"Soft!" ejaculated Mr. Spenlove, looking round into the darkness and feeling for a fresh cigarette. "You have said it. I was soft. But when you come to think of it, what else could I have been? I am confessing myself before you. What did you want me to do? Invent a tale? In which I play a noble and manly part? A red-blooded story, as they say? A story in which I rescue a virtuous maiden from a gross plutocrat and marry her, the light dying away on a close-up picture of me bending over her while she holds up a replica of Jack's angel child? Why, even Jack would not endorse a yarn like that. I have a very clear memory of him suddenly spoiling the idyllic peace of a summer afternoon in the Mediterranean by dashing his magazine down on the deck and uttering a profane objurgation against what he called 'muck.' We were sliding blissfully along a cobalt-blue floor, a floor without a ripple as far as the eye could see. And there wasn't a woman or a baby, that we were aware of, within three or four hundred miles. Peace, perfect peace. And Jack, instead of realizing the extreme felicity of the actual moment, had been devouring a red-blooded story in which one of these dashing, daring, clean-cut merchant-captains had saved a beautiful virgin from a rascally foreigner. There was a picture of her being saved. Splendid! Specially written for people who love the sea!

"No, I am confessing myself before you. Truth can be served in many ways, and this is mine. The fortunate being whose characters consist of homogeneous heroism and are compact of courage seem to elude my scrutiny. And even when I meet a clever and sensible genius like Florian Kelly, I cannot honestly say I admire him unreservedly. He gets on. He succeeds. He arrives. But people who arrive with the convenient punctuality of a railway timetable do not interest me. They lack the weaknesses which make men fascinating to my amateur fancy.

"And so I am prepared to admit that she did what, in a previous moment of softness, I had asked her to do. She used me. She used me to feed her craving for influence over men, her inherited and insatiable desire for building up romantic and glamorous memories. Florian Kelly regarded her efforts with admiring exasperation, regretting their interference with his own designs upon our susceptibilities. Mrs. Evans had made a commotion like a bird defending her nest. Young Siddons had been bowled over, as he phrased it, and offered her something of no real value to an artist—a tender and inexperienced loyalty. Such women are episodic. Their lives are a string of jewels of varying value connected by a thread of no value at all. And I confess that to me the shame of being used by her was not apparent. She, the leading lady, selected me for a slightly higher rÔle than that of a super in the play, and I found the position singularly agreeable. I was afflicted at the time with no rash desire to supplant the principal protagonists. It was a piquant and persuasive proof of the infinite variety of human relationships that she could bring me to meet the wealthy and powerful individual over whom she had cast the spell of her radiant personality. I mean the gross and licentious plutocrat of the red-blooded story. He came in as I was standing, hat in hand, ready to go, and he heard me described as 'an old friend, who knew her father years ago.' Which was true, though I was not sure Captain Macedoine would have endorsed the statement. Mr. Kinaitsky came forward with his hat on, removed it and one of his gloves, and shook hands with a courtly gesture. He looked older than his photograph. The fine gray hair fluffed out over the ears, the bushy brows shading voluptuous eyes, the swarthy cheeks and flexible lips gave him the air of a prosperous impresario. He brought in with him, however, an atmosphere of affairs. He nodded politely to the girl's explanation, patted her gently on the shoulder, and passed on to his room. Returning for a cigarette, and offering me the box, he remarked that he hoped I would excuse him as he was dining out and had to dress at once. He had had a fatiguing day in the city. Did I know London? A fine day. Would I excuse him once more? Turning to the girl, who was sitting on the arm of a chair, he took her chin in his hand and favoured her with a swift, masculine, appraising glance. She gave him one of her delicious, derisive smiles and whispered something, her eyes flickering toward me for an instant. He patted her cheek and turned away, remarking, 'Of course if she wished.' He would not be in till late. 'Amuse yourself, ma chere,' he added, and bowing slightly to me, went away to his bath.

"There was something odd to me in this, but I found it was a characteristic of his infatuation to see as little of her as possible. He never took her anywhere and he never brought any of his friends to the hotels where they stayed. She had absolute freedom. He gave her whatever she demanded. But she must not bother him. And while she was absent getting a cloak, I looked around the room turning this unusual idiosyncrasy over in my mind. There was a smoking table in one corner and I observed a tarbush on the lower shelf. Of course we ourselves often wear a fez while smoking; but the sight of it gave me a cue. For you must understand that, the normal Anglo-Saxon temperament, there is necessarily something disturbing about such an attitude toward a woman. Assuming the infatuation. And it occurred to me that herein lay the source of an unidentified impression which he had made upon me as he stood regarding the girl. And I saw as well the reason why she had harped so on needing 'a friend.' I looked at the tarbush, glowing bright red among the cedar-wood caskets and—yes, a narghileh stood in the corner behind, the amber mouth-piece thrust into the coils of its own barbarically decorated tube. This man, for all his suave courtesy and western polish, would be the inheritor of oriental ideas. His attitude would be the attitude of the pasha on his divan. He would not understand my sentimental affection for Artemisia, or Florian Kelly's panic-stricken rush from blind passion to a callous, worldly caution. In short, he was equipped precisely as Florian Kelly said we ought to be equipped before we embark upon an episode with such a woman. He had wealth and he had wisdom, not only the wisdom of the world, but the inherited sagacity of orientalized ancestors, the bearded owners of extensive domestic establishments.

