been antedated by some of your own people, for 
 the apparatus was intact. I shall be glad to 
 show some charming effects to any one who cares 
 to see them. I have succeeded in causing the 
 diamonds of Darius to phosphoresce most won- 
 derfully." 
 
 The phosphorescence of the diamonds of Darius 
 was to the people far less important than the 
 joyous fact which they were not slow to grasp, 
 
372 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 that the Hereditary Treasure was, if they might 
 beUeve the king's words, restored to them, and 
 the burden of the tax averted. They did not 
 understand, nor did they seek to understand; 
 because they knew the inefficiency of details and 
 they also knew the value of mere import. 
 
 But the king, child of a social order that wreaks 
 itself on particularizations, returned to his quest 
 for a certain recounting. 
 
 " Prince Tabnit," he said, " the High Council 
 and the people of Yaque are impatient for your 
 answer to this woman's words." 
 
 " I rejoice with them and with your Majesty," 
 replied Prince Tabnit softly, " that the treasure 
 is safe. My own explanation is far less simple. 
 If what this woman says is true, yet it is true in 
 such wise as, strive as I may, I can not speak; 
 nor, strive as you may, can you fathom. There- 
 fore I say that the claim which she has made is 
 idle, and not within my power to answer." 
 
 At this St. George bounded to his feet. Amory 
 looked up at him in terror, and Little Cawthome 
 and Bennietod went a step or two after him 
 as he sprang forward, and RoUo's lean shadowed 
 face, obvious as his way of speech, was wrinkled 
 in terrified appeal. 
 
 " An idle claim! " St. George thundered as he 
 strode before the dais. " Is this woman's story and 
 mine an idle claim, and one not within your 
 power to answer? Then I will tell you how to 
 
OUT OF THE HALL OF KINGS 373 
 
 answer, Prince Tabnit. I challenge you now, in 
 the presence of your people — taste this! " 
 
 Upon the carven arm of Prince Tabnit 's throne 
 St. George set something that he had taken from 
 his pocket. It was the vase of rock-crystal from 
 which, the night before in the room of the tombs, 
 the king had drunk. 
 
 What followed was the last thing that St. George 
 had expected. It was as if his defiance had 
 unlocked flood-gates. In an instant the vast 
 assembly was in motion. With a sound of gar- 
 ments that was like far wind they were upon their 
 feet and pressing toward the throne. With all 
 the passion of their " Yes! Yes! Yes! " in response 
 to Olivia's appeal they came, resistlessly demand- 
 ing the answer to some dreadful question long 
 shrouded in their hearts. Their armour was 
 their silence; they made no sound save that 
 ominous sweep of their robes and the conspiracy 
 of their sandaled feet upon the tiles. 
 
 St. George did not turn. Indeed, it did not 
 once cross his mind that their hostility could 
 possibly be toward him. Besides, his look was 
 fixed upon the prince's face, and what he read 
 there was enough. The peers, the High Council 
 and those nearest the throne wavered and swerved 
 from the man, leaving him to face what was to 
 come. 
 
 Whatever was to come he would have met 
 nobly. He was of those infrequent folk of some 
 
374 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 Upper air who exhibit a certain purity even in 
 error, or in worse. He stood with his exquisite 
 pale face upHfted, his white hair in a glory about 
 it, his white gown embroidered by a thousand 
 needles falling in virginal lines against the warm, 
 pure colour of that room with its wraiths of hue 
 and light. And he opened the heart of the green 
 jewel that burned upon his breast. 
 
 " Not for me the wineof youth," he said slowly, 
 " but the poison of age. The poison which, 
 without me to unlock the secret, all mankind must 
 drink alone. May you drink it late, my friends! " 
 he cried. "I, who hold in my soul the secret of the 
 passing of time and youth, drink now to those 
 among you and among all men who have won 
 and kept the one thing dearer than these." 
 
 He touched the green gem to his lips, and let 
 it fall upon the embroidered laces on his breast. 
 Then quietly and in another voice he began 
 to speak. 
 
