Mentally St. George added another barrel to the cargo of The Aloha, and wondered if the Sentinel would start botanical gardens and a lighting plant and turn them to the account of advertisers.

All the time, mile upon mile, was unrolling before them the unforgetable beauty of the island.  So perfectly were its features marshaled and so exact were its proportions that, as in many great experiences and as in all great poems, one might not, without familiarity, recall its detail, but must instead remain wrapped in the glory of the whole.  The avenues, wide as a river, swept between white banks of majestic buildings combining with the magic of great mass the pure beauty of virginal line.  Line, the joy of line, the glory of line, almost, St. George thought, the divinity of line, was everywhere manifest; and everywhere too the divinity of colour, no longer a quality extraneous, laid on as insecure fancy dictates, but, by some law long unrevealed, now actually identified with the object which it not so much decorated as purified.  The most interesting of the thoroughfares led from the Eurychorus, or public square, along the lagoon.  This fair water, extending from Med to Melita, was greenly shored and dotted with strange little pleasure crafts with exquisite sweeping prows and silken canopies.  Before a white temple, knee-deep in whose flowered ponds the ibises dozed and contemplated, was anchored the imperial trireme, with delicately-embroidered sails and prow and poop of forgotten metals.  From within, temple music sounded softly and was never permitted to be silenced, as the flame of the Vestals might never be extinguished.  Here on the shores had begun the morning traffic of itinerant merchants of Med and Melita, compelled by law to carry on their exchange in the morning only, when the light is least lovely.  Upon canopied wagons drawn by strange animals, with shining horns, were displayed for sale all the pleasantest excuses for commerce—­ostrich feathers, gums, gems, quicksilver, papyrus, bales of fair cloth, pottery, wine and oranges.  The sellers of salt and fish and wool and skins were forced down under the wharfs of the lagoon, and there endeavoured to attract attention by displaying fanciful and lovely banners and by liberating faint perfumes of the native orris and algum.  Street musicians, playing tunefully upon the zither and upon the crowd, wandered, wearing wreaths of fir, and clustered about stalls where were offered tenuous blades, and statues, and temple vessels filled with wine and flowers.

At the head of the street leading to the temple of Baaltis (My Lady—­Aphrodite) the prince’s motor was checked while a procession of pilgrims, white-robed and carrying votive offerings, passed before them, the votive tablet to the Lady Tanith and the Face of Baal being borne at the head of the line by a dignitary in a smart electric victoria.  This was one of the frequent Festival Embassies to Melita, to combine religious rites with mourning games