When he paused before the shrine he seemed like a child come to beseech some last word concerning the Riddle, rather than a man who believed himself to have mastered all wisdom and to have nailed the world-sphinx to her cross.
"Surely there is a vein for the silver And a place for the gold where they fine it.
Iron is taken out of the earth And brass is moulton out of the stone.
Man setteth an end to darkness And searcheth out all perfection: The stones of darkness and of the shadow of death," he was repeating softly.

"So it is," he added, "'and searcheth to the farthest bound.' Have I not done so?
And do I not triumph ?" Then the youth who had once admitted St.George and his friends to that far-away house in McDougle Street--with the hokey-pokey man outside the door--entered with the poetry of deference; and if, as he bent low, there was a lift and droop of his eyelids which tokened utter bewilderment, not to say agitation, he was careful that the prince should not see that.
"Her Highness, the Princess of Yaque, Mrs.Hastings, Mr.Augustus Frothingham and Miss Frothingham ask audience, your Highness," he announced clearly.
Prince Tabnit turned swiftly.
"Whom do you say, Matten ?" he questioned and when the boy had repeated the names, meditated briefly.

He was at a loss to fathom what this strange visit might portend; beyond doubt, he reflected (in a world which was an intaglio of his own designing) it portended nothing at all.

He hastened forward to wait upon them and paused midway the room, for the highest tribute that a Prince of the Litany could pay to another was to receive him in this chamber of the Crucified Sphinx.
"Conduct them here, Matten," he commanded, and took up his station beside an hundred-branched candlestick made in Curium.

There he stood when, having been led down corridors of ivory and through shining anterooms, Mrs.Hastings and Olivia and Antoinette appeared on the threshold of the chamber, followed by Mr.Frothingham.As the prince hastened forward to meet them with sweepings of his gown embroidered by a thousand needles and bent above their hands uttering gracious words, assuredly in all the history of Med and of the Litany the room of the Crucified Sphinx had never presented a more peculiar picture.
Into that tranquil atmosphere, dream-pervaded, Mrs.Medora Hastings swept with all the certainty of an opinion bludgeoning the frail security of a fact.