will forget the Taj Mahal and the Bon Marche. 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 window, and the window
looked down upon the palace garden, steeped in the gold of the sunny
morning, and formal with aisles of mighty, flowering trees. Within,
the apartment was lofty, its walls fashioned 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 direction from the crudity of the seven-winged spectrum. 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, bearing 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 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