"Yes, he gave her absolute freedom, and demanded only absolute obedience. I could not help wondering how Mrs. Evans would have regarded such a proposition, and this led me to reflect that Jack's equipment was too primitive, too simple. We Westerners do not seem to prosper in such enterprises. We are hampered by our excessive idealism. Our training does not fit us for the rÔle of pasha. We are unable to compass the art of intelligent infatuation. And I confess that at this close view of the understructure of a polygamous career, I was weak enough to feel scandalized. When she told me casually, as we sat at dinner, that Mr. Kinaitsky had a fiancÉe, a rich young Jewess in Saloniki, my appetite was affected. I felt that he was, well, a little beyond my range. Any faint notions I may have had of experimenting in that direction myself faded from view. Even the position of friend, of being a sort of deputy amant-de-coeur, was fraught with grave danger to my emotional stability. Very curious, I can assure you, to be suddenly apprised of the extreme fragility of one's moral fibre!

"And the trouble with us is that we are usually unable to make out a very strong case for our side of the question. We point with a fine gesture toward the severely beautiful figure of Virtue, and the woman, following our instructions, looks and sees Mrs. Evans and the angel child. We point ecstatically to Love, and she shrugs her shoulders as the figure of young Siddons emerges, with his boyish mind choked with racial and social prejudices, his muzzy, impossible idealism, and his empty purse.

"And mind you, she was naÏve enough or clever enough to play up to the highest possible estimate of such a situation. When I asked her how long this was going to last, she was charmingly vague and pensive. It was part of the bargain, I suppose, to furnish the necessary sentiment. And when I persisted, and wished to know what she would do then, she sighed and hoped I would always be her friend. Well, she was right about that. I was her friend until the time came, not so long after, when her need of friends ceased, when her homeless and undisciplined spirit was transported to a sphere uncomplicated, let us hope, by our terrestrial deficiencies. And I like to think that this friendship of ours, unsullied by conventional gallantry, was for her a source of comfort, and sustained her at times when the flames of exaltation burned low, and she was oppressed by the shadow of her destiny. But of course, this may be only one of my occidental illusions.

"At the time, however, it seemed as though for me the adventure was already nothing more than an intriguing memory. From time to time I received postcards written from Paris, Munich, Vienna, Buda-Pesth, Prague, and Constantinople. And then, after a long silence, a brief letter telling me that she was living in an apartment, near the Esky Djouma, turning up out of the Rue Eqnatia, but that I was to write to the Rue Paleologue, and she would be sure to get it. Her father was much preoccupied with financial affairs. She wanted to know if I were coming to Saloniki. I was to be sure and let her know.

"Well, there was nothing inherently impossible in my appearing in Saloniki. I had been there in the Manola more than once with coal. At that time, however, we were busily shipping our mineral wealth, at cut-rate prices, to Italy, and the voyages alternated between Genoa and Ancona, calling at Tunis for iron ore to keep Krupp's gun-shops at Essen working full time. All three places were too far away for week-ending at Saloniki, and the charter was for a year. I wrote to her more than once. But I am no correspondent. I am unable to maintain the, to-me, unnatural mental contortions of translating a mood into a literary form. I can tell you—yes; but I regard with envy those fortunate souls who 'pour themselves out' as we say, upon paper. Somehow or other, I am not to be poured out. And so our correspondence did not flourish with that tropical luxuriance which is so much appreciated by the world when we are dead and unable to protect ourselves. But I did not forget. I shall never forget that romantic encounter, the sweet, resonant voice coming across the rose-shaded supper-table, the exquisite face with the radiant and questing, derisive smile.

"And then, with the matter-of-fact abruptness of sea-faring, I was informed that we were to proceed to the Bristol Channel and load steam coal for Saloniki. Jack was concerned at this, for it meant a longer voyage, and Mrs. Evans was in an interesting condition, as he put it. Jack had settled down. He was worried, of course, but his period of eccentric uxoriousness was over. He sighed occasionally for a 'shore job,' but he acknowledged the sense of my argument that he would be a fool to quit. He was already looking forward to the distant day when he could retire. Had saved a couple of hundred pounds and put it into oil shares, which were going up. His conversation contained less of Madeline and more of possible profits. In fact, Madeline disappeared, and was supplanted by a sober institution known as 'the Missus.' He had forgotten 'the gel,' I imagined, but it transpired that even upon him she had left her mark. On the voyage out, during a conversation about our probable port of loading, he suddenly expressed a curiosity as to what became o' that gel? What did I suppose? For I had not scrupled to keep my relations with Captain Macedoine's daughter to myself. I said I couldn't imagine. Probably married by this time. Ah! said Jack. Best thing, too. What was her name now? He'd forgotten. Ah! Fancy givin' a child a name like that! And another thing. We'd be able to have a look at the Anglo-Hellenic Development Company. See what we'd missed, eh? Jack gave a fat chuckle. Oil for him! Something that was quoted on the Stock Exchange. Six per cent. and safe as houses. Safer! Tenants were so destructive nowadays, his father-in-law told him. For the workhouse master was an owner of small houses in a quiet way. A warm man. Had five hundred in these here oil shares. And so on.

"No, I kept my romantic behaviour to myself. Jack would not understand my interest in 'that gel.' Before we left Cardiff I had written to the Rue Paleologue to say that we were on our way, and gave the probable date of our arrival. And while we were on our way I turned over in my mind my reasons for writing to the Rue Paleologue. Middle age demands reasons. Well, I was hungry for sensations. In my youth I had a great ambition to seek adventure. Fate took me into a world of machine-belts, harsh language, and industrial dullness. I escaped from that into sea-life believing that I should find adventure. The greatest mistake imaginable! But I realized that it was not adventure I really craved after all—only sensations. A difficult case to prescribe for, I admit. One has to train oneself to perceive, to become aware of their proximity. I suppose this really is what used to pass as culture—the adventures of one's soul among the doubtful masterpieces which throng the dusty junk-shop we call the World. I played with the notion that in the Rue Paleologue I might come upon an authentic piece.

