so much farther east it _can't_ be very late in New York at this
minute, and I intend to go to bed by my watch as I always do, and
that is New York time. If I were in New York I wouldn't be sleepy
now, and I'm no different here, am I? I don't think people are half
independent enough."
Mrs. Hastings stepped round a stone god, almost faceless, that stood
in a little circular depression in the floor.
"Olivia, where," she inquired, patting the bobbing, ticking jet on
her gown, "where do you think that frightful, mad, old man is?"
"I heard him cross the corridor a little while ago," Olivia
answered. "I think he went to his room."
"I must say, Olivia," said Mrs. Hastings with a damp sigh, "that you
are very selfish where I am concerned--in _this_ matter."
"Ah," said Olivia, "please, Aunt Dora. He is far too feeble to harm
any one. And he's away there on the second floor."
"I'm sure he's a murderer," protested Mrs. Hastings. "He has the
murderer's eye. Mr. Hastings would have said he has. We all sleep on
the ground floor here," she continued plaintively, "because we are
so high up anyway that I think the air must be just as pure as it
would be up stairs. I always leave my window up the width of my
handkerchief-box."
As they went out to the great corridor Olivia spoke softly to St.
George.
"Look up," she said.
He looked, and saw that the vast circular chamber was of
incalculable height, extending up to the very dome of the palace,
and shaping itself to the lines of the topmost of the three huge
cones. It was a great well of light, playing over strange frescoes
of gods and daemons, of constellations and of beasts, and exquisite
with all the secret colours of some other way of vision. As high as
the eye could see, the precious metals upon the skeleton of the open
roof shone in the bright light that was set there--the light on the
summit of the king's palace.
St. George turned from the glory of it and looked into her eyes.
"'A new Heaven and a new earth,'" he said; but he did not mean the
dome of light nor yet the splendour of the palace.
* * * * *
Manifestly, there is no use in being asleep when one can dream
rather better awake. St. George wandered aimlessly between his room
and Amory's and took the time to reflect that when a man looks the
way Amory did he might as well have Cupids painted on his coat.
"St. George," Amory said soberly, "is this the way you've been
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