ivia
tranquilly took away his breath by observing.

St. George looked up at her quickly and, secretly, Olivia thought
that if he had been attractive when he was courageous he was doubly
so with the present adorably abashed look in his eyes.

"When--alone?" St. George asked unconvincingly.

She laughed a little, looking down at him in a reproof that was all
approbation, and to be reproved like that is the divinest praise.

"How did you know?" protested St. George in fine indignation.
"Besides," he explained, "I haven't an idea what you mean."

"I guessed about that ride," she went on, "the night before last,
when you were walking up and down outside my window. I don't know
what made me--and I think it was very forward of me. Do you want to
know something?" she demanded, looking away.

"More than anything," declared St. George. "What?"

"I think--" Olivia said slowly, "that it began--then--just when I
first thought how wonderful that ride would have been. Except--that
it had begun a great while before," she ended suddenly.

And at these enigmatic words St. George sent a quick look over the
forward deck. It was of no use. Mr. Frothingham was well within
range.

"Heavens, good heavens, how happy I am," said St. George instead.

"And then," Olivia went on presently, "sometimes when there are a
lot of people about--literary-theory persons and all--I shall look
across at you, differently, and that will mean that you are to
remember the exact minute when you looked in the window up at the
palace, on the mountain, and I saw you. Won't it?"

"It will," said St. George fervently. "Don't try to persuade me that
there wasn't any such mountain," he challenged her. "I suppose," he
added in wonder, "that lovers have been having these secret signs
time out of mind--and we never knew."

Olivia drew a little breath of content.

"Bless everybody," she said.

So they made invasion of that pure, dim world before them; and the
serene mystery of the distance came like a thought, drawn from a
state remote and immortal, to clasp the hand of There in the hand of
Here.

"And then sometimes," St. George went on, his exultation proving
greater than his discretion, "we'll take the yacht and pretend
we're going back--"

He stopped abruptly with a quick indrawn breath and the hope that
she had not noticed. He was, by several seconds, too late.

"Whose yacht is it?" Olivia asked promptly. "I wondered."

St. George had dreaded the