"I confess, though, that I had a certain diffidence about going ashore and calling, as we say, in a perfectly normal manner, upon Captain Macedoine. I really felt I had not sufficient excuse. And when we were able to go ashore, and I stepped across what is now satirically known as the Place de la LibertÉ, I compromised. I went into the OdÉon, a lofty cafÉ on the corner, to have a drink and come to a decision. It was full. At the far end a big burly individual in a frock coat and a fez, with a silver star on his breast, was standing on a chair and delivering a harangue. A patriot. Waiters rushed to and fro bearing trays loaded with glasses. The murmur of conversation rose and fell around me. Here and there among the excited proletariat sat dignified old gentlemen with drooping moustaches sipping mastic, munching caviar sandwiches, and reading newspapers. And while I was rolling a cigarette I caught sight, at a corner table, of a familiar figure, a figure in a short shabby overcoat with a fur collar and a fur cap on his head, writing rapidly on a large sheet of the cafÉ paper. It was M. Nikitos, the lieutenant of the Anglo-Hellenic Development Company. I had forgotten him, to tell the truth. Artemisia gave me the impression that he had dropped out of consideration. I was mistaken, it appears. He had not forgotten me, however. In due course he looked in my direction, looked again with attention, and I saw recognition come into his unprepossessing features. He rose up, gathered together his writing materials, and came over to my table. We shook hands. I invited him to have a drink, which he accepted with alacrity. He still had the air of a dirty virtuoso. He was good enough to say he remembered me perfectly in Ipsilon, of the Manola, ah, yes. Well, he was doing extremely well, having taken up international journalism. Was employed on the Phos, of which I might have heard. He didn't look as though international journalism had done much for him. His long French boots were burst at the sides and his linen was far from fresh. To my enquiry as to the prosperity of the great enterprise he raised his eyebrows and shoulders and exhibited a pair of unwashed palms, his forearms resting on the marble table. In time, in time, they would achieve success. But the conditions were highly unfavourable to financial operations. There was great political unrest. Revolution was in the air. Eventually Liberty would be triumphant, which was glorious, but in the meanwhile, finance languished. At present even a very sound scheme for building a dock was hung up for lack of adequate support from responsible capitalists.

"'And Captain Macedoine—is he still in business?' I asked, casually. He opened his eyes and drew down the corners of his lips. Very sad. Confined to his apartment. He, M. Nikitos, the only friend faithful to him. Deserted by his daughter even. But still planning for the development of Macedonia. Colossal brain still working. Adverse circumstances, aided by GrÜnbaum's company, preventing success.

"This was surprising. Deserted by his daughter? I suggested to M. Nikitos that he must be under a misapprehension. He looked at me gloomily and shook his head. She had gone off, deluding her father with a story of marriage. He himself knew how much there was in that. Certainly she had got money from someone—but whom? Sooner or later he would discover. He had his own interest in that affair. After he had done everything for them when they first came to Saloniki, to show him the door.... When he did discover her and her lover, we would see. Straitened circumstances had prevented him from doing anything so far. But wait.

"'Why, what would you do?' I asked, idly. The notion of this penurious little humbug getting in the way of a serene and powerful polygamist like Kinaitsky was entertaining. He looked down between his knees, presenting the crown of his greasy tarbush at my breast as though he were about to butt me. He mumbled something. It was so preposterous I pretended I had misunderstood him.

"'Oh, come!' I said. 'You must be joking. You can't interfere with anybody like that. She has a right to do as she pleases. Why bother about her? I happen to know she is very happy.'

"He looked up at me sharply, and pulled his mouth to one side as though he were making a face at me.

"'Happy?' he echoed. 'You know? Then it is with you.... It explains all those English clothes she had when I saw her at the White Tower. She was in a box with the family who live next door. Madame Sarafov....' He stared at me with his mouth fallen open, his whole body motionless. He gave me the impression of a man perched upon a perilous precipice, uncertain whether the next movement would plunge him to destruction.

"'No,' I said, shaking my head, 'you are making a mistake. But I know.' He moved slightly, leaning forward.

"'You know where she lives?' he muttered. 'This place where she is very happy?'

"'No, I can't say I do,' I replied. 'You can hardly expect me to tell you, either, even if I knew, after what you said just now. Of course,' I went on, 'you spoke in hyperbole, but it would be scarcely the act of a gentleman to distress a woman by forcing yourself upon her.'

"'Hyperbole?' he repeated, staring at me as though fascinated. 'Gentleman ... distress?... she gave the Sarafov girl some English clothes. I never imagined for a moment.... Incredible dÉnouement.' He looked suddenly discouraged. 'Then you have her in England.' A gleam of understanding came into his eyes. 'You have brought her back here? Well, do you know what she will do, now you have finished with her? She will——'

"He stopped as I put up my hand. I said 'She is not my mistress, I tell you.' He brought his hand down with a crash on the table, so that the glasses jumped and the ink-bottle slipped off and emptied itself on the floor. One or two people looked at him, but most of the excitement centred round the robust person with the silver star, whose speech was being applauded with a tremendous amount of guttural approval. Nikitos stood up, towering over me in a threatening manner.