 With the first words there came to St, George 
 the thrill of something that had possessed him — 
 when? In that ecstatic moment on The Aloha 
 when he had seen the light in the king's palace; 
 in the instant when the Isle of Yaque had first 
 lain subject before him, " a land which no one can 
 define or remember — only desire; " in the divine 
 time of his triumph in having scaled the 
 heights to the palace, that sky-thing, with 
 ramparts of air; above all, in the hour of 
 
OUT OF THE HALL OF KINGS 375 
 
 his joy in the King's Alcove, when Olivia had 
 looked in his eyes and touched his lips. Inex- 
 plicably as the way that eternity lies barely 
 unrevealed in some kin-thing of its own — a shell, 
 a duty, a vista — he suddenly felt it now in 
 what the prince was saying. He listened, and 
 for one poignant stab of time he knew that he 
 touched hands with the elemental and saw the 
 ancient kindliness of all those people naked in 
 their faces and knew himself for what he was. 
 
 He listened, and yet there was no making cap- 
 tive the words of the prince in understanding. 
 Prince Tabnit was speaking the English, and 
 every word was clearly audible and, moreover, was 
 probably daily upon St. George's lips. But if it 
 had been to ransom the rest of the world from 
 its night he could not have understood what the 
 prince was saying. Every word was a word that 
 belonged as much to St. George as to the prince ; 
 but in some unfathomable fashion the inner sense 
 of what he said for ever eluded, dissolving in the 
 air of which it was a part. And yet, past all 
 doubting, St. George knew that he was hearing the 
 essence of that strange knowledge which the Isle 
 of Yaque had won while all the, rest of mankind 
 struggled for it — he knew with the certainty with 
 which we recognize strange forces in a dozen of 
 the every-day things of life, in electricity, in 
 telepathy, in dreams. With the same certainty he 
 realized that what the prince was saying would, 
 
376 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 if he could understand, lift a certain veil. 
 Here, put in words at last, was manifestly the 
 secret, that catch of understanding without 
 which men are groping in the dark, perhaps that 
 mere pointing of relations which would make 
 clear, without blasphemy, time and the future, 
 rebirth and old existence, it might be; and cer- 
 tainly the accident of personality. Here, crystal- 
 lized, were the things that men almost know, the 
 dream that has just escaped every one, the whisper 
 in sleep that would have explained if one 
 could remember when one woke, the word that 
 has been thrillingly flashed to one in moments of 
 absorption and has fled before one might catch 
 the sound, the far hope of science, the glimpse 
 that comes to dying eyes and is voiced in 
 fragments by dying lips. Here without penetrat- 
 ing the great reserve or tracing any principle to 
 its beginning, was the truth about both. And St. 
 George was powerless to receive it. 
 
 He turned fearfully to Olivia. Ah — what if 
 she did not guess anything of the meaning of 
 what she was hearing? For one instant he knew 
 all the misery of one whose friend stands on 
 another star. But when he saw her uplifted face, 
 her eager eyes and quick breath and her look 
 divinely questioning his, he was certain that 
 though she might not read the figures of the 
 veil, yet she too knew how near, how near they 
 stood; and to be with her on this side was 
 
OUT OF THE HALL OF KINGS 377 
 
 dearer — nay, was nearer the Secret — than without 
 her to pass the veil that they touched. Then he 
 looked at Amory ; wouldn't old Amory know, he 
 wondered. Wouldn't his mere understanding of 
 news teach him what was happening? But old 
 Amory, the light flashing on his pince-nez, was 
 keeping one eye on the prince and wondering 
 if the chair that he had just placed for Antoinette 
 was not in the draught of the dome; and little 
 Antoinette was looking about her like a rosebud, 
 new to the butterflies of June; and King Otho 
 was listening, languid, heavy-lidded, sensitive to 
 little values, sophisticating the moment; and 
 Little Cawthome stood with eyes raised in simple, 
 tolerant wonder; and the others, Bennietod, Mrs. 
 Hastings and Mr. Augustus Frothingham, showed 
 faces like the pools in which pebbles might be 
 dropped, making no ripples — one must suppose 
 that there are such pools, since there are certainly 
 such faces. St. George saw how it was. Here, 
 spoken casually by the prince, just as the Banal 
 would speak of the visible and invisible worlds, 
 here was the Sesame of understanding toward 
 which the centuries had striven, the secret of the 
 link between two worlds; and here, of all man- 
 kind, were only they two to hear — they two and 
 that motionless company who knew what the 
 prince knew and who kept it sealed within their 
 eyes. 
 
