St. George watched. And as the car drew nearer the thought which, at first sight of its speed, had vaguely flashed into being, took definite shape, and his blood leaped to its music. Whose hand would be upon that lever, whose daring would be directing its flight, whose but one in all Yaque--and that Olivia's?
It was Olivia. That was plain even in the mere instant that it took the great, beautiful motor, at thirty miles an hour, to flash past them. St. George saw her--coat of hunting pink and fluttering veil and shining eyes; he was dimly conscious of another little figure beside her, and of the unmistakable and agonized Mrs. Hastings in the tonneau; but it was only Olivia's glance that he caught as it swept the prince. There was the faintest possible smile, and she was gone; and St. George, his heart pounding, sat staring stupidly after that shining cloud of dust, frantically wondering whether she could just possibly have seen him. For this was no trick of the imagination, his galloping heart told him that. And whether or not Yaque was a place, the world, the world was within his grasp, instinct with possibilities heavenly sweet. His eyes met Amory's in the minute when Cassyrus, prime minister of Yaque, had it borne in upon him that this was no runaway machine, but the ordinary and preferred pace of the daughter of their king; and while Cassyrus, at the enormity of the conception, breathed out expostulations in several languages--some of them known to us only by means of inscriptions on tombs--Amory spoke to St. George: "Who was the other girl?" he asked comprehensively.
"What other girl?" St. George blankly murmured.
And at this, Amory turned away with a look that could be made to mean whatever Amory meant.
On went the imperial train faring back to Med over the road lately stirred to shining dust by the wheels of Olivia's auto. Olivia's auto. St. George was secretly saying over the words with a kind of ecstatic non-comprehension, when the prince spoke: "That," he said, "may explain why an American has been able to govern us. Chance crowned him, but he made himself king."
Prince Tabnit hesitated and his eyes wandered--and those of St. George followed--to a far winding dot in that opal valley, a mere speck of silver with a prick of pink, fleeing in a cloud of sunny dust.
"I do not know if you will know what I mean," said the prince, "but hers is the spirit, and the spirit of her father, the king, which Yaque had never known. It is the spirit which we of Phoenicia seem to have lost since the wealth of the world accumulated at her ports and she gave her trust to the hands of mariners and mercenaries, and later bowed to the conqueror. It is the spirit that not all the continental races, I fancy, have for endowment, but yours possesses in rich measure. For this we would exchange half that we have achieved."