"'Then who took her from me?' he snarled, 'who gave her the English clothes? You....' He sat down again and held up a menacing finger. 'You think, you imagine, that the destruction of my hopes is to be accepted with what you call philosophy? Well, yes.... I am philosophical——' he stooped without taking his eyes from mine and replaced the ink-bottle on the table. 'Listen, Monsieur. I am a pure man. In my travels, in Egypt, in Turkey, and in Europe, I keep myself—you understand—immaculate. Because I have here'—he tapped his dark forehead where the large flat black eyebrows were like symmetrical charcoal smudges—'I have here an undoubted ambition. In Egypt I was poor—very poor—very, very poor. Captain Macedoine, whom I met in my business, extends to me his generosity. To me, a poor interpreter in a firm of exporters, he offers his friendship. I confide to him my ambition, my dreams. My mÉtier, I tell him, is politics; but of what use without the financial power? You comprehend, Monsieur? For me it was impossible to associate with a demi-vierge. I express myself to Captain Macedoine with great strength, for it is my business in Alexandria to introduce these ladies to the captains and the passengers. Captain Macedoine gives me his entire confidence. He tells me he has a daughter. When he is appointed to a position in Ipsilon he is good enough to obtain for me also a subordinate appointment. He brings his daughter from England. We are affianced. We come to Saloniki. I secure for them a good house, most suitable, in the Rue Paleologue. What then? Mademoiselle is distrait. She desires me to wait, a month, two, three. I do not understand, but it is as Mademoiselle wishes. And then Captain Macedoine becomes very ill. A terrible misfortune! I work. I think. I sacrifice myself. Mademoiselle is suddenly no longer distrait. She commands me to leave the house—I, Stepan Nikitos! You understand, Monsieur, that I have had much to bear. The Osmanli, our vessel, entering the harbour, is struck by another vessel, and sinks. Only her mast remains to see above the water. I have to go to Constantinople to get the insurance. Our concessions in Macedonia are no longer secure. And Captain Macedoine too ill to be informed! I struggle against those misfortunes. I am compelled to accept a position on the Phos to earn the rent of my poor room and a little food. I go to Mademoiselle and I find she is gone. Her father receives me as always, with affection; but he grieves to tell me his daughter is married. Well, Monsieur, I have told you that, in Alexandria, I was of necessity a friend of the demi-vierge, and I am familiar with the significant change in the tone of these women when they have secured a wealthy lover. When Mademoiselle commanded me to leave the house I was not deceived. It was for me the destruction of my hopes and the birth of a resolution.'

"He held his finger horizontal, pointing at my breast, as though his resolution was to take careful aim and shoot. 'Which nothing can kill,' he added, with calmness, and folded his arms on the table.

"Now what struck me about these revelations of M. Nikitos, made across the sloppy marble-topped table of the OdÉon, was what I may call their preoccupied sincerity. He conveyed the impression of being perfectly sincere and yet thinking of something else at the same time. And there was another peculiar thing about it. Although he addressed himself to me with exaggerated directness, I could not rid myself of the conviction that I knew no more of what he was really up to than if I were in a theatre watching him on the stage. For, remember, all the sounds, the cries of the fanatics, the guttural ebullience of the burly person with the silver star, the article for the Phos, half written in a spidery Greek script, the whole of the jangling uproar of the city, was within this man's cognizance, while to me it was a mere senseless cacophony. His assumption of lonely despair was not borne out by the subtle air he had of being in with all these people who were chaffering among themselves and applauding the rhetorician with his silver star. And the upshot was that I grew very much afraid of this sinister, shrunken figure whose hopes had been destroyed, and who was nursing with extreme care a new-born resolution 'which nothing could kill.' His singular claim to purity only added to this alarm. One is scarcely reassured by hearing that a man is not only desperate but immaculate. And I did what most of us would do under the circumstances. I got up to go. M. Nikitos gathered his manuscript together, stuffed it into his breast pocket and prepared to accompany me. As we came out upon the quay I turned to him.

"'Are you coming down to the ship?' The question seemed to bring his thoughts to a standstill.

"'The ship?' he repeated. 'Oh, no, Monsieur. Why should I go down to the ship? I will see you when you return.'

"'Now see here,' I said, touching him on the shoulder, 'you must get all that nonsense out of your head about Miss Macedoine. If she has treated you badly the decent thing to do is to forget it. You may not be the only one, you know.'

"'Forget it?' he asked, like an intelligent child, 'how can one forget it, Monsieur?'

"'What I mean is, you must not annoy her if you ever meet her.'

"'Annoy her?' he repeated in the same tone. 'I should not annoy. Our interview,' he added, reflectively, looking at his disintegrating boots, 'would not take up more than a few moments. Very short. To the point, as you say.' And he regarded me with amusement.

