The lateness of the hour of their arrival at the palace the evening before had prevented the prince from receiving them, but he had sent a most courteous message announcing that he himself would wait upon them at a time which he appointed. While they were abiding his coming, Rollo setting aside the dishes, Amory smoking, strolling up and down, and examining the faint symbolic devices upon the walls' tiling, St. George stood before one of the casements, and looked over the aisles of flowering tree-tops to the grim, grey sides of Mount Khalak, inscrutable, inaccessible, now not even hinting at the walls and towers upon its secret summit. He was thinking how heavenly curious it was that the most wonderful thing in his commonplace world of New York--that is, his meeting with Olivia--should, out here in this world of things wonderful beyond all dream, still hold supreme its place as the sovereign wonder, the sovereign delight.
"I dare say that means something," he said vaguely to himself, "and I dare say all the people who are--in love--know what it does mean," and at this his spirit of adventure must have nodded at him, as if it understood, too.
When, in a little time, Prince Tabnit appeared at the open door of the "porch of light," it was as if he had parted from St. George in McDougle Street but the night before. He greeted him with exquisite cordiality and his welcome to Amory was like a welcome unfeigned. He was clad in white of no remembered fashion, with the green gem burning on his breast, but his manner was that of one perfectly tailored and about the most cosmopolitan offices of modernity. One might have told him one's most subtly humourous story and rested certain of his smile.
"I wonder," he asked with engaging hesitation when he was seated, "whether I may have a--cigarette? That is the name? Yes, a cigarette. Tobacco is unknown in Yaque. We have invented no colonies useful for the luxury. How can it be--forgive me--that your people, who seem remote from poetry, should be the devisers and popularizers of this so poetic pastime? To breathe in the green of earth and the light of the dead sun! The poetry of your American smoke delights me."
St. George smiled as he offered the prince his case.
"In America," he said, "we devised it as a vice, your Highness. We are obliged to do the same with poetry, if we popularize it."
And St. George was thinking: "Miss Holland. He has seen Miss Holland--perhaps yesterday. Perhaps he will see her to-day. And how in this world am I ever to mention her name?"