Adventure stories; Islands -- Fiction; Journalists -- Fiction; Love stories; Science fiction; South Pacific Ocean -- Fiction
It was Olivia. That was plain even in the mere instant that it took
the great, beautiful motor, at thirty miles an hour, to flash past
them. St. George saw her--coat of hunting pink and fluttering veil
and shining eyes; he was dimly conscious of another little figure
beside her, and of the unmistakable and agonized Mrs. Hastings in
the tonneau; but it was only Olivia's glance that he caught as it
swept the prince. There was the faintest possible smile, and she was
gone; and St. George, his heart pounding, sat staring stupidly after
that shining cloud of dust, frantically wondering whether she could
just possibly have seen him. For this was no trick of the
imagination, his galloping heart told him that. And whether or not
Yaque was a place, the world, the world was within his grasp,
instinct with possibilities heavenly sweet. His eyes met Amory's in
the minute when Cassyrus, prime minister of Yaque, had it borne in
upon him that this was no runaway machine, but the ordinary and
preferred pace of the daughter of their king; and while Cassyrus, at
the enormity of the conception, breathed out expostulations in
several languages--some of them known to us only by means of
inscriptions on tombs--Amory spoke to St. George:
"Who was the other girl?" he asked comprehensively.
"What other girl?" St. George blankly murmured.
And at this, Amory turned away with a look that could be made to
mean whatever Amory meant.
On went the imperial train faring back to Med over the road lately
stirred to shining dust by the wheels of Olivia's auto. Olivia's
auto. St. George was secretly saying over the words with a kind of
ecstatic non-comprehension, when the prince spoke:
"That," he said, "may explain why an American has been able to
govern us. Chance crowned him, but he made himself king."
Prince Tabnit hesitated and his eyes wandered--and those of St.
George followed--to a far winding dot in that opal valley, a mere
speck of silver with a prick of pink, fleeing in a cloud of sunny
dust.
"I do not know if you will know what I mean," said the prince, "but
hers is the spirit, and the spirit of her father, the king, which
Yaque had never known. It is the spirit which we of Phoenicia seem
to have lost since the wealth of the world accumulated at her ports
and she gave her trust to the hands of mariners and mercenaries, and
later bowed to the conqueror. It is the spirit that not all the
continental races, I fancy, have for endowment, but yours possesses
in rich measure. For this we would exchange half that we have
achieved."
St. George nodded, glowing.
"It is a great tribute, your Highness," he said simply, and in his
heart he laid it at Olivia's feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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