"And one of the most agreeable hours I"ve had in Yaque," he finished, "was last night, when you were chairman of the meeting.
That was magnificent."
"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 ecstatically.
"Ah, before," she explained, "and then afterward, 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sed 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.
"Afterward--when I was back in the palace--I thought I must have dreamed it," she answered, "and no one seemed to know, and _I_ 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 a.s.sent.
"Who knows," she said, "what may be true of us--_nous 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. Evidently the magician, whoever he was, did not 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," a.s.sented 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 exquisite 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 pa.s.sage 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 to descend; and of what she herself had done since her arrival. 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 information about the king, her father; she had a.s.signed 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. n.o.body could ever have found what the shares stood for, but that happens every day. Half the corporations must be capitalized chiefly in the Fourth Dimension. That is all," she added wearily, "save that day after to-morrow I am to be married."
"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 heavenly, heavenly place this would be, would it not?"
"It would, it would indeed," a.s.sented 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 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 m.u.f.fins 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 pa.s.sed 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.