St. George nodded approvingly. Unless all signs failed, he reflected, Yaque had some surprises in store at the hands of the daughter of its sovereign.
“Where does the prince appoint?” he asked.
He listened in entire disapproval while she told him of the place below quarantine where they were to board the submarine. The prince, it appeared, had sent his servant early that morning to assure them that all was in readiness, a bit of oriental courtesy which made no impression upon St. George, though it explained the prompt withdrawal from 19 McDougle Street. When she had finished, St. George rose and stood before the fire, looking down at her from a world of uncertainty.
“I don’t like it, Miss Holland,” he declared, and hesitated, divided between the desire to tell her that he was going too, and the fear lest Mrs. Hastings should arrive from the chemist’s.
Olivia made a gesture of throwing it all from her.
“Have a muffin—do,” she begged. “This is my last breakfast in America for a time—let me have a pleasant memory of it. Mr. St. George, I want—oh, I want to tell you how greatly I appreciate—”
“Ah, please,” urged St. George, and smiled while he protested, “you see, I’ve been very selfish about the whole matter. I’m selfish now to be here at all when, I dare say, you’ve no end of things to do.”
“No,” Olivia disclaimed, “I have not,” and thus proved that she was a woman of genius. For a less complex woman always flutters through the hour of her departure. Only Juno can step from the clouds without packing a bag and feeding the peacocks and leaving, pinned to an asphodel, a note for Jupiter.
“Then tell me what you are going to do in Yaque,” he besought. “Forgive me—what are you going to do all alone there in that strange land, and such a land?”
He divined that at this she would be very brave and buoyant, and he was lost in anticipative admiration; when she was neither he admired more than ever.
“I don’t know,” said Olivia gravely, “I only know that I must go. You see that, do you not—that I must go?”
“Ah, yes,” St. George assured her, “I do indeed, believe me. Don’t you think,” he said, “that I might give you a lamp to rub if you need help? And then I’ll appear.”
“In Yaque?”
He nodded gravely.
“Yes, in Yaque. I shall rise out of a jar like the Evil Genie; and though I shall be quite helpless you will still have the lamp. And I shall be no end glad to have appeared.”
“But suppose,” said Olivia merrily, “that when I have eaten a pomegranate or a potato or something in Yaque I forget all about America? And when you step out of the jar I say ‘Off with his head,’ by mistake. How shall I know it is you when the jar is opened?”
“I shall ask you what the population of Yaque is,” he assured her, “and how the island compares with Manhattan, and if this is your first visit, and how you are enjoying your stay; and then you will recognize the talk of civilization and spare me.”