"this reminds me very much
of a case that I had on the June calendar--"

In half an hour St. George and Amory saw that all serious
consideration of their situation must be accomplished alone with
Olivia; for in that time Mr. Frothingham had been reminded of two
more cases and Mrs. Hastings had twice been reduced to tears by the
picture of the possible fate of her brother. Moreover, there
presently appeared supper--a tray of the most savoury delicacies, to
produce which Olivia had slipped away and, St. George had no doubt,
said over some spell in the kitchens. Supper in the white marble
room of the king's palace was almost as wonderful as muffins and tea
at the Boris.

There were Olivia in her gown of roses on one side of the table and
Antoinette on the other and between them the hungry and happy
adventurers. Across the room under a tall silver vase that might
have been the one proposed by Achilles at the funeral games for
Patroclus ("that was the work of the 'skilful Sidonians'" St. George
recalled with a thrill), Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Frothingham were
conscientiously finishing their chess, since the lawyer believed in
completing whatever he undertook, if for nothing more than a warning
never to undertake it again. Manifestly the little ivory kings and
queens and castles were in league with all the other magic of the
night, for the game prolonged itself unconscionably, and the supper
party found it far from difficult to do the same. St. George looked
at Olivia in her gown of roses, and his eyes swept the high white
walls of the room with its frescoes and inscriptions, its broken
statues and defaced chests of stone and ancient armour, and so back
to Olivia in her gown of roses, with her little ringless hands
touching and lifting among the alien dishes as she ministered to
him. What a dear little gown of roses and what beautiful hands, St.
George thought; and as for the broken statues and the inscriptions
and the contents of the stone chests, nobody had paid any attention
to them for so long that they could hardly have missed his regard.
Nor Amory's. For Amory was in the midst of a reminiscent reference
to the Chiswicks, in the Adirondacks, and to Antionette Frothingham
in a launch.

At last they all were aware that the chess-board was being closed
and Mrs. Hastings had risen.

"I suppose," she was saying, "that they have an idea here, the poor
deluded creatures, that it is very late. But I tell Olivia that we
are