 St. George looked at the multitude in swift 
 
378 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 understanding. They were like a Greek chorus, 
 signifying what is. They knew what the prince 
 was saying, they had the secret and yet — they 
 were no nearer, no nearer than he. With their 
 ancient kindliness naked in their faces, St. 
 George knew that through his love he was as 
 near to the Source as were they. And it was 
 suddenly^ as it had been that first night when 
 he had stridden buoyantly through the island ; for 
 he could not tell which was the secret of the 
 prince and of these people and which was the 
 blessedness of his love. 
 
 None the less he clung desperately to the last 
 words of Prince Tabnit in a vain effort to hold, to 
 make clear, to sophisticate one single phrase, as one 
 waking in the night says over, in a vain effort to fix 
 it, some phantom sentence cried to him in dreams 
 by a shadowy band destined to be dissolved when, 
 in bright day, he would reclaim it. He even 
 managed frantically to write down a jumble of 
 words of which he could make nothing, save here 
 and there a phrase like a touch of hands from 
 the silence: "... the infinite moment that is 
 pending " . . . " all is become a window where 
 had been a wall" . . . "the wintry vision" . . . 
 they were all words that beckon without replying. 
 And all the time it was curiously as if the Some- 
 thing Silent within St. George himself, that so 
 long had striven to speak, were crying out at last 
 in the prince's words — and he could not under- 
 
OUT OF THE HALL OF KINGS 379 
 
 stand. Yet in spite of it all, in spite of this 
 imminent satisfying of the strange, dreadful curi- 
 osity which possesses all mankind, St. George, 
 even now, was far less keen to comprehend than 
 he was to burst through the throng with Olivia 
 in his arms, gain the waiting Aloha and sail into 
 the New York harbour with the prize that he had 
 won. " I drink now to those among you and 
 among all men who have won and kept that which 
 is greater than these," the prince had said, and 
 St. George perfectly understood. He had but 
 to look at Olivia to be triumphantly willing that 
 the gods should keep their secrets about time and 
 the link between the two worlds so long as they 
 had given him love. What should he care about 
 time? He had this hour. 
 
 When the prince ceased speaking the hall was 
 hushed; but because of the tempest in the hearts 
 of them all the silence was as if a strong wind, 
 sweeping powerfully through a forest, were to 
 sway no boughs and lift no leaves, only to strive 
 noiselersly round one who walked there. 
 
 Prince Tabnit wrapped his white mantle about 
 him and sat upon his throne. Spell-stricken, 
 they watched him, that great multitude, and 
 might not turn away their eyes. Slowly, imper- 
 ceptibly, as Time touches the familiar, the 
 face of the prince took on its change — and one 
 could not have told wherein the change lay, but 
 subtly as the encroachment of the dark, or the 
 
380 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 alchemy of the leaves, or the betrayal of cer- 
 tain modes of death, the finger was upon him. 
 While they watched he became an effigy, the 
 hideous face of a fantasy of smoke against the 
 night sky, with a formless hand lifted from among 
 the delicate laces in farewell. There was no 
 death — the horror was that there was no death. 
 Only this curse of age drying and withering at the 
 bones. 
 
 A long, whining cry came from Cassyrus, who 
 covered his face with his mantle and fled. The 
 spell being broken, by common consent the 
 great hall was once more in motion — St. George 
 would never forget that tide toward all the great 
 portals and the shuddering backward glances at 
 the white heap upon the beetling throne. They 
 fled away into the reassuring sunlight, leaving 
 the echoless hall deserted, save for that breathing 
 one upon the throne. 
 
 There was one other. From somewhere beside 
 the dais the woman Elissa crept and knelt, clasp- 
 ing the knees of the man. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 OPEN SECRETS 
 
 ** Will you have tea? " asked Olivia. 
 
 St. George brought a deck cushion and tucked 
 it in the willow steamer chair and said adoringly 
 that he would have tea. Tea. In a world where 
 the essentials and the inessentials are so deli- 
 ciously confused, to think that tea, with some one 
 else, can be a kind of Heaven. 
 
 " Two lumps? " pursued Olivia. 
 
 " Three, please," St. George directed, for the 
 pure joy of watching her hands. There were no 
 tongs. 
 
