es--but Yaque seemed to be a land whose very grotesques had
all the dignity of the ultimate instead of crying for the indulgence
due a phase. The roof was inlaid with prisms of clear stone, and on
high were pilasters carved with the Tyrian sphinxes crucified upon
upright crosses, surmounted by parhelions of burnished metal. All
the seats faced a great dais at the chamber's far end where three
thrones were set.

But it was the men and women in the great chamber who filled St.
George with wonder. The women--they were beautiful women,
slow-moving, slow-eyed, of soft laughter and sudden melancholy, and
clear, serene profiles and abundant hair. And they were all _alive_,
fully and mysteriously alive, alive to their finger-tips. It was as
if in comparison all other women acted and moved in a kind of
half-consciousness. It was as if, St. George thought vaguely, one
were to step through the frame of a pre-Raphaelite tapestry and
suddenly find its strange women rejoicing in fulfillment instead of
yearning, in noon instead of dusk. As he stood looking down the vast
chamber, all springing columns and light lines lifting through the
honey-coloured air, it smote St. George that these people, instead
of being far away, were all near, surprisingly, unbelievably near to
him,--in a way, nearer to his own elusive personality than he was
himself. They were all obviously of his own class; he could
perfectly imagine his mother, with her old lace and Roman mosaics,
moving at home among them, and the bishop, with his wise, kindly
smile. Yet he was irresistibly reminded of a certain haunting dream
of his childhood in which he had seemed to himself to walk the world
alone, with every one else allied against him because they all knew
something that he did not know. That was it, he thought suddenly,
and felt his pulse quickening at the intimation: _They all knew
something that he did not know_, that he could not know. But, as
they swept him with their clear-eyed, impersonal look, a look
that seemed in some exquisite fashion to take no account of
individuality, he was gratefully aware of a curious impression
that they would like to have had him know, too.

"They wish I knew--they'd rather I did know," St. George found
himself thinking in a strange excitement, "if only I could know--if
only I could know."

He looked about him, smiling a little at his folly. He saw the
light flash on Amory's glasses as they turned inquisitively on this
and that