of
bond, nor enter into the marriage contract with an alien; from which
law only the royal house is exempt. Thus were the two needs of our
land to be served by the means to which we had recourse. For there
being no way to settle the difficulty, we vowed to leave the matter
to Chance, that great patient arbiter of destinies of which your
civilization takes no account, save to reduce it to slavery.
Accordingly each inhabitant of the island took a solemn oath to
await, with an open mind free from choice or prejudice, the
settlement of the event, certain that the gods would permit the
possible. Five days after this decision our watchers upon the hills
sighted a South African transport bound for the Azores to coal. A
hundred miles from our coast she was wrecked, and it was thought
that all on board had been lost. A submarine was ordered to the
spot--"

"Do you mean," interrupted St. George, "that you were able to see
the wreck at that distance?"

"Certainly," said the prince. "Pray forgive me," he added winningly,
"if I seem to boast. It is difficult for me to believe that your
appliances are so immature. We were using steamship navigation and
limiting our vision at the time of Pericles, but the futility of
these was among our first discoveries."

Involuntarily St. George turned to Miss Holland. What would she
think, he found himself wondering. Her eyes were luminous and her
breath was coming quickly; he was relieved to find that she had not
the infectious vulgarity to doubt the possibility of what seemed
impossible. This was one of the qualities of Mr. Augustus
Frothingham, who had assumed an air of polite interest and an
accurately cynical smile, and the manner of generously lending his
professional attention to any of the vagaries of the client. Mrs.
Hastings stirred uneasily.

"I'm sure," she said fretfully, "that I must be very stupid, but I
simply can _not_ follow you. Why, you talk about things that don't
exist! My husband, who was a very practical and advanced man, would
have shown you at once that what you say is impossible."

Here was the attitude of the Commonplace the world over, thought St.
George: to believe in wireless telegraphy simply because it has
been found out, and to disbelieve in the Fourth Dimension because it
has not been.

"I can not explain these things," admitted the prince gravely, "and
I dare say that you could prove that they do not exist, just as a
man from another planet could show