 " Aren't the rest going to have some? " Olivia 
 absently shared her attention, tinkling delicately 
 about among the tea things. " Doesn't every one 
 want a cup of tea? " she inquired loud enough for 
 nobody to hear. St. George, shifting his shoulder 
 from the rail, looked vaguely over the deck of 
 The Aloha, sighed contentedly, and smiled back 
 at her. No one else, it appeared, would have 
 tea; and there was none to regret it. 
 
 St. George's cursory inspection had revealed 
 381 
 
382 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 the others variously absorbed, though they were 
 now all agreed in breathing easily since Barnay, 
 interlarding rational -speech with Irishisms of 
 thanksgiving, had announced five minutes before 
 that the fires were up and that in half an hour 
 The Aloha might weigh anchor. The only thing 
 now left to desire was to slip clear of the shadow 
 of the black reaches of Yaque, shouldering the 
 blue. 
 
 Meanwhile, Antoinette and Amory sat in the 
 comparative seclusion of the bow with their 
 backs to the forward deck, and it was definitely 
 manifest to every one how it would be with them, 
 but every one was simply glad and dismissed the 
 matter with that. Mr. Frothingham, in his 
 steamer chair, looked like a soft collapsible tube 
 of something; Bennietod, at ease upon the uncov- 
 ered boards of the deck, was circumspectly 
 having cheese sandwiches and wastefully shoot- 
 ing the ship's rockets into the red sunset, in 
 general celebration ; and Rollo, having taken occa- 
 sion respectfully to submit to whomsoever it 
 concerned that fact is ever stranger than fiction, 
 had gone below. Mr. Otho Holland and Little 
 Cawthome — ^but their smiles were like different 
 names for the same thing — were toasting each 
 other in something light and dry and having a 
 bouquet which Mr. Holland, who ought to know, 
 compared favourably with certain vintages of 
 I GOO B. C. In a hammock near them reclined 
 
OPEN SECRETS 383 
 
 Mrs. Medora Hastings, holding two kinds of 
 smelling salts which invariably revived her 
 simply by inducing the mental effort of deciding 
 which was the better. Her hair, which was 
 exceedingly pretty, now rippled becomingly 
 about her flushed face and was guiltless of 
 side-combs — she had lost them both down a chasm 
 in that headlong flight from the cliff's summit, 
 and they irrecoverably reposed in the bed of 
 some brook of the Miocene period. And Mrs. 
 Hastings, her hand in that of her brother, lay 
 in utter silence, smiling up at him in serene con- 
 tent. 
 
 For King Otho of Yaque was turning his back 
 upon his island domain for ever. In that hurried 
 flight across the Eurychorus among his distracted 
 subjects, his resolution had been taken. Jarvo 
 and Akko, the adieux to whom had been every 
 one's sole regret in leaving the island, had mirac- 
 ulously found their way to the king and his 
 party in their flight, and were despatched to 
 Mount Khalak for such of their belongings as 
 they could collect, and the island sovereign was 
 well content. 
 
 " Ah well now," he had just observed, languidly 
 surveying the tropical horizon through a cool 
 glass of winking amber bubbles, " one must learn 
 that to touch is far more delicate than to lift. 
 It is more wonderful to have been the king of 
 one moment than the ruler of many. It is better 
 
384 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 to have stood for an instant upon a rainbow 
 than to have taken a morning walk through a 
 field of clouds. The principle has long been 
 understood, but few have had — shall I say the 
 courage? — to practise it. Yet ' courage ' is a 
 term from-the-shoulder, and what I require is a 
 word of finger-tips, over-tones, ultra-rays — a 
 word for the few who understand that to leave 
 a thing is more exquisite than to outwear it. 
 It is by its very fineness circumscribed — a 
 feminine virtue. Women understand it and keep 
 it secret. I flatter myself that I have pos- 
 sessed the high moment, vanished against the 
 
 noon. Ah, my dear fellow " he added, 
 
 lifting his glass to St. George's smile. 
 
 But Little Cawthome — all reality in his 
 heliotrope outing and duck and grey curls — 
 raised a characteristic plaint. 
 
