Then he looked at Amory; wouldn't old Amory
know, he wondered. Wouldn't his mere understanding of news teach him
what was happening? But old Amory, the light flashing on his
pince-nez, was keeping one eye on the prince and wondering if the
chair that he had just placed for Antoinette was not in the draught
of the dome; and little Antoinette was looking about her like a
rosebud, new to the butterflies of June; and King Otho was
listening, languid, heavy-lidded, sensitive to little values,
sophisticating the moment; and Little Cawthorne stood with eyes
raised in simple, tolerant wonder; and the others, Bennietod, Mrs.
Hastings and Mr. Augustus Frothingham, showed faces like the pools
in which pebbles might be dropped, making no ripples--one must
suppose that there are such pools, since there are certainly such
faces. St. George saw how it was. Here, spoken casually by the
prince, just as the Banal would speak of the visible and invisible
worlds, here was the Sesame of understanding toward which the
centuries had striven, the secret of the link between two worlds;
and here, of all mankind, were only they two to hear--they two and
that motionless company who knew what the prince knew and who kept
it sealed within their eyes.
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