Amory leaned forward and feverishly polished his pince-nez.
"What do you think of that ?" he put it, beneath his breath, "what _do_ you think of that ?" St.George, watching that little figure--so adorably, almost pathetically little in its corner of the great throne--knew that he had not counted upon her in vain.

Over there on the raised seats Mrs.Medora Hastings and Mr.Augustus Frothingham were looking on matters as helplessly as they would look at a thunder-storm or a circus procession, and they were taking things quite as seriously.
But Olivia, in spite of the tragedy that the hour held for her, was giving the moment its exact value, guiltless of the feminine immorality of panic.

To give a moment its due without that panic, is, St.George knew, a kind of genius, like creating beauty, and divining another's meaning, and redeeming the spirit of a thing from its actuality.

But by that time the arithmetic of his love was by way of being in too many figures to talk about.

Which is the proper plight of love.
Every one had turned toward Prince Tabnit, and as St.George looked it smote him whimsically that that impassive profile was like the profiles upon the ancient coins which, almost any day, might be cast up by a passing hoof on the island mold.