ivia.

"Choose," he said significantly, but so softly that none might hear,
"oh, my beloved, choose!"

The faces of the great assembly blurred and wavered before Olivia,
and the low hum of the talk in the room was relative, like the
voices of passers-by. She looked up at the prince and away from him
in mute appeal to something that ought to help her and would not.
For Olivia was of those who, never having seen the face of Destiny
very near, are accustomed to look upon nothing as wholly
irrevocable; and--for one of her graces--she had the feminine
expectation that, if only events can be sufficiently postponed,
something will intervene; which is perhaps a heritage of the
gentlest women descended from Homeric days. If the island was so
historic, little Olivia may have said, where was the interfering
goddess? She looked unseeingly toward St. George and toward her
father, and the sense of the bitter actuality of the choice suddenly
wounded her, as the Actual for ever wounds the woman and the dream.

Then suddenly, above the stir of expectation of the people, and the
associate bustling of the High Council there came a vague confusion
and trampling from outside, and the far outer doors of the hall were
thrown open with a jar and a breath, vibrant as a murmur. There was
a cry, the determined resistance of some of the Golden Guard, and
shouts of expostulation and warning as they were flung aside by a
powerful arm. In the disorder that followed, a miraculously-familiar
figure--that familiarity and strangeness are both miracles ought to
explain certain mysteries--was beside St. George and a thankful
voice said in his ear:

"Mr. St. George, sir, for the mercy of Heaven, sir--come back to the
yacht. No person can tell what may happen ten minutes ahead, sir!"

The oracle of this universal truth was Rollo, palpitating, his
immaculate coat stained with earth, earth-stains on his cheeks, and
his breast labouring in an excitement which only anxiety for his
master could effect. But St. George hardly saw him. His eyes were
fixed on some one who stood towering before the dais, like the old
prints of the avenging goddesses. Clad in the hideous stripes which
boards of directors consider _de rigueur_ for the soul that is to be
won back to the normal, stood the woman Elissa, who, by all counts
of Prince Tabnit, should have been singing a hymn with Mrs. Manners
and Miss Bella Bliss Utter in the Bitley Reformatory, in Westchester
County, N