The Project Gutenberg EBook of Romance Island, by Zona Gale

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Title: Romance Island

Author: Zona Gale

Release Date: October 13, 2004 [EBook #13731]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: frontispiece]

ROMANCE ISLAND

By

ZONA GALE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
HERMANN C. WALL

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
1906

"Who that remembers the first kind glance of her
whom he loves can fail to believe in magic?"
--NOVALIS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I DINNER TIME
II A SCRAP OF PAPER
III ST. GEORGE AND THE LADY
IV THE PRINCE OF FAR-AWAY
V OLIVIA PROPOSES
VI TWO LITTLE MEN
VII DUSK, AND SO ON
VIII THE PORCH OF THE MORNING
IX THE LADY OF KINGDOMS
X TYRIAN PURPLE
XI THE END OF THE EVENING
XII BETWEEN-WORLDS
XIII THE LINES LEAD UP
XIV THE ISLE OF HEARTS
XV A VIGIL
XVI GLAMOURIE
XVII BENEATH THE SURFACE
XVIII A MORNING VISIT
XIX IN THE HALL OF KINGS
XX OUT OF THE HALL OF KINGS
XXI OPEN SECRETS

ROMANCE ISLAND

CHAPTER I

DINNER TIME

As _The Aloha_ rode gently to her buoy among the crafts in the
harbour, St. George longed to proclaim in the megaphone's monstrous
parody upon capital letters:

"Cat-boats and house-boats and yawls, look here. You're bound to
observe that this is my steam yacht. I own her--do you see? She
belongs to me, St. George, who never before owned so much as a piece
of rope."

Instead--mindful, perhaps, that "a man should not communicate his
own glorie"--he stepped sedately down to the trim green skiff and
was rowed ashore by a boy who, for aught that either knew, might
three months before have jostled him at some ill-favoured lunch
counter. For in America, dreams of gold--not, alas, golden
dreams--do prevalently come true; and of all the butterfly
happenings in this pleasant land of larvae, few are so spectacular as
the process by which, without warning, a man