hough he was
completely indifferent to Mrs. Hastings' and Antoinette's claims to
it; and he wondered if he were to love Olivia more for everything
that she did, how he could possibly live long enough to tell her.
When one has been to Yaque the simplest gifts and graces resolve
themselves into this question.

_The Aloha_ gently freed herself from the shallow green pocket where
she had lain through three eventful days, and slipped out toward the
waste of water bound by the flaunting autumn of the west. An island
wind, fragrant of bark and secret berries, blew in puffs from the
steep. A gull swooped to her nest in a cranny of the basalt. From
below a servant came on deck, his broad American face smiling over a
tray of glasses and decanters and tinkling ice. It was all very
tranquil and public and almost commonplace--just the high tropic
seas at the moment of their unrestrained sundown, and the odour of
tea-cakes about the pleasantly-littered deck. And for the moment,
held by a common thought, every one kept silent. Now that _The
Aloha_ was really moving toward home, the affair seemed suddenly
such a gigantic impossibility that every one resented every one
else's knowing what a trick had been played. It was as if the
curtain had just fallen and the lights of the auditorium had flashed
up after the third act, and they had all caught one another
breathless or in tears, pretending that the tragedy had really
happened.

"Promise me something," begged St. George softly, in sudden alarm,
born of this inevitable aspect; "promise me that when we get to New
York you are not going to forget all about Yaque--and me--and
believe that none of us ever happened."

Olivia looked toward the serene mystery of the distance.

"New York," she said only, "think of seeing you in New York--now."

"Was I of more account in Yaque?" demanded St. George anxiously.

"Sometimes," said Olivia adorably, "I shall tell you that you were.
But that will be only because I shall have an idea that in Yaque you
loved me more."

"Ah, very well then. And sometimes," said St. George contentedly,
"when we are at dinner I shall look down the table at you sitting
beside some one who is expounding some baneful literary theory, and
I shall think: What do I care? He doesn't know that she is really
the Princess of Far-Away. But I do."

"And he won't know anything about our motor ride, alone, the night
that I was kidnapped, either--the literary-theory person," Ol