"Suppose," said Olivia whimsically, "that we open our eyes in a minute, and find that we are in the prince's room in McDougle Street, and that he has passed his hand before our faces and made us dream all this. And father is safe after all."
"But it isn't all a dream," St. George said softly, "it can't possibly all be a dream, you know."
She met his eyes for a moment.
"Not your coming away here," she said, "if the rest is true I wouldn't want that to be a dream. You don't know what courage this will give us all."
She said "us all," but that had to mean merely "us," as well. St. George turned and looked over the terrace. What an Arabian night it was, he was saying to himself, and then stood in a sudden amazement, with the uncertain idea that one of the Schererazade magicians had answered that fancy of his by appearing.
A little shrine hung thick with vines, its ancient stone chipped and defaced, stood on the terrace with its empty, sightless niche turned toward the sea. Leaning upon its base was an old man watching them. His eyes under their lowered brows were peculiarly intent, but his look was perfectly serene and friendly. His stuff robe hung in straight folds about his singularly erect figure, and his beard and hair were not all grey. But he was very old, with incredibly brown and wrinkled flesh, and his face was vacant, as if the mind were asleep.
As he looked, St. George knew him. Here on the top of this mountain was that amazing old man whom he had last seen in the banquet hall at the Palace of the Litany--that old Malakh for whom Olivia had so unexplainably interceded.
"What is that man doing here?" St. George asked in surprise.
"He is a mad old man, they said," Olivia told him, "down there they call him Malakh--that means 'salt'--because they said he always weeps. We had stopped to look at a metallurgist yesterday--he had some zinc and some metals cut out like flowers, and he was making them show phosphorescent colours in his little dark alcove. The old man was watching him and trying to tell him something, but the metallurgist was rude to him and some boys came by and jostled him and pushed him about and taunted him--and the metallurgist actually explained to us that every one did that way to old Malakh. So I thought he was better off up here," concluded Olivia tranquilly.
St. George was silent. He knew that Olivia was like this, but everything that proved anew her loveliness of soul caught at his heart.