such
faces. St. George saw how it was. Here, spoken casually by the
prince, just as the Banal would speak of the visible and invisible
worlds, here was the Sesame of understanding toward which the
centuries had striven, the secret of the link between two worlds;
and here, of all mankind, were only they two to hear--they two and
that motionless company who knew what the prince knew and who kept
it sealed within their eyes.

St. George looked at the multitude in swift understanding. They
were like a Greek chorus, signifying what is. They knew what the
prince was saying, they had the secret and yet--they were _no
nearer, no nearer_ than he. With their ancient kindliness naked in
their faces, St. George knew that through his love he was as near to
the Source as were they. And it was suddenly as it had been that
first night when he had stridden buoyantly through the island; for
he could not tell which was the secret of the prince and of these
people and which was the blessedness of his love.

None the less he clung desperately to the last words of Prince
Tabnit in a vain effort to hold, to make clear, to sophisticate one
single phrase, as one waking in the night says over, in a vain
effort to fix it, some phantom sentence cried to him in dreams by a
shadowy band destined to be dissolved when, in bright day, he would
reclaim it. He even managed frantically to write down a jumble of
words of which he could make nothing, save here and there a phrase
like a touch of hands from the silence: "...the infinite moment that
is pending" ... "all is become a window where had been a wall" ...
"the wintry vision" ... they were all words that beckon without
replying. And all the time it was curiously as if the Something
Silent within St. George himself, that so long had striven to speak,
were crying out at last in the prince's words--and he could not
understand. Yet in spite of it all, in spite of this imminent
satisfying of the strange, dreadful curiosity which possesses all
mankind, St. George, even now, was far less keen to comprehend than
he was to burst through the throng with Olivia in his arms, gain the
waiting _Aloha_ and sail into the New York harbour with the prize
that he had won. "I drink now to those among you and among all men
who have won and kept that which is greater than these," the prince
had said, and St. George perfectly understood. He had but to look at
Olivia to be triumphantly willing that the gods should keep th