Thus it came about that when Prince Tabnit indicated a low, pillared, temple-like building as the home of perpetual motion, which gave the power operating the manufactures and water supply of the entire island, St. George looked and understood and resolved to go over the temple before he left Yaque, and then fell a-wondering whether, when he did so, Olivia would be with him.  When the prince explained that it is ridiculous to suppose that combustion is the chief means of obtaining light and heat, or that Heaven provided divinely-beautiful forests for the express purpose of their being burned up; and when he told him that artificial light and heat were effected in a certain reservoir (built with a classic regard for the dignity of its use as a link with unspoken forces) St. George listened, and said over with attention the name of the substance acted upon by emanations—­and wondered if Olivia were not afraid of it.  So it was all through the exhibition of more wonders scientific and economic than any one has dreamed since every one became a victim of the world’s habit of being afraid to dream.  Although it is true that when St. George chanced to observe that there were about Med few farms of tilled ground, the prince’s reply did startle him into absorbed attention: 

“You are referring to agriculture?” Prince Tabnit said after a moment’s thought.  “I know the word from old parchments brought from Phoenicia by our ancestors.  But I did not know that the art is in practice anywhere in the world.  Do you mean to assure me,” cried the prince suddenly, “that the vegetables which I ate in America were raised by what is known as ’tilling the soil’?”

“How else, your Highness?” doubted St. George, wondering if he were responsible for the fading mentality of the prince.

Prince Tabnit looked away toward the splendour of some new thought.

“How beautiful,” he said, “to subsist on the sun and the dust.  Beautiful and lost, like the dreams of Mitylene.  But I feel as if I were reading in Genesis,” he declared.  “Is it possible that in this ‘age of science’ of yours it has not occurred to your people that if plants grow by slowly extracting their own elements from the soil, those elements artificially extracted and applied to the seed will render growth and fruitage almost instantaneous?”

“At all events we’ve speculated about it,” St. George hastened to impart with pride, “just as we do about telephones that will let people see one another when they talk.  But nearly every one smiles at both.”

“Don’t smile,” the prince warned him.  “Yaque has perfected both those inventions only since she ceased to smile at their probability.  Nothing can be simpler than instantaneous vegetation.  Any Egyptian juggler can produce it by using certain acids.  We have improved the process until our fruits and vegetables are produced as they are needed, from hour to hour.  This was one of the so-called secrets of the ancient Phoenicians—­has it never occurred to you as important that the Phoenician name for Dionysos, the god of wine-growers, was lost?”