“I understand you to say,” said St. George, with the weary self-restraint of one who deals with lunatics, “that the line of King Hiram, the friend of King David of Israel, became extinct less than a year ago?”

The prince smiled.

“Do not conceal your incredulity,” he said liberally, “for I forgive it.  You see, then,” he went on serenely, “how in Yaque the question of the succession became engrossing.  The matter was not merely one of ascendancy, for the Yaquians are singularly free from ambition.  But their pride in their island is boundless.  They see in her the advance guard of civilization, the peculiar people to whom have come to be intrusted many of the secrets of being.  For I should tell you that my people live a life that is utterly beyond the ken of all, save a few rare minds in each generation.  My people live what others dream about, what scientists struggle to fathom, what the keenest philosophers and economists among you can not formulate.  We are,” said Prince Tabnit serenely, “what the world will be a thousand years from now.”

“Well, I’m sure,” Mrs. Hastings broke in plaintively, “that I hope your servant, for instance, is not a sample of what the world is coming to!”

The prince smiled indulgently, as if a child had laid a little, detaining hand upon his sleeve.

“Be that as it may,” he said evenly, “the throne of Yaque was still empty.  Many stood near to the crown, but there seemed no reason for choosing one more than another.  One party wished to name the head of the House of the Litany, in Med, the King’s city, who was the chief administrator of justice.  Another, more democratic than these, wished to elevate to the throne a man from whose family we had won knowledge of both perpetual motion and the Fourth Dimension—­”

St. George smiled angelically, as one who resignedly sees the last fragments of a shining hope float away.  This quite settled it.  The olive prince was crazy.  Did not St. George remember the old man in the frayed neckerchief and bagging pockets who had brought to the office of the Sentinel chart after chart about perpetual motion, until St. George and Amory had one day told him gravely that they had a machine inside the office then that could make more things go for ever than he had ever dreamed of, though they had not said that the machine was named Chillingworth.

“You have knowledge of both these things?” asked St. George indulgently.

“Yaque understood both those laws,” said the prince quietly, “when William the Conqueror came to England.”

He hesitated for a moment and then, regardless of another soft explosion from Mr. Frothingham’s lips, he added: 

“Do you not see?  Will you not understand?  It is our knowledge of the Fourth Dimension which has enabled us to keep our island a secret.”

St. George suddenly thrilled from head to foot.  What if he were speaking the truth?  What if this man were speaking the truth?