Adventure stories; Islands -- Fiction; Journalists -- Fiction; Love stories; Science fiction; South Pacific Ocean -- Fiction
"This--me--most of all, you!" he answered.
"But you must believe it," she cried anxiously, "or maybe it will
stop being."
"I will, I will, I am now!" promised St. George in alarm.
Whereat they both laughed again in sheer light-heartedness. Then,
resting his broad shoulders against a prism of the parapet, St.
George looked down at her in infinite content.
"You found the island," she said; "what is still more wonderful you
have come here--but _here_--to the top of the mountain. Oh, did you
bring news of my father?"
St. George would have given everything save the sweet of the moment
to tell her that he did.
"But now," he added cheerfully, and his smile disarmed this of its
over-confidence, "I've only been here two days or so. And, though it
may look easy, I've had my hands full climbing up this. I ought to
be allowed another day or two to locate your father."
"Please tell me how you got here," Olivia demanded then.
St. George told her briefly, omitting the yacht's ownership,
explaining merely that the paper had sent him and that Jarvo and
Akko had pointed the way and, save for that journey down nebulous
ways in the wake of her veil the night before, sketching the
incidents which had followed his arrival upon the island.
"And one of the most agreeable hours I've had in Yaque," he
finished, "was last night, when you were chairman of the meeting.
That was magnificent."
"You _were_ there!" cried Olivia, "I thought--"
"That you saw me?" St. George pressed eagerly.
"I think that I thought so," she admitted.
"But you never looked at me," said St. George dolefully, "and I had
on a forty-two gored dress, or something."
"Ah," Olivia confessed, "but I had thought so before when I knew it
couldn't be you."
St. George's heart gave a great bound.
"When before?" he wanted to know ecstatically.
"Ah, before," she explained, "and then afterward, too."
"When afterward?" he urged.
(Smile if you like, but this is the way the happy talk goes in Yaque
as you remember very well, if you are honest.)
"Yesterday, when I was motoring, I thought--"
"I was. You did," St. George assured her. "I was in the prince's
motor. The procession was temporarily tied up, you remember. Did you
really think it was I?"
But this the lady passed serenely over.
"Last night," she said, "when that terrible thing happened, who was
it in the other motor? Who was it, there in the road when I--was it
you? Was it?" she demanded.
"Did you think it was I?" asked St. George simply.
"Afterward--when I was back in the palace--I thought I must have
dreamed it," she answered, "and no one seemed to know, and _I_
didn't know. But I did fancy--you see, they think father has taken
the treasure," she said, "and they thought if they could hide me
somewhere and let it be known, that he would make some sign."
"It was monstrous," said St. George; "you are really not safe here
for one moment. Tell me," he asked eagerly, "the car you were
in--what became of that?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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