s--as if black were no longer
absence cf colour but, the veil of negative definitions having been
pierced, were found to be a mystic union of colour and more
inclusive than white. The very dark seemed delicately vocal and to
"fill the waste with sound" no less than the wash of the waves. St.
George awoke deliciously confused by a returning sense of the sweet
and the joy of the night.

"'This was the loneliest beach between two seas,'" there flitted
through his mind, "'and strange things had been done there in the
ancient ages.'" He turned among the vines, half listening. "And in
there is the king's daughter," he told himself, "and this is
certainly 'the strangest thing that ever befell between two seas.'
And I have a great mind to look up the old woman of that tale who
must certainly be hereabout, dancing 'widdershins.'"

Then, like a bright blade unsheathed in a quiet chamber, a cry of
great and unmistakable fear rang out from the palace--a woman's
cry, uttered but once, and giving place to a silence that was even
more terrifying. In an instant St. George was on his feet, running
with all his might.

"Coming!" he called, "where are you--where are you?" And his heart
pounded against his side with the certainty that the voice had been
Olivia's.

It was unmistakably Olivia's voice that replied to him.

"Here!" she cried clearly, and St. George followed the sound and
dashed through the long open window of the room next that in which
he had first seen her that night.

"Here," she repeated, "but be careful. Some one is in this room."

"Don't be afraid," he cried cheerily into the dark. "It's all
right," which is exactly what he would have said if there had been
about dragons and real shades from Sidon.

The room was now in darkness, and in the dim light cast by the high
moon he could at first discern nothing. He heard a silken rustling
and the tap of slippered feet. The next instant the apartment was
quick with light, and in the curtained entrance to an inner room,
Olivia, in a brown dressing-gown, her hair vaguely bright about her
flushed face, stood confronting him.

Between them, his thin hand thrown up, palm outward, to protect his
eyes from the sudden light, was the old man whom St. George had last
seen by the shrine on the terrace.

St. George was prepared for a mere procession of palace ghosts, but
at this strange visitor he stared for an uncomprehending moment.

"What are you doing here?" he said wonde