“Did you rub the lamp?” he said.  “Because I couldn’t help coming.”

She looked at him breathlessly.

“Have you,” he asked her gravely, “eaten of the potatoes of Yaque?  And are you going to say, ‘Off with his head’?  And can you tell me what is the population of the island?”

At that they both laughed—­the merry, irrepressible laugh of youth which explains that the world is a very good place indeed and that one is glad that one belongs there.  And the memory of that breakfast on the other side of the world, of their happy talk about what would happen if they two were impossibly to meet in Yaque came back to them both, and set his heart beating and flooded her face with delicate colour.  In her laugh was a little catching of the breath that was enchanting.

“Not yet,” she said, “your head is safe till you tell me how you got here, at all events.  Now tell me—­oh, tell me.  I can’t believe it until you tell me.”

She moved a little away from the door.

“Come in,” she said shyly, “if you’ve come all the way from America you must be very tired.”

St. George shook his head.

“Come out,” he pleaded, “I want to stand on top of a high mountain and show you the whole world.”

She went quite simply and without hesitation—­because, in Yaque, the maddest things would be the truest—­and when she had stepped from the low doorway she looked up at him in the tender light of the garden terrace.

“If you are quite sure,” she said, “that you will not disappear in the dark?”

St. George laughed happily.

“I shall not disappear,” he promised, “though the world were to turn round the other way.”

They crossed the still terrace to the parapet and stood looking out to sea with the risen moon shining across the waters.  The light wind stirred in the cedrine junipers, shaking out perfume; the great fairy pile of the palace rose behind them; and before them lay the monstrous moon-lit abyss than whose depths the very stars, warm and friendly, seemed nearer to them.  To the big young American in blue serge beside the little new princess who had drawn him over seas the dream that one is always having and never quite remembering was suddenly come true.  No wonder that at that moment the patient Amory was far enough from his mind.  To St. George, looking down upon Olivia, there was only one truth and one joy in the universe, and she was that truth and that joy.

“I can’t believe it,” he said boyishly.

“Believe—­what?” she asked, for the delight of hearing him say so.

“This—­me—­most of all, you!” he answered.

“But you must believe it,” she cried anxiously, “or maybe it will stop being.”

“I will, I will, I am now!” promised St. George in alarm.

Whereat they both laughed again in sheer light-heartedness.  Then, resting his broad shoulders against a prism of the parapet, St. George looked down at her in infinite content.