! How--oh, how
did he get here? Was there, then, a wishing-stone in that window
embrasure where she had been sitting, and had the knight come
because she had willed it? How much did he know? How much ought she
to tell? Nothing whatever, prudently decided the lawyer's daughter.

"I've had, I'm almost certain, the pleasure of seeing you before,"
imparted Amory pleasantly, adjusting his pince-nez and looking down
at her. She was so enchantingly tiny and he was such a giant.

"In New York?" demanded Antoinette.

"No," said Amory, "no. Do desert island princesses get to New York
occasionally, then? No, I think I saw you in Yaque. Yesterday. In a
silver automobile. Did I?"

Antoinette dimpled.

"We frightened them all to death," she recalled. "Did we frighten
you?"

"So much," admitted Amory, "that I took refuge up here."

"Where were you?" Antoinette asked curiously. Really, he was very
amusing--this big courtly creature. How agreeable of Olivia to stay
away.

"Ah, tell me how you got here," she impetuously begged. "Desert
island people don't see people from New York every day."

"Well then, O Pitiful Princess," said the Shade from Sidon, "it was
like this--"

It was easy enough to fleet the time carelessly, and assuredly that
high moon-lit world was meant to be no less merry than the golden.
Whoever has chanced to meet a delightful companion on some silver
veranda up in the welkin knows this perfectly well; and whoever has
not is a dull creature. But there are delightful folk who are wont
to suspect the dullest of harbouring some sweet secret, some sense
of "those sights which alone (says the nameless Greek) make life
worth enduring," and this was akin to such a sight.

After a time, at Antoinette's conscientious suggestion, they
strolled the way that St. George had taken. And to Olivia and the
missing adventurer over by the parapet came Amory's soft query:

"St George, may I express a friendly concern?"

"Ah, come here, Toby," commanded St. George happily, "her Highness
and I have been discussing matters of state."

"Antoinette!" cried Olivia in amazement. From time immemorial
royalty has perpetually been surprised by the behaviour of its
ladies-in-waiting.

"I've been remembering a verse," said Amory when he had been
presented to Olivia, "may I say it? It goes:

"'I'll speak a story to you,
Now listen while I try:
I met a Queen, and she kept house
A