"I left him with a sudden gesture of impatience and he went off toward the offices of the Phos. Words broke out upon him like a rash: it was impossible to preserve one's credulity in the face of his enigmatic fluency. Impossible to maintain a grasp upon common facts and homely eventualities. I walked on past the dock-buildings and came to the station. And I wondered where the Rue Paleologue might be. A cab-driver raised his whip as I halted, and moved slowly over to where I stood. He did not seem to have any clear ideas, but signified by a wealth of gesture that if I would get in he would find out. It was just dusk and I got in. We galloped away with a great deal of whip-cracking and noise of iron tires on the granite sets, past the OdÉon again, and onward along the quays. I reflected upon the attitude Nikitos had taken up toward Artemisia, but I could arrive at no opinion. One has very little data for gauging the mentality of a highly sophisticated but immaculate being. And I still retained the impression that she, under the powerful protection of Kinaitsky, would stand in very little danger from the annoyance of a journalist on the Phos. Nevertheless, idealists who take pride in their purity are dangerous, because they are incalculable. It is the only hold we have on most people in these days of extreme personal liberty—the sad but inexorable fact that they are not immaculate. It captured my imagination in spite of my distaste for the man, this conception he had evoked of himself pursuing his way through the unnameable wickedness of Levantine cities, yet bearing within an inviolable chastity. One felt there was something formidable in its mere existence, like vitriol, something not quite human, and therefore to be feared. It was like beholding a white-robed virgin with severe features bearing a palm amidst the groups of courtesans who were strolling along the quays, arm in arm, taking the air before engaging in the business of the evening.

"There was a new twist given to my thoughts when the carriage pulled up and the driver spoke to a couple of these girls who were walking mincingly along in their high-heeled shoes. Evidently inquiring the way. They regarded me with friendly approval, but they shook their heads over the Rue Paleologue. We were about to drive on when one of them put her hand to her head with a gesture of recollection. She spoke to the driver—a musical and resonant torrent of words. We drove on, past the great bulk of the Tour Blanche, on into the darkness.

"For the road here left the quay and began to wind between large houses embowered in trees. Those on the right faced the Gulf. No doubt in one of them Mr. Kinaitsky dwelt with his wealthy Hebrew bride. To the left could be seen avenues turning off. There was a great glare for a moment as we passed a building with tall windows—a factory of some sort. And then, after following this road for some time, we turned up one of the avenues into deeper darkness and a silence broken only by the clink of the harness and the soft sound of hoof and tire on loam and leaves. At the head of this road the carriage stopped, and the driver pointed with his whip, repeating the word Paleologue to intimate that we were there.

"I paid him and moved across the road in the direction indicated, and found my foot striking a hard sidewalk beneath trees. It was very dark. Here and there a grid of light was thrown on the road from a partly shuttered window, or a pale glow would silhouette a woman sitting in a doorway. There were many houses and I did not know the number I wanted. I moved slowly along, hesitating to ask. You see, I was not sure. And the language difficulty troubled me. These people spoke no intelligible word as far as I was concerned. But I was constrained to pause at length, and seeing some seated forms, outside a doorway in the darkness, I began by asking if this were really the Rue Paleologue. A tall woman rose from her chair and said 'Oui, Monsieur,' and I found myself in the dim light from a spacious tiled vestibule, floundering in the middle of whispered explanations. Their eyes seemed very large in the darkness, and their forms tall and ghostly. Suddenly one of the girls stepped into the light and I saw the broad, flat beauty of the Southern Slav. She stood there regarding me, her hands behind her, her chin raised. And then she remarked in a hoarse and musical tone, 'You English?' I said in some surprise that I was and asked if they spoke it. She said 'Why, sure,' and we all laughed.

"Surprising? Well, yes, it was. Because the intonation was not English at all, but American. It was like reading a book in French and Italian and coming suddenly upon a sentence written in italics, in one's own tongue. The very isolation of it, adrift in a waste of partially intelligible expressions, doubles the luminous emphasis of it. I looked at them in astonishment, and they looked at each other and laughed again. And then they led the way into the house.

"They were very much alike. That is to say, they resembled the portraits of the same handsome woman at the ages of thirteen, eighteen, and thirty-five. They were mother and daughters. And when I said I was looking for a Miss Macedoine, they uttered exclamations.

"'Her father—he lives in the next house,' they said.

"'I have heard,' I remarked, 'of a family named—what was it?—Sarafov.' And they nodded with animation. 'You got it,' said the elder girl. 'This is mother, Mrs. Sarafov. I'm Pollyni, and my sister here is Olga. Did Miss Macedoine tell you about it?'

"'No,' I said, 'I heard in a round-about way. But tell me, where is she?'

"They looked at each other. Mrs. Sarafov spoke.

"'Are you the gentleman on the ship...?' I nodded. 'Well, I guess we can tell you. I suppose you know how she's fixed.' I nodded again. 'Well, she's got an apartment in the town. If you like we'll send a message to her, but she wouldn't be able to get here much before twelve o'clock. Perhaps you'd better call to-morrow. Afternoons she's free, you understand.'

"But of course what I was thinking about at that particular moment was the problem of the Sarafovs themselves. It was simple enough. They had emigrated to New York some years before, Sarafov taking his wife and two young children to make his fortune in the Golden Country beyond the sea. Not much, according to our standards, no doubt, but a comfortable competence in Turkey where living was so cheap. So they had come back and settled in their native town, in the Frank Quarter, while Sarafov pÈre continued for a year or so longer his accumulation of dollars. 'Yes,' said Mrs. Sarafov. 'We liked America all right, after we got used to their ways, but this country's pretty good, too. And it's freer here,' she added, reflectively. This was so astonishing that I felt bound to demand some explanation. It was the first time I had heard of any one fleeing from America to seek liberty in the Sultan's dominions. 'Why,' said Mrs. Sarafov, 'you can't do a thing in America without you get soaked for it, some way. And the prices! A dollar don't go any distance at all. My husband, he says, 'Yes, but you are handling the money, though.' That's like a man!'

