"How did you know?" protested St. George in fine indignation. "Besides," he explained, "I haven't an idea what you mean."
"I guessed about that ride," she went on, "the night before last, when you were walking up and down outside my window. I don't know what made me--and I think it was very forward of me. Do you want to know something?" she demanded, looking away.
"More than anything," declared St. George. "What?"
"I think--" Olivia said slowly, "that it began--then--just when I first thought how wonderful that ride would have been. Except--that it had begun a great while before," she ended suddenly.
And at these enigmatic words St. George sent a quick look over the forward deck. It was of no use. Mr. Frothingham was well within range.
"Heavens, good heavens, how happy I am," said St. George instead.
"And then," Olivia went on presently, "sometimes when there are a lot of people about--literary-theory persons and all--I shall look across at you, differently, and that will mean that you are to remember the exact minute when you looked in the window up at the palace, on the mountain, and I saw you. Won't it?"
"It will," said St. George fervently. "Don't try to persuade me that there wasn't any such mountain," he challenged her. "I suppose," he added in wonder, "that lovers have been having these secret signs time out of mind--and we never knew."
Olivia drew a little breath of content.
"Bless everybody," she said.
So they made invasion of that pure, dim world before them; and the serene mystery of the distance came like a thought, drawn from a state remote and immortal, to clasp the hand of There in the hand of Here.
"And then sometimes," St. George went on, his exultation proving greater than his discretion, "we'll take the yacht and pretend we're going back--"
He stopped abruptly with a quick indrawn breath and the hope that she had not noticed. He was, by several seconds, too late.
"Whose yacht is it?" Olivia asked promptly. "I wondered."
St. George had dreaded the question. Someway, now that it was all over and the prize was his, he was ashamed that he had not won it more fairly and humiliated that he was not what she believed him, a pillar of the Evening Sentinel. But Amory had miraculously heard and turned himself about.
"It's his," he said briefly, "I may as well confess to you, Miss Holland," he enlarged somewhat, "he's a great cheat. The Aloha is his, and so am I, busy body and idle soul, for using up his yacht and his time on a newspaper story. You were the 'story,' you know."