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 himself 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 lanthorn. For the vehicles were a kind of electric
motor, but constructed 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 Columbus
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, creeping on from point to point.

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 provided
divinely-beautiful forests for the express purpose of their being
burned up; and when he told him that artificial light and heat were