Amory looked. Down a side avenue—one of those tunnels of shadow that taught the necessity of mystery—a great motor car was speeding, and in the dimness the two men could see the white of Olivia's floating veil.
At this, Amory wheeled and searched the length of wall across the yard. If only—if only—
There on the side of the courtyard opposite the windows of the banquet room stood the motor that was that night to go back to Melita. Bolt upright on the seat was Jarvo, and climbing in the tonneau, with his neck stretched toward the confusion of the palace, was Rollo. Jarvo saw Amory, who beckoned; and in an instant the car was beside them and the two men were over the back of the tonneau in a flash.
"That way," cried St. George, with no time to waste on the miracle of Jarvo's appearance, "that way—there. Where you see the white."
At a touch the motor plunged away into the fragrant darkness. Amory looked back. Figures crowded the windows of the palace, and streamed from the banquet hall into the courtyard. Men hurried through the hall, and there was clamour of voices, and in the honey-coloured air the great bulk of the palace towered like a faithless sentinel, the alien banners in nameless colours sending streamers into the moon-lit upper spaces.
On before, down nebulous ways, went the whiteness of the floating veil.
CHAPTER XII
BETWEEN-WORLDS
Down nebulous ways they went, the thin darkness flowing past them. The sloping avenue ran all the width of the palace grounds, and here among slim-trunked trees faint fringes of the light touched away the dimness in the open spaces and expressed the borders of the dusk. Always the way led down, dipping deeper in the conjecture of shadow, and always before them glimmered the mist of Olivia's veil, an eidolon of love, of love's eternal Vanishing Goal.