Romance Island

It was unmistakably Olivia's voice that replied to him.

"Here!" she cried clearly, and St. George followed the sound and dashed through the long open window of the room next that in which he had first seen her that night.

"Here," she repeated, "but be careful. Some one is in this room."

"Don't be afraid," he cried cheerily into the dark. "It's all right," which is exactly what he would have said if there had been about dragons and real shades from Sidon.

The room was now in darkness, and in the dim light cast by the high moon he could at first discern nothing. He heard a silken rustling and the tap of slippered feet. The next instant the apartment was quick with light, and in the curtained entrance to an inner room, Olivia, in a brown dressing-gown, her hair vaguely bright about her flushed face, stood confronting him.

Between them, his thin hand thrown up, palm outward, to protect his eyes from the sudden light, was the old man whom St. George had last seen by the shrine on the terrace.

St. George was prepared for a mere procession of palace ghosts, but at this strange visitor he stared for an uncomprehending moment.

"What are you doing here?" he said wonderingly to him; "what in the world are you doing here?"

The old man looked uncertainly about him, one hand spread against the pillar behind him, the other fumbling at his throat.

"I think," he answered almost indistinguishably, "I think that I meant to sit here--to sit in the room beyond, where the mock stars shine."

Olivia uttered an exclamation.

"How could he possibly know that?" she said.

"But what does he mean?" asked St. George.

She crossed swiftly to a portiere hanging by slender rings from the full height of the lofty room, and at her bidding St. George followed her. She pushed aside the curtain, revealing a huge cave of the dark, a room whose walls were sunk in shadow. But overhead the ceiling was constellated in stars, so that it seemed to St. George as if he were looking into a nearer heaven, homing the far lights that he knew. The Pleiades, Orion, and the Southern Cross, blazing down with inconceivable brilliance, were caught and held captive in the cup of this nearer sky.

"It is like this at night," Olivia said, "but we see nothing in the daytime, save the vague outlines of here and there a star. But how could he have known? There is no other door save this."

The old man had followed them and stood, his eyes fixed on the shining points.