spaper
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 tapestries 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 Canaanitish
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 supplement, 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 threshold
of the audience-chamber they involuntarily 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 remember 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
grotesqu