He laughed awkwardly. “I remember telling you that the palace has run to seed.”
“But you still live in it.”
“No, dear,” said he.
“Oh!” said Stellamaris in a tone of deep disappointment. “Oh, why, why?”
John felt ridiculously unhappy. She believed, after all, in the incredible fairy-tale.
“Perhaps it was n't such a gorgeous palace as I made out,” he confessed lamely. “As the cooks say, my hand was rather heavy with the gold and marble.” She laughed, to his intense relief. “I have felt since that there was a little poetic exaggeration somewhere. But it must be a beautiful place, all the same.” His spirits sank again. “I could walk about it blindfold, although we have n't talked of it for so long. Who is living there now?”
“I 've sold it, dear, to some king of the Cannibal Islands,” he declared in desperate and ponderous jest.
“So there's no more palace?”
“No more,” said he.
“I 'm sorry,” said Stellamaris—“so sorry.” She smiled at him, but the tears came into her eyes. “I was looking forward so to seeing it. You see, dear, I've lived in it for such a long, long time!”