This was one of the frequent Festival Embassies to Melita, to combine religious rites with mourning games and the dedication of the tablet, and there was considerable delay incident to the delivery of a wireless message to the dignitary with the tablet of the Semitic inscription.

St.George wondered vaguely why, in a world of marvels, progress should not already have outstripped the need of any communication at all.

This reminded him of something at which the prince had hinted away off in another aeon, in another world, when St.George had first seen him, and there followed ten minutes of talk not to be forgotten.
"Would it be possible for you to tell me, your Highness," St.George asked,--and thereafter even a lover must have forgiven the brief apostasy of his thought--"how it can be that you know the English?
How you are able to speak it here in Yaque ?" The motor moved forward as the procession passed, and struck into a magnificent country avenue bordered by trees, tall as elms and fragrant as acacias.
"I can tell you, yes," said the prince, "but I warn you that you will not in the least understand me.

I dare say, however, that I may illustrate by something of which you know.

Do there chance to be, for example, any children in America who are regarded as prodigies of certain understanding ?" "You mean," St.George asked, "children who can play on a musical instrument without knowing how they do it, and so on ?" "Quite so," said the prince with interest.
"Many, your Highness," affirmed St.George.