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 question.  Someway, now that it was all over and the prize was his, he was ashamed that he had not won it more fairly and humiliated that he was not what she believed him, a pillar of the Evening Sentinel.  But Amory had miraculously heard and turned himself about.

“It’s his,” he said briefly, “I may as well confess to you, Miss Holland,” he enlarged somewhat, “he’s a great cheat. The Aloha is his, and so am I, busy body and idle soul, for using up his yacht and his time on a newspaper story.  You were the ‘story,’ you know.”

“But,” said Olivia in bewilderment, “I don’t understand.  Surely—­”

“Nothing whatever is sure, Miss Holland,” Amory sadly assured her, but his eyes were smiling behind his pince-nez.  “You would think one might be sure of him.  But it isn’t so.  Me, you may depend upon me,” he impressed it lightly.  “I’m what I say I am—­a poor beggar of a newspaper man, about to be held to account by one Chillingworth for this whole millenial occurrence, and sent off to a political convention to steady me, unless I’m fired.  But St. George, he’s a gay dilettante.”

Then Amory resumed a better topic of his own; and Olivia, when she understood, looked down at her lover as miserably as one is able when one is perfectly happy.

“Oh,” she said, “and up there—­in the palace to-day—­I did think for a minute that perhaps you wanted me to marry the prince so that—­they could—.”

One could smile now at the enormity of that.

“So that I could put it in the paper?” he said.  “But, you see, I never could put it in any paper, even if I didn’t love you.  Who would believe me?  A thousand years from now—­maybe less—­the Evening Sentinel, if it is still in existence, can publish the story, perhaps.  Until then I’m afraid they’ll have to confine themselves to the doings of the precincts.”

Olivia waived the whole matter for one of vaster importance.

“Then why did you come to Yaque?” she demanded.

Mr. Frothingham had left his place by the wheel-house and wandered forward.  The steamer chair had a back that was both broad and high, and one sitting in its shadow was hermetically veiled from the rest of the deck.  So St. George bent forward, and told her.