perial airship, with a man secretly in
control. By night they can escape to their yacht. This I will
do--upon one condition."

"Oh--what is that?" she asked, and for all the reticence of her
eagerness, her voice was a betrayal.

Prince Tabnit turned to the window. Below, in the palace grounds,
and without, in the Eurychorus, a thousand people awaited the
opening of the palace doors. They filled the majestic avenue, poured
up the shadowed alleys that taught the necessity of mystery, were
grouped beneath the honey-sweet trees; and above their heads, from
every dome and column in the fair city, flowed and streamed the
joyous, wizard, nameless colours of the pennons blown heavenward
against the blue. They were come, this strange, wise, elusive
people, to her marriage.

The prince was smiling as he met her eyes; for the world was always
the exquisite intaglio, and to-day was its design.

"They know," he said simply, "what was to have been at noon to-day.
Do you not understand my condition?"

CHAPTER XIX

IN THE HALL OF KINGS

Somewhat before noon the great doors of the Palace of the Litany and
of the Hall of Kings were thrown open, and the people streamed in
from the palace grounds and the Eurychorus. Abroad among
them--elusive as that by which we know that a given moment belongs
to dawn, not dusk--was the sense of questioning, of unrest, of
expectancy that belongs to the dawn itself. Especially the youths
and maidens--who, besides wisdom, knew something of spells--waited
with a certain wistfulness for what might be, for Change is a kind
of god even to the immortals. But there were also those who weighed
the departures incident to the coming of the strange people from
over-seas; and there were not lacking conservatives of the old
regime to shake wise heads and declare that a barbarian is a
barbarian, the world over.

All that rainbow multitude, clad for festival, rose with the first
light music that stole, winged and silken, from hidden cedar
alcoves, and some minutes past the sounding of the hour of noon the
chamfered doors set high in the south wall of the Hall of Kings were
swung open, and at the head of the stair appeared Olivia.

She was alone, for the custom of Yaque required that the island
princesses should on the day of their recognition first appear alone
before their people in token of their mutual faith. From the
wardrobes at the castle Olivia had chosen the coronation gown of
Queen Mitygen