 " Oh, but I've done it," he mournfully reviewed. 
 " When '11 I ever be in another island, in front of 
 another vacated throne? Why didn't I move into 
 the palace, and set up a natty, up-to-date little 
 republic? I could have worn a crown as a matter 
 of taste — what's the use of a democracy if you 
 aren't free to wear a crown? And what kind of 
 American am I, anyway, with this undeveloped 
 taste for acquiring islands? If they ever find this 
 out at the polls my vote'll be challenged. What ? ' ' 
 
 " Aw whee! " said Bennietod, intent upon a 
 Roman candle, " wha' do you care, Mr. Caw- 
 
OPEN SECRETS 385 
 
 t'ome? You don't hev to go back fer to be a 
 child-slave to Chillingwort'. Me, I've gotta good 
 call to jump overboard now an' be de sonny of 
 a sea-horse, dead to rights! " 
 
 St. George looked at them all affectionately, 
 unconscious that already the experience of the 
 last three days was slipping back into the sheath- 
 ing past, like a blade used. But he was dawningly 
 aware, as he sat there at Olivia's feet in glorious 
 content, that he was looking at them all with 
 new eyes. It was as if he had found new names 
 for them all; and until long afterward one does 
 not know that these moments of bestowing new 
 names mark the near breathing of the god. 
 The silence of Mrs. Hastings and her quiet 
 devotion to her brother somehow gave St. 
 George a new respect for her. Over by the wheel- 
 house something made a strange noise of 
 crying, and St. George saw that Mr. Frothingham 
 sat holding a weird little animal, like a squirrel 
 but for its stumpy tail and great human eyes, 
 which he had unwittingly stepped on among 
 the rocks. The little thing was licking his hand, 
 and the old lawyer's face was softened and 
 glowing as he nursed it and coaxed it with 
 crumbs. As he looked, St. George warmed to 
 them all in new fellowship and, too, in swift self- 
 reproach; for in what had seemed to him but 
 " broad lines and comic masks " he suddenly saw 
 the authority and reality of homely hearts. The 
 
386 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 better and more intimate names for everything 
 which seemed now within his grasp were more 
 important than Yaque itself. He remembered, 
 with a thrill, how his mother had been wont to 
 tell him that a man must walk through some sort 
 of fairy-land, whether of imagination or of the 
 heart, before he can put much in or take much 
 from the market-place. And lo ! this fairy-land of 
 his finding had proved — must it not always 
 prove? — the essence of all Reality. 
 
 His eyes went to Olivia's face in a flash of imder- 
 standing and belief. 
 
 " Don't you see? " he said, quite as if they 
 two had been talking what he had thought. 
 
 She waited, smiling a little, thrilled by his 
 certainty of her sympathy. 
 
 " None of this happened really, " triumphantly 
 explained St. George, " I met you at the Boris, 
 did I not? Therefore, I think that since then 
 you have graciously let me see you for the proper 
 length of time, and at last we've fallen in love 
 just as every one else does. And true lovers 
 always do have trouble, do they not? So then, 
 Yaque has been the usual trouble and happi- 
 ness, and here we are" — engaged." 
 
 "I'm not engaged," Olivia protested serenely, 
 " but I see what you mean. No, none of it hap- 
 pened," she gravely agreed. " It couldn't, you 
 know. Anybody will tell you that." 
 
 In her eyes was the sparkle of understanding 
 
OPEN SECRETS 387 
 
 which made St. George love her more every time 
 that it appeared. He noted the white cloth 
 frock, and the coat of hunting pink thrown across 
 her chair, and he remembered that in the infinites- 
 imal time that he had waited for her outside 
 the Palace of the Litany, she must have exchanged 
 for these the coronation robe and jewels of Queen 
 Mitygen. St. George liked that swift practicality 
 in the race of faery, though he was completely 
 indifferent to Mrs. Hastings' and Antoinette's 
 claims to it; and he wondered if he were to love 
 Olivia more for everything that she did, how 
 he could possibly live long enough to tell her. 
 When one has been to Yaque the simplest gifts 
 and graces resolve themselves into this question. 
 The Aloha gently freed herself from the shallow 
 green pocket where she had lain through three 
 eventful days, and slipped out toward the waste 
 of water bound by the flaunting autumn of the 
 west. An island wind, fragrant of bark and secret 
 berries, blew in puffs from the steep. A gull 
 swooped to her nest in a cranny of the basalt. 
 From below a servant came on deck, his broad 
 American face smiling over a tray of glasses 
 and decanters and tinkling ice. It was all very 
 tranquil and public and almost commonplace — 
 just the high tropic seas at the moment of their 
 unrestrained sundown, and the odour of tea- 
 cakes about the pleasantly-littered deck. And 
 for the moment, held by a common thought, 
 