"They were astonishing. They sat there, those three extremely handsome females, easy and uncorseted, their white teeth gleaming, their perfect complexions glowing, their dark eyes and hair shining in the lamplight, and contradicted all the conventional notions I had ever held about American emigrants. They had no animus against America, you must remember, but they possessed something for which even the western republic cannot supply a substitute—a traditional love of the land of their ancestors. They had a perfectly steady and unsentimental grip upon realities. Liberty for them was not a frothy gabble of insincere verbiage, but a clear and concrete condition of body and soul. I suppose the perfectly healthy have no dreams. Their vitality, like the vitality of so many of the people in these regions, was extraordinary. It was like a radiance around them. They seemed independent of everything peculiar to our boasted western civilization. Neither patent medicines nor cosmetics nor municipal enterprise came into their lives at all. There were no books in the house. They produced figs in syrup, and sherbet and cognac, and a smooth red wine that was a most generous cordial. They gave me bread and raisins. They had all the things we read of, and strive to imitate, and which we imagine we buy in cans. They had no manners, for they ate with their fingers and licked them vigorously afterward; yet they conveyed the impression that their civilization was older than the ruined turrets above the city. They sat and moved with the poised rhythm and dignity of the larger carnivora. The girls reclined with an easy and assured relaxing of the limbs upon a settee of violet plush, and their grouping made me think instantly of ancient sculptural forms. They were without that nuance and stealthy deception which gives us such a feeling of manly superiority over our own women, and without which masculine humour would die out. Perhaps it was because, not only did they dispense with what are called breakfast foods, but with breakfast itself, that they could sit there in the merciless glare of an unshaded kerosene lamp and defy one with their flawless and amiable personalities. And while I sat there and talked to them and ate their bizarre and appetizing provender, I became aware of something even more astonishing than their failure to use the immeasurable advantages of existence in a Brooklyn apartment, where the breath of life, warmed beyond endurance, came up out of mysterious grids in the walls and dried all the vitality out of them. It wasn't only that, it transpired. These women, with their quality of hard, practical devotion to a concrete bodily well-being, conveyed something beyond all that. For when I suggested that Artemisia's way of life must place her beyond their sympathies, they registered emphatic dissent. For why? They were unable to understand. They looked at each other.

"'That's American,' said Mrs. Sarafov, distinctly.

"'Not entirely,' I protested. 'It has a certain vogue in England also, I assure you. And personally,' I added, 'I am bound to say it makes a difference. I regret it.'

"'But,' said Mrs. Sarafov, and she turned her eyes upon her younger daughter, who was going out with some dishes, 'But she must have a man to look after her.' She regarded me attentively. 'I suppose you know that she is very fond of you. She is always talking about how kind you were to her on the ship. And in London. She says you liked her at first. And I can't see,' she went on, 'why, if you regret it, as you say, you didn't look after her yourself. She would have gone.'

"'And you think that would have made any difference?' I demanded. I was very much disturbed at this sudden turn of things. I seemed to be getting away from my cherished position as a super in the play. And it was the emotion educed from this conversation that revealed to me how these women had abandoned their life in America without regret. I had a vision of it suddenly as I looked at the other daughter's face. She was regarding me with a sort of raptness. The exquisite features glowed and the bright, bronze-coloured eyes burned above purple shadows like lamps above dark pools. Yes, I had a vision of it suddenly, and it was what we call, lightly, cynically, disapprovingly, Romance. It was simply this—that to them, what we deem a dangerous and useless appendage of our spiritual life is a tremendous and vital need. So tremendous and so vital that the external moral aspect of it was a matter of little importance. To put the case in point, they were interested in me not because I was a moral Englishman but because Artemisia was fond of me. It was for them as simple as breathing to go with the being one loved. And back of that there was another thing, which scared the modern and moral being within me still more. It followed, from their perfectly naÏve and innocent faith in Romance, that a woman was not a political equal of man, a strenuous co-educated, enfranchised voter, but a possession. The crown of her achievement was to be possessed by the man she loved. He might kill her or enslave her, but without men she was of no importance whatever. And I suspected that my own attitude which, mind you, is the attitude of most of us, to draw away at the approach of a compromising emotion, was difficult to comprehend. Especially when, in response to the inevitable question, I said I wasn't married or promised. They harped on it, those two, while the younger girl was in the kitchen. It was evident Artemisia had confided a great deal to them and they had talked and talked, turning this peculiar problem over in their minds, the problem of a man who persisted in remaining a super in the play. Barbarous of them? Well, let us say mediÆval. They lived in a world of harsh limitations and extraordinary latitudes. They were forbidden divorce and were accustomed to neighbours with a plurality of wives. They seemed to know nothing of the refinements of modern passion. For them it was a question of sex, without any admixture of social or racial distinctions. That Artemisia had had a lover in England was not a matter of amazement to them at all. What they couldn't understand was the reason why everything had to be driven underground. And the extremely bourgeois conception of love culminating in a colourless civil contract between a good provider and a capable housekeeper, which was all they could see in American institutions—a civil contract which could apparently be shot to pieces upon any frivolous pretext, struck their mediÆval minds as profoundly irreligious and unpleasant.

