“Ah well now,” he had just observed, languidly surveying the tropical horizon through a cool glass of winking amber bubbles, “one must learn that to touch is far more delicate than to lift.  It is more wonderful to have been the king of one moment than the ruler of many.  It is better to have stood for an instant upon a rainbow than to have taken a morning walk through a field of clouds.  The principle has long been understood, but few have had—­shall I say the courage?—­to practise it.  Yet ‘courage’ is a term from-the-shoulder, and what I require is a word of finger-tips, over-tones, ultra-rays—­a word for the few who understand that to leave a thing is more exquisite than to outwear it.  It is by its very fineness circumscribed—­a feminine virtue.  Women understand it and keep it secret.  I flatter myself that I have possessed the high moment, vanished against the noon.  Ah, my dear fellow—­” he added, lifting his glass to St. George’s smile.

But little Cawthorne—­all reality in his heliotrope outing and duck and grey curls—­raised a characteristic plaint.

“Oh, but I’ve done it,” he mournfully reviewed.  “When’ll I ever be in another island, in front of another vacated throne?  Why didn’t I move into the palace, and set up a natty, up-to-date little republic?  I could have worn a crown as a matter of taste—­what’s the use of a democracy if you aren’t free to wear a crown?  And what kind of American am I, anyway, with this undeveloped taste for acquiring islands?  If they ever find this out at the polls my vote’ll be challenged.  What?”

“Aw whee!” said Bennietod, intent upon a Roman candle, “wha’ do you care, Mr. Cawt’orne?  You don’t hev to go back fer to be a child-slave to Chillingwort’.  Me, I’ve gotta good call to jump overboard now an’ be de sonny of a sea-horse, dead to rights!”

St. George looked at them all affectionately, unconscious that already the experience of the last three days was slipping back into the sheathing past, like a blade used.  But he was dawningly aware, as he sat there at Olivia’s feet in glorious content, that he was looking at them all with new eyes.  It was as if he had found new names for them all; and until long afterward one does not know that these moments of bestowing new names mark the near breathing of 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”