All that was in his imagination might have existed, he thought. All the splendour should have come in praise of her. Nothing would have stopped him. In his heart her face would have flowered, that beautiful, pale face, the image of the woman he loved; he would have made his city glorious. Marble bridges should have spanned the channels. His empire would have spread. It would have spread over the sea there, over the keys, over the low coast fringed with mangroves, over the hills, dim in the south, over the crags where the clouds streamed, beyond the great bay, far into the south, past Garachina, past Tumbez, beyond Ylo to the Evangelists. He would have been a king. His ships would have scented all the seas of the world, bringing balms and spice home. Now all that was over, he saw what might have been. It would not now be. He had no wish now to see his city rise. He found his imagination dulled. The woman who had been his imagination, through whom, alone, he had lived imaginatively, walked, a tired shadow, with heavy eyes, in the ship beyond the reef. If he passed her she shuddered, averting her eyes. If he spoke to her--twice he had tried to speak to her--she drew in her breath, her eyes shut; she drew away from him as from a snake. He had no heart left to think of cities. All that he wished now was to do what he could for the merchants who had risked their money. The city would have to wait till the other lover came. The city would rise up glorious from the beauty of some other woman. All his love, and high resolve, and noble effort had come to this, that Olivia thought him something lower than Stukeley, something baser than the beasts.