"And then," said Mr. Spenlove, suddenly turning and savagely addressing the silent and recumbent forms in the darkness of the awning, "I made another astonishing discovery. They respected Captain Macedoine. A nice old gentleman! They thought he was fine! I give you my word, when they told me that, and proposed that we go right in and see him, I obtained a glimmer of what Nietzsche must have meant when he spoke of the transvaluation of all values. I was startled by the sudden realization of how tenaciously I had been holding to my belief in that man's essential unworthiness. You regard a man for years as despicable and rotten, judging him as though you were God, and then you meet a woman who worships the very ground he treads on, or a child to whom he is a fanatically fond parent. Of course, the enthusiasm of Monsieur Nikitos for his patron was discounted for by my low estimate of Nikitos himself. Possibly, I mused in a startled way, as we entered the dark ante-room of Captain Macedoine's abode, M. Nikitos was regarded by a septuagenarian mother as an angel of light. The possibility remains in suspense, for of that gentleman's antecedents I don't recall any particulars. I saw him again, as you shall hear, but he failed to prepossess me in his favour. He departed from my view, a perplexing and polysyllabic problem, claiming for himself a useless and preposterous purity. But perhaps it was not so useless from his point of view. Perhaps he owed his brief political omnipotence, when the whole country flamed into battle, murder, and sudden death, to his peculiar mania for a spectacular chastity. They say men fear such freaks, and deem them endowed with sinister supernatural powers. Possibly. There are strange things embedded in that fierce lava-flow of the Balkan volcanoes, congealed agonies and solidified monstrosities of soul.

"At first I could see nothing save that the chamber was large and lofty. Even at the moment it struck me—a sort of last attempt at superiority, you know—that it would be just like Captain Macedoine to live in a large and lofty chamber without much light. And then, as I saw him, propped up among cushions on an immense bed, with a table close at hand on which reposed writing materials, books, a photograph, and a small shaded lamp, I wondered why the characteristics which in him had created such animosity should take the form of an alluring hypnotism in his daughter. Such thoughts make one uneasy and anxious for one's position as a super in the play. For that was the upshot of it, that I was shakily anxious to see her again, to see Captain Macedoine because he was her father, to drift, I knew not where. I was a pretty spectacle to myself, I can assure you!

"His illness had emaciated him, and the crimson bedspread, together with the long, drooping folds of the looped-up mosquito-bar, like the curtains of a catafalque, and a round cap he wore to cover his bald spot, gave him the air of some old pope holding an audience. He raised his eyes without lifting his head, and smiled as Madame Sarafov and her daughter, with measured strides that reminded one again of the larger carnivora, moved forward to the bedside. And he lifted his hand in a decidedly pontifical fashion, as though to bless them. I remained for a moment in the shadow before they turned and explained who I was; and the pale blue eyes, without any recognition, beamed upon me as upon a new and promising adherent to the faith. He was immensely improved, though very much nearer the grave than when I had seen him for that dubious moment through the window of his house in Ipsilon. The harsh ravages of a life of distorted ideals had been softened by illness to an ascetic benignity. And he talked. I was obliged to admit to myself that so far I had never seen him in private life. He talked and he was full of reminiscence. He had a musical tenor voice, and he spoke rapidly and with an unconcerned change from subject to subject which might be set down to garrulity. He gazed into the shadows as he talked and I listened, very much astonished. For it was not the talk of a wicked man or an unhappy man or even an unsuccessful man. It was rather the talk of an intelligent humbug, such as one might expect from the super-annuated and senile secretary of some rich and fantastic scientific society. He gave one that impression, that his whole life had been one of gentle dilletantism under the protecting shadow of giant vested interests. It was an astonishingly picturesque scene, the sort of genre picture the Victorians did so well and for which we moderns have so profound a contempt. It might have been called 'The Old Professor Tells His Story.' It flowed from him. He had a fund of phrases, quite common no doubt, but which he used as though he had invented them himself. His long, rose-tinted, transparent nostrils moved at times. His hands lay on the bedspread, singularly small and chunky for so large a being, and he often withdrew his gaze suddenly from the shadows of the past and examined his knuckles with a sharp scrutiny that, I suppose, was merely a habit born of an unconscious reflex action, but gave one a notion that at times he began to doubt his own reality.

"And then," said Mr. Spenlove after a pause, "I discovered that Captain Macedoine belonged to that class of raconteurs who do not believe in reticence on personal matters. I have very little of that sort of squeamishness myself, but he was much more confidential. If confidential is the word. Because there was no atmosphere of confession about his story. He frequently interjected the words, 'you know,' and it really seemed as if he assumed that we did know, and was just amusing himself. Or perhaps he was rehearsing for the day of judgment. No matter. He ran on. And we listened. We were interrupted once, when an elderly person, 'My housekeepah,' as he called her, 'Madame Petronita,' came in with some sustaining liquid in a basin. And if you ask me what he talked about, I should say that he furnished us with a large number of details of his private life which the majority of us never mention even though we may not be ashamed of them. At this distance of time it presents to me the sort of memory which one retains of an interesting book read long ago. I remember him, you see, because of what happened afterward, because he was the father of this girl of whom I am telling you, and I recall the picture of him dispensing those amiable garrulities because it was as we sat there that the notion first came to me that he was really an original artist working upon himself and concealing himself behind the grandiose presentment of an impossibly superior and effulgent human being. All I had known of him or heard of him in the old days corroborated this notion of mine. 'We are a very old family, you know—I was a younger son, you know—I was at Charterhouse School, you know—we were very poor—a scholarship boy, you know.' This was addressed to a certain extent to me, as an Englishman, of course, but the glamour of his rich intonation enveloped those two beautiful women, mother and daughter, sitting there with their perfect parted lips and their extraordinarily seductive Slavonic eyes. It would be interesting, no doubt, to know just what they imagined lay in the portentous statement that Captain Macedoine had been sent as a poor boy—a day boy, he informed us meticulously—to that ancient foundation known as the Charterhouse—they with their oriental antecedents, their untrammelled comprehension of the romantic value of life, and their initiation into western ways in a Brooklyn apartment. Yet I'm not sure that deep did not call into deep, that they did not succeed in getting hold of his real meaning after all. As Mrs. Sarafov said to me afterward in the intense darkness of the street, 'Captain Macedoine, he goes 'way back, I guess'; and there was a peculiar inflection in her tone which brought to mind echoing corridors in the house of life.

