But if the palace had been discovered to be the preserved and transported Temple of Solomon it could not have stayed St. George for one moment of admiration. He was off up the slope, seeing only the great closed portals, and with Amory beside him he ran boldly up the long steps. It was a part of the unreality of the place that there seemed absolutely no sign of life about the King's palace. The windows glowed with the soft light within, but there were no guards, no servants, no sign of any presence. For the first time, when they reached the top of the steps, the two men hesitated.
"Personally," said Amory doubtfully, "I have never yet tapped at a king's front door. What does one do?"
St. George looked at the long stone porches, uncovered and girt by a parapet following the curve of the façade.
"Would you mind waiting a minute?" he said.
With that he was off along the balcony to the south--and afterward he wondered why, and if it is true that Fate tempts us in the way that she would have us walk by luring us with unseen roses budding from the air.
Where the porch abruptly widened to a kind of upper terrace, like a hanging garden set with flowering trees, three high archways opened to an apartment whose bright lights streamed across the grass-plots. St. George felt something tug at his heart, something that urged him forward and caught him up in an ecstasy of triumph and hope fulfilled. He looked back at Amory, and Amory was leaning on the parapet, apparently sunk in reflections which concerned nobody. So St. George stepped softly on until he reached the first archway, and there he stopped, and the moment was to him almost past belief. Within the open doorway, so near that if she had lifted her eyes they must have met his own, was the woman whom he had come across the sea to seek.
St. George hardly knew that he spoke, for it was as if all the world were singing her name.
"Olivia!" he said.