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
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," 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 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