388 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 every one kept silent. Now that The Aloha was 
 really moving toward home, the affair seemed 
 suddenly such a gigantic impossibility that every 
 one resented every one else's knowing what a 
 trick had been played. It was as if the curtain 
 had just fallen and the lights of the auditorium 
 had flashed up after the third act, and they 
 had all caught one another breathless or in 
 tears, pretending that the tragedy had really 
 happened. 
 
 " Promise me something," begged St. George 
 softly, in sudden alarm, bom of this inevitable 
 aspect; " promise me that when we get to New 
 York you are not going to forget all about Yaque — 
 and me — and believe that none of us ever hap- 
 pened. " 
 
 Olivia looked toward the serene mystery of the 
 distance. 
 
 " New York," she said only, " think of seeing 
 you in New York — now." 
 
 " Was I of more account in Yaque? " demanded 
 St. George anxiously. 
 
 " Sometimes," said Olivia adorably, " I shall 
 tell you that you were. But that will be only 
 because I shall have an idea that in Yaque you 
 loved me more." 
 
 " Ah, very well then. And sometimes," said 
 St. George contentedly, " when we are at dinner 
 I shall look down the table at you sitting beside 
 some one who is expounding some baneful literary 
 
OPEN SECRETS 389 
 
 theory, and I shall think; What do I care? 
 He doesn't know that she is really the Princess of 
 Far- Away. But I do. " 
 
 " And he won't know anything about our motor 
 ride, alone, the night that I was kidnapped, 
 either — the literary-theory person," Olivia tran- 
 quilly took away his breath by observing. 
 
 St. George looked up at her quickly and, 
 secretly, Olivia thought that if he had been 
 attractive when he was courageous he was doubly 
 so with the present adorably abashed look in 
 his eyes. 
 
 " When — alone? " St. George asked uncon- 
 vincingly. 
 
 She laughed a little, looking down at him in a 
 reproof that was all approbation, and to be 
 reproved like that is the divinest praise. 
 
 " How did you know? " protested St. George 
 in fine indignation. " Besides," he explained, 
 " I haven't an idea what you mean." 
 
 " I guessed about that ride," she went on, 
 ** the night before last, when you were walking 
 up and down outside my window. I don't know 
 what made me — and I think it was very forward 
 of me. Do you want to know something? " she 
 demanded, looking away. 
 
 " More than anything," declared St. George. 
 " What? " 
 
 " I think—" Olivia said slowly, " that it 
 began — then — ^just when I first thought how won- 
 
890 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 derful that ride would have been. Except — 
 that it had begun a great while before," she 
 ended suddenly. 
 
 And at these enigmatic words St. George sent 
 a quick look over the forward deck. It was of 
 no use. Mr. Frothingham was well within range. 
 
 *' Heavens, good heavens, how happy I am," 
 said St. George instead. 
 
 "And then," Olivia went on presently, "some- 
 times when there are a lot of people about — 
 literary-theory persons and all — I shall look 
 across at you, differently, and that will mean 
 that you are to remember the exact minute when 
 you looked in the window up at the palace, on 
 the mountain, and I saw you. Won't it? " 
 
 " It will," said St. George fervently. " Don't 
 try to persuade me that there wasn't any such 
 mountain," he challenged her. " I suppose," 
 he added in wonder, " that lovers have been 
 having these secret signs time out of mind — 
 and we never knew." 
 
 Olivia drew a little breath of content. 
 
 " Bless everybody," she said. 
 
 So they made invasion of that pure, dim 
 world before them; and the serene mystery of 
 the distance came like a thought, drawn from a 
 state remote and immortal, to clasp the hand of 
 There in the hand of Here. 
 
 ** And then sometimes," St. George went on, 
 his exultation proving greater than his discretion, 
 
OPEN SECRETS 391 
 
 " we'll take the yacht and pretend we're 
 going back " 
 
 He stopped abruptly with a quick indrawn 
 breath and the hope that she had not noticed. 
 He was, by several seconds, too late. 
 
