Romance Island

St. George hardly knew what effect his words had. He saw only Olivia, her hands locked, her lips parted, looking in his face in anguish; and he saw Prince Tabnit smile. Prince Tabnit sat upon the king's left hand, and he leaned and whispered a smiling word in the ear of his sovereign and turned a smiling face to Olivia upon her father's right.

"I know something of your American newspapers, your Majesty," the prince said aloud, "and these men are doing their part excellently, excellently."

"What do you mean, your Highness?" demanded St. George curtly.

"But is it not simple?" asked the prince, still smiling. "You have contrived a sensation for the great American newspaper. No one can doubt."

King Otho leaned back in the beetling throne.

"Ah, yes," he said, "it is true. Something has been contrived. But--is the sensation of his contriving, Prince?"

Olivia stood silent. It was not possible, it was not possible, she said over mechanically. For St. George to have come with this story of a potion--a drug that had restored youth to her father, had transformed him from that mad old Malakh-"Father!" she cried appealingly, "don't you remember--don't you know?"

King Otho, watching the prince, shook his head, smiling.

"At dawn," he said, "there are few of us to be found remaining still at table with Socrates. I seem not to have been of that number."

"Olivia!" cried St. George suddenly.

She met his eyes for a moment, the eyes that had read her own, that had given message for message, that had seen with her the glory of a mystic morning willingly relinquished for a diviner dawn. Was she not princess here in Yaque? She laid her hand upon her father's hand; the crown that they had given her glittered as she turned toward the multitude.

"My people," she said ringingly, "I believe that that man speaks the truth. Shall the prince not answer to this charge before the High Council now--here--before you all?"

At this King Otho did something nearly perceptible with his eyebrows. "Perfect. Perfect. Quite perfect," he said below his breath. The next instant the eyelids of the sovereign drooped considerably less than one would have supposed possible. For from every part of the great chamber, as if a storm long-pent had forced the walls of the wind, there came in a thousand murmurs--soft, tremulous, definitive--the answering voice to Olivia's question: "Yes. Yes. Yes..."