When the music sank a little
her voice sounded above it with a sweet distinctness:
"One moment, if you please, your Highness," she said clearly.
It was the first time that St. George had heard her voice since its
good-by to him in New York. And before her words his vague fears for
her were triumphantly driven. The spirit that he had hoped for was
in her face, and something else; St. George could have sworn that he
saw, but no one else could have seen the look, a glimpse of that
delicate roguery that had held him captive when he had breakfasted
with her--several hundred years before, was it?--at the Boris. Ah,
he need not have feared for her, he told himself exultantly. For
this was Olivia--of America--standing in a company of the women who
seemed like the women of whom men dream, and whose presence, save in
glimpses at first meetings, they perhaps never wholly realize. These
were the women of the land which "no one can define or remember."
And yet, as he watched her now, St. George was gloriously conscious
that Olivia not only held her own among them, but that in some charm
of vividness and of _knowledge of laughter_, she transcended them
all.
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