Amory looked up with an irrepressible thrill of delight.  He was just at that moment crossing the high white audience-hall, the anteroom to the Hall of Kings—­he, Amory, in Tyrian purple garments.  If anything were needed to complete the picture it would be to meet face to face, there in that big, lonely room, a little figure in rose and silver.  It made his heart beat even to think of the possibilities of that situation.  He skirted the Hall of Kings, and stood in one of the archways of the colonnade, facing the banquet room.

The banquet-table extended about three sides of the room, whose centre the guests faced.  The middle space was left pure, unvexed by columns or furnishing.  At the room’s far end Amory glimpsed the prince, at his side Olivia’s white veil, and her women about her; and, nearer, St. George and Balator in the place appointed.  A guard came to conduct him, and he crossed to his seat and sank down with the look that could be made to mean whatever Amory meant.

“I expect to be served,” murmured the journalist in him, “by beautiful tame megatheriums, in sashes.  And is that glyptodon salad?”

St. George’s eyes were upon the guests, so tranquilly seated, aware of the hour.

“I fancy,” he said in half-voice, “that presently we shall see little flames issuing from their hair, as there used from the hair of the ladies in Werner’s ballets.”

Then as Balator leaned toward him in his splendid leisure, fostering his charm, there came an amazing interruption.

The low key of the room was electrically raised by a cry, loosed from some other plight of being, like an odour of burning encroaching upon a garden.

“Why have you not waited?” some one called, and the voice—­clear, equal, imperious—­evened its way upon the air and reduced to itself the soft speech of the others.  Silence fell upon them all, and their eyes were toward a figure standing in the open interval of the room—­a figure whose aspect thrilled St. George with sudden, inexplicable emotion.

It was an old man, incredibly old, so that one thought first of his age.  His beard and hair were not all grey, but he had grotesquely brown and wrinkled flesh.  His stuff robe hung in straight folds about his singularly erect figure, and there was in his bearing the dignity of one who has understood all fine and gentle things, all things of quietude.  But his look was vacant, as if the mind were asleep.

“Why have you not waited?” he repeated almost wonderingly.  “Why have you not sent for me?” and his eyes questioned one and another, and rested on the face of the prince upon the dais, with Olivia by his side.  The guard, whom in some fashion the strange old man had eluded, hurried from the borders of the room.  But he broke from them and was off up half the length of the hall toward the prince’s seat.

“Do you not know?” he cried as he went, “I am Malakh.  Read one another’s eyes and you will know.  I am Malakh.”