the
god.

The silence of Mrs. Hastings and her quiet devotion to her brother
somehow gave St. George a new respect for her. Over by the
wheel-house something made a strange noise of crying, and St. George
saw that Mr. Frothingham sat holding a weird little animal, like a
squirrel but for its stumpy tail and great human eyes, which he had
unwittingly stepped on among the rocks. The little thing was licking
his hand, and the old lawyer's face was softened and glowing as he
nursed it and coaxed it with crumbs. As he looked, St. George warmed
to them all in new fellowship and, too, in swift self-reproach; for
in what had seemed to him but "broad lines and comic masks" he
suddenly saw the authority and reality of homely hearts. The better
and more intimate names for everything which seemed now within his
grasp were more important than Yaque itself. He remembered, with a
thrill, how his mother had been wont to tell him that a man must
walk through some sort of fairy-land, whether of imagination or of
the heart, before he can put much in or take much from the
market-place. And lo! this fairy-land of his finding had
proved--must it not always prove?--the essence of all Reality.

His eyes went to Olivia's face in a flash of understanding and
belief.

"Don't you see?" he said, quite as if they two had been talking what
he had thought.

She waited, smiling a little, thrilled by his certainty of her
sympathy.

"None of this happened really," triumphantly explained St. George,
"I met you at the Boris, did I not? Therefore, I think that since
then you have graciously let me see you for the proper length of
time, and at last we've fallen in love just as every one else does.
And true lovers always do have trouble, do they not? So then, Yaque
has been the usual trouble and happiness, and here we are--engaged."

"I'm not engaged," Olivia protested serenely, "but I see what you
mean. No, none of it happened," she gravely agreed. "It couldn't,
you know. Anybody will tell you that."

In her eyes was the sparkle of understanding which made St. George
love her more every time that it appeared. He noted, the white cloth
frock, and the coat of hunting pink thrown across her chair, and he
remembered that in the infinitesimal time that he had waited for her
outside the Palace of the Litany, she must have exchanged for these
the coronation robe and jewels of Queen Mitygen. St. George liked
that swift practicality in the race of faery, t