r make actual
age--_age_, do you understand--just as we of Yaque bring both
flowers and fruit to swift maturity!"

Olivia uttered a little cry, not at the grotesque horror of what the
woman had said but at the miracle of its unconscious support of the
story and theory of St. George. And St. George heard; and suddenly,
because another had voiced his own fantastic message, its
incredibility and unreality became appalling, and yet he felt
infinitely reconciled to both because he interpreted aright that
little muffled exclamation from Olivia. What did it matter--oh, what
did it matter whether or not the reality were grotesque? What seems
to be happening is always the reality, if only one understands it
sufficiently. And at all events there had been that hour in the
King's Alcove. At last, as he weighed that hour against the fantasy
of all the rest, St. George understood and lived the divine madness
of all great moments, the madness that realizes one star and is
content that all the heavens shall march unintelligibly past so long
as that single shining is not dimmed.

But King Otho was riding no such griffin with sun-gold wings. King
Otho was genuinely and personally interested in the woman's words.
He turned to Prince Tabnit with animation.

"Really, Prince," he said, "is it so? Pray do not deny it unless
there is no other way, for I am before all things interested. It is
far more important to me that you tell me as much as you can tell,
than that you deny or even disprove it."

Prince Tabnit smiled in the eagerly interested face of his
sovereign, and rose and came to the edge of the dais, his garments
embroidered by a thousand needles touching and floating about him;
and it was as if he reached those before him by a kind of spiritual
magnetism, not without sublimity.

"My people," he said--and his voice had all the tenderness that they
knew so well--"this is some conspiracy of those to whom we have
shown the utmost hospitality. I would have shielded your king, for
he was also my sovereign and I owed him allegiance. But now that is
no longer possible, and the time is come. Know then, oh my people of
Yaque, that which my loyalty has led me wrongfully to conceal: that
in the strange disappearance and return of your sovereign, King
Otho, he who will may trace the loss of that which the island has
mourned without ceasing. I accuse your king--he is no longer
mine--of being now in possession of the Hereditary Treasure of