 " Whose yacht is it? " Olivia asked promptly. 
 ** I wondered." 
 
 St. George had dreaded the question. Some- 
 way, now that it was all over and the prize was 
 his, he was ashamed that he had not won it more 
 fairly and humiliated that he was not what she 
 believed him, a pillar of the Evening Sentinel. 
 But Amory had miraculously heard and ttumed 
 himself about. 
 
 " It's his," he said briefly, " I may as well 
 confess to you, Miss Holland," he enlarged some- 
 what, ** he's a great cheat. The Aloha is his, 
 and so am I, busy body and idle soul, for using 
 up his yacht and his time on a newspaper story. 
 You were the * story,' you know." 
 
 " But," said Olivia in bewilderment, " I don't 
 understand. Surely " 
 
 " Nothing whatever is sure, Miss Holland," 
 Amory sadly assured her, but his eyes were 
 smiling behind his pince-nez. " You would think 
 one might be sure of him. But it isn't so. Me, 
 you may depend upon me," he impressed it 
 lightly. "I'm what I say I am — a poor beggar 
 of a newspaper man, about to be held to account 
 by one Chilllngworth for this whole millenial 
 
392 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 occurrence, and sent off to a political convention 
 to steady me, unless I'm fired. But St. George, 
 he's a gay dilettante." 
 
 Then Amory resumed a better topic of his own; 
 and Olivia, when she understood, looked down 
 at her lover as miserably as one is able when 
 one is perfectly happy. 
 
 " Oh," she said, " and up there — in the palace 
 to-day — I did think for a minute that perhaps 
 you wanted me to marry the prince so that — 
 they could " 
 
 One could smile now at the enormity of that. 
 
 " So that I could put it in the paper? he said. 
 " But, you see, I never could put it in any paper, 
 even if I didn't love you. Who would believe 
 me? A thousand years from now — maybe less — 
 the Evening Sentinel, if it is still in existence, can 
 publish the story, perhaps. Until then I'm 
 afraid they'll have to confine themselves to the 
 doings of the precincts." 
 
 Olivia waived the whole matter for one of 
 vaster importance. 
 
 " Then why did you come to Yaque? " she 
 demanded. 
 
 Mr. Frothingham had left his place by the 
 wheel-house and wandered forward. The steamer 
 chair had a back that was both broad and high, 
 and one sitting in its shadow was hermetically 
 veiled from the rest of the deck. So St. George 
 bent forward, and told her. 
 
OPExN SECRETS 393 
 
 After that they sat in silence, and together 
 they looked back toward the island with its black 
 rocks smitten to momentary gold by a last 
 javelin of light. There it lay — ^the land locking 
 away as realities all the fairy-land of specula- 
 tion, the land of the miracles of natural law. 
 They had walked there, and had glimpsed the 
 shadowy threshold of the Morning. Suppose, 
 St. George thought, that instead of King Otho, 
 with his delicate sense of the merely visible, a 
 great man had chanced to be made sovereign of 
 Yaque? And instead of Mr. Frothingham, slave 
 to the contestable, and Little Cawthome in 
 bondage to humour, and Amory and himself 
 swept off their feet by a heavenly romance, 
 suppose a party of savants and economists 
 had arrived in Yaque, with a poet or two to 
 bring away the fire — what then? St. George 
 lost the doubt in the noon of his own certainty. 
 There could be no greater good, he chanted to 
 the god who had breathed upon him, than this 
 that he and Amory shared now with the wise and 
 simple world, the world of the resonant new 
 names. He even doubted that, save in degree, 
 there could be a purer talisman than the spirit 
 that inextinguishably shone in the face of the 
 childlike old lawyer as the strange little animal 
 nestled in his coat and licked his hand. And 
 these were open secrets. Open secrets of the 
 ultimate attainment. 
 
394 ROMANCE ISLAND 
 
 They watched the land dissolving in the dark- 
 ness like a pearl in wine of night. But at last, 
 when momentarily they had turned happy eyes 
 to each other's faces, they looked again and 
 found that the dusk, taking ancient citadels with 
 soundless tread, had received the island. And 
 where on the brow of the mountain had sprung 
 the white pillars of the king's palace glittered 
 only the early stars. 
 
 " Crown jewels," said Olivia softly, " for every- 
 body's head." 
 

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