eir
secrets about time and the link between the two worlds so long as
they had given him love. What should he care about time? He had this
hour.

When the prince ceased speaking the hall was hushed; but because of
the tempest in the hearts of them all the silence was as if a strong
wind, sweeping powerfully through a forest, were to sway no boughs
and lift no leaves, only to strive noiselessly round one who walked
there.

Prince Tabnit wrapped his white mantle about him and sat upon his
throne. Spell-stricken, they watched him, that great multitude, and
might not turn away their eyes. Slowly, imperceptibly, as Time
touches the familiar, the face of the prince took on its change--and
one could not have told wherein the change lay, but subtly as the
encroachment of the dark, or the alchemy of the leaves, or the
betrayal of certain modes of death, the finger was upon him. While
they watched he became an effigy, the hideous face of a fantasy of
smoke against the night sky, with a formless hand lifted from among
the delicate laces in farewell. There was no death--the horror was
that there was no death. Only this curse of age drying and withering
at the bones.

A long, whining cry came from Cassyrus, who covered his face with
his mantle and fled. The spell being broken, by common consent the
great hall was once more in motion--St. George would never forget
that tide toward all the great portals and the shuddering backward
glances at the white heap upon the beetling throne. They fled away
into the reassuring sunlight, leaving the echoless hall deserted,
save for that breathing one upon the throne.

There was one other. From somewhere beside the dais the woman Elissa
crept and knelt, clasping the knees of the man.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXI

OPEN SECRETS

"Will you have tea?" asked Olivia.

St. George brought a deck cushion and tucked it in the willow
steamer chair and said adoringly that he would have tea. Tea. In a
world where the essentials and the inessentials are so deliciously
confused, to think that tea, with some one else, can be a kind of
Heaven.

"Two lumps?" pursued Olivia.

"Three, please," St. George directed, for the pure joy of watching
her hands. There were no tongs.

"Aren't the rest going to have some?" Olivia absently shared her
attention, tinkling delicately about among the tea things. "Doesn't
every one want a cup of tea?" she inquired loud enough for nobody to
hear. St. George