t, his white gown
embroidered by a thousand needles falling in virginal lines against
the warm, pure colour of that room with its wraiths of hue and
light. And he opened the heart of the green jewel that burned upon
his breast.

"Not for me the wine of youth," he said slowly, "but the poison of
age. The poison which, without me to unlock the secret, all mankind
must drink alone. May you drink it late, my friends!" he cried. "I,
who hold in my soul the secret of the passing of time and youth,
drink now to those among you and among all men who have won and kept
the one thing dearer than these."

He touched the green gem to his lips, and let it fall upon the
embroidered laces on his breast. Then quietly and in another voice
he began to speak.

With the first words there came to St. George the thrill of
something that had possessed him--when? In that ecstatic moment on
_The Aloha_ when he had seen the light in the king's palace; in the
instant when the Isle of Yaque had first lain subject before him, "a
land which no one can define or remember--only desire;" in the
divine time of his triumph in having scaled the heights to the
palace, that sky-thing, with ramparts of air; above all, in the hour
of his joy in the King's Alcove, when Olivia had looked in his eyes
and touched his lips. Inexplicably as the way that eternity lies
barely unrevealed in some kin-thing of its own--a shell, a duty, a
vista--he suddenly felt it now in what the prince was saying. He
listened, and for one poignant stab of time he knew that he touched
hands with the elemental and saw the ancient kindliness of all those
people naked in their faces and knew himself for what he was.

He listened, and yet there was no making captive the words of the
prince in understanding. Prince Tabnit was speaking the English, and
every word was clearly audible and, moreover, was probably daily
upon St. George's lips. But if it had been to ransom the rest of the
world from its night he could not have understood what the prince
was saying. Every word was a word that belonged as much to St.
George as to the prince; but in some unfathomable fashion the inner
sense of what he said for ever eluded, dissolving in the air of
which it was a part. And yet, past all doubting, St. George knew
that he was hearing the essence of that strange knowledge which the
Isle of Yaque had won while all the rest of mankind struggled for
it--he knew with the certainty with which we recogniz