mbards.

"Good night," old Malakh told him courteously, "good night. But yet
all nights are good--save the night of the heart."

St. George went back to the terrace. For hours he paced the paths of
that little upper garden or lay upon the wall among the pungent
vines. But now he forgot the iridescent dark and the companion-sea
and the high moon and the king's palace, for it was not these that
made the necromancy of the night. It was permitted him to watch
before the threshold while Olivia slept, as lovers had watched in
the youth of the world. Whatever the morrow held, to-night had been
added to yesternight. Not until the dawn of that morrow whitened the
sky and drew from the vapourous plain the first far towers of Med,
the King's City, did St. George say good night to her glimmering
windows.

CHAPTER XVI

GLAMOURIE

There is a certain poster, all stars and poppies and deep grass; and
over these hangs a new moon which must surely have been cut by fairy
scissors, for it looks as much like a cake or a cowslip as it looks
like a moon. But withal it sheds a light so eery and strangely
silver that the poster seems, in spite of the poppies, to have been
painted in Spring-wind.

"Never," said some chance visitors vehemently, "have I seen such a
moon as that!"

"But ah, sir, and ah, madame," was the answer--it is not recorded
whether the poster spoke or whether some one spoke for it--"wouldn't
you like to?"

Now, therefore, concerning the sweet of those hours in the king's
palace the Vehement may be tempted to exclaim that in life things
never happen like that. Ah--do they not so? You have only to go back
to the days when young love and young life were yours to recall
distinctly that the most impossible things were every-day
occurrences. What about the time that you went down one street
instead of up another and _that_ changed the entire course of your
days and brought you two together? What about the song, the June,
the letter that touched the world to gold before your eyes and
caught you up in a place of clouds? Remembering that magic, it is
quite impossible to assert that any charming thing whatever would
not have happened. Is there not some wonderland in every life? And
is not the ancient citadel of Love-upon-the-Heights that common
wonderland? One must believe in all the happiness that one can.

But if the Most Vehement--who are as thick as butterflies--still
remain unconvinced and persist that they n