A little shrine hung thick with vines, its ancient stone chipped and defaced, stood on the terrace with its empty, sightless niche turned toward the sea.  Leaning upon its base was an old man watching them.  His eyes under their lowered brows were peculiarly intent, but his look was perfectly serene and friendly.  His stuff robe hung in straight folds about his singularly erect figure, and his beard and hair were not all grey.  But he was very old, with incredibly brown and wrinkled flesh, and his face was vacant, as if the mind were asleep.

As he looked, St. George knew him.  Here on the top of this mountain was that amazing old man whom he had last seen in the banquet hall at the Palace of the Litany—­that old Malakh for whom Olivia had so unexplainably interceded.

“What is that man doing here?” St. George asked in surprise.

[Illustration]

“He is a mad old man, they said,” Olivia told him, “down there they call him Malakh—­that means ’salt’—­because they said he always weeps.  We had stopped to look at a metallurgist yesterday—­he had some zinc and some metals cut out like flowers, and he was making them show phosphorescent colours in his little dark alcove.  The old man was watching him and trying to tell him something, but the metallurgist was rude to him and some boys came by and jostled him and pushed him about and taunted him—­and the metallurgist actually explained to us that every one did that way to old Malakh.  So I thought he was better off up here,” concluded Olivia tranquilly.

St. George was silent.  He knew that Olivia was like this, but everything that proved anew her loveliness of soul caught at his heart.

“Tell me,” he said impulsively, “what made you let him stay last night, there in the banquet hall?”

She flushed, and shook her head with a deprecatory gesture.

“I haven’t an idea,” she said gravely, “I think I must have done it so the fairies wouldn’t prick their feet on any new sorrow.  One has to be careful of the fairies’ feet.”

St. George nodded.  It was a charming reason for the left hand to give the right, and he was not deceived.

“Look at him,” said St. George, almost reverently, “he looks like a shade of a god that has come back from the other world and found his shrine dishonoured.”

Some echo of St. George’s words reached the old man and he caught at it, smiling.  It was as if he had just been thinking what he spoke.

“There are not enough shrines,” he said gently, “but there are far too many gods.  You will find it so.”

Something in his words stirred St. George strangely.  There was about the old creature an air of such gentleness, such supreme repose and detachment that, even in that place of quiet, his presence made a kind of hush.  He was old and pallid and fragile, but there lingered within him, while his spirit lingered, the perfume of all fine and gentle things, all things of quietude.  When he had spoken the old man turned and moved slowly down the ways of strange light, between the fallen temples builded to forgotten gods, and he seemed like the very spirit of the ancient mountain, ignorant of itself and knowing all truth.