Romance Island

"Rollo," said St. George, "go and look out the window and see if Sodom is smoking."

"Yes, sir," said Rollo, and moved to the nearest casement and bent his look submissively below.

"Everything quiet, sir," he reported literally; "a very warm day, sir. But it's easy to sleep, sir, no matter how warm the days are if only the nights are cool. Begging your pardon, sir."

St. George nodded.

"You don't see Jezebel down there in the trees," he pressed him, "or Elissa setting off to found Carthage? Chaldea and Egypt all calm?" he anxiously put it.

Rollo stirred uneasily.

"There's a couple o' blue-tailed birds scrappin' in a palm tree, sir," he submitted hopefully.

"Ah," said St. George, "yes. There would be. Now, if you like," he gave his servant permission, "you may go to the festivals or the funeral games or wherever you choose to-day. Or perhaps," he remembered with solicitude, "you would prefer to be present at the wedding-of-the-land-water-with-the-sea-water, providing, as I suspect, Tyre is handy?"

"Thank you, sir," said Rollo doubtfully.

"Mind you put your money on the crack disc-thrower, though," warned St. George, "and you might put up a couple of darics for me."

"No," languidly begged Amory, "pray no. You are getting your periods mixed something horrid."

"A person's recreation is as good for him as his food, sir," proclaimed Rollo, sententious, anxious to agree.

"Food," said Amory languidly, "this isn't food--it's molten history, that's what it is. Think--this is what they had to eat at the cafés boulevardes of Gomorrah. And to think we've been at Tony's, before now. Do you remember," he asked raptly, "those brief and savoury banquets around one o'clock, at Tony's? From where Little Cawthorne once went away wearing two omelettes instead of his overshoes? Don't tell me that Tonycana and all this belong to the same system in space. Don't tell me--"

He stopped abruptly and his eyes sought those of St. George. It was all so incredible, and yet it was all so real and so essentially, distractingly natural.

"I feel as if we had stepped through something, to somewhere else. And yet, somehow, there is so little difference. Do you suppose when people die they don't notice any difference, either?"

"What I want to know," said Amory, filling his pipe, "is how it's going to look in print. Think of Crass--digging for head-lines."

St. George rose abruptly. Amory was delicious, especially his drawl; but there were times-"Print it," he exclaimed, "you might as well try to print the absolute."

Amory nodded.

"Oh, if you're going to be Neoplatonic," he said, "I'm off to hum an Orphic hymn. Isn't it about time for the prince? I want to get out with the camera, while the light is good."