"Yes, he was a younger son and he went out into an unsympathetic world as a 'secretary'. Became a land-steward on great estates, secretary to a London club, which fell on evil days, and was—in short—shut up. Travelled for a while. I like that. It gave the obliging human imagination such scope in which to devise a romantic and Byronic pilgrimage for him. Accepted a post as purser on a grand duke's yacht. He began to move in exalted circles. Grand duchesses, princesses of principalities, eccentric millionaires, oriental potentates, and English nobles with Mediterranean villas came upon the stage and performed various evolutions which brought them into touch with the Grand Duke's purser. He was thanked for his services on one occasion by a fat, pop-eyed voluptuary who has become famous in history for scientific and cold-blooded political murders. Was offered a cigarette from the Imperial case which he accepted of course, but did not venture to smoke. Indeed, murmured Captain Macedoine with a faint smile, he had it still. 'My dear,' he addressed the girl Pollyni, 'if you will bring me the bag in the top drawer over there....' She came back into the circle of light bearing a small black bag of formidably heavy leather, the handle-straps sewn right round the body of it and the bronze hasp fitted with a massive brass padlock. It was a bag to inspire awe; and yet it made me smile. On one side the thick leather had been carefully pared away in three places. You see, I recognized that bag at once as one of the specie carriers of the Maracaibo Steamship Company, whose initials M. S. C. had been removed. It reminded me that after all I had known this personality, in the making, when he had not yet realized all his magnificent possibilities. In those days the furtive theft of a leather bag was all in the day's work. But when I looked at him again I was almost afraid to believe my own memories and conclusions. He held the bag before him, his small chunky hands gathered together on the handles, and gazed into the shadows with an expression of gentle and refined melancholy upon his face, as though he knew there might be nothing in the bag after all.

"But there was. There were things in that bag I couldn't have believed existed out of a museum or a grand-opera property-room. There were his epaulettes and other insignia as a grand duke's purser, thick slices of gold and silver lace, buttons as large as medallions, and a badge like some ancient coat of arms done in glittering enamel. There were russia-leather boxes whose frayed edges still bore traces of exquisite gold-tooling and which, on being opened, bore within, delicately printed on their satin lining, the strange names of oriental and Levantine jewellers. And in one of these boxes, an oblong affair like the case of a cigar-holder, we were permitted to behold the cigarette which the great potentate had deigned to offer the Grand Duke's purser. A fat oval thing bearing an imperial monogram in gold. Captain Macedoine regarded it reverently as it lay on his palm. From His Majesty's own case, he observed in a deep abstraction. Part of the Old Order. Soon to go.... He spread out his bizarre possessions on the coverlet and showed us each in turn. There was a slip-ring for a cravat, of gold so heavy it could never be used, and with an incongruous emerald like a lump of bottle glass clamped to the centre of it. There was a stick-pin with a perfect knob of silly-looking rubies. There were cuff-buttons like Brazil nuts and about as beautiful, with diamonds in an eruption around the edges. There was a gold stop watch in a hunter case, with a chime and a coat-of-arms. And there was a gold cigarette case like a polished slab, almost insolent in its sheer, naked pricelessness. These, it appeared, were tokens of recognition from various wealthy personages who had been guests on the Grand Duke's yacht. It was customary, you know. There had been many others, which he did not regard with any particular sentiment, and had sold or exchanged for feminine trinkets for his dear Euphrosyne. There was a movement on the part of the two women as he pronounced this name and I looked at the girl. She met my gaze with a radiant smile and a little nod that seemed to mean 'Now we are coming to it.' As we were. For Captain Macedoine went on to inform us that one of the penalties of his wanderings among princes and plutocrats was an almost monastic habit of life. It would not have done, you know. He was the repository of discreet confidences, the inarticulate witness of august privacies. He occupied a position, so he seemed to imply, similar to that of the eunuchs of oriental empires, in so far as he was supposed to have no ascertainable human attributes beyond cupidity and intelligence. A seneschal! So it fell out that the Grand Duke, whose photograph showed a much be-whiskered person with very long thin legs and a huge nose, found himself without a purser one day. Captain Macedoine resigned. Under ordinary circumstances he would have returned to England and settled on a small estate in the country. But the circumstances were not ordinary. He had become the last of his line. The Macedoines had been dwindling for centuries. Did I believe in hereditary destinies? Families do die out, you know. So instead of taking the P. L. M. express from Cannes to Paris and so on to London, he took a passage to New York. First class, you know. As we reached this particular stage in Captain Macedoine's reminiscences, a brief and extraordinarily concentrated expression came into the pale blue eyes fixed on the shadows beyond the bed, his hands and nostrils remained momentarily rigid, as though a sharp memory had gone right through him and bereft him of all volition. And his eyes, closing, seemed to take his life with them and he became a corpse enjoying, let us say, a siesta. And this paroxysm, which gave me an uncomfortable feeling that Captain Macedoine was omitting the really interesting details of his departure from the Grand Duke's yacht, was construed by the Sarafov women as a symptom of mental anguish; and the girl, with a gesture almost divine in its exquisite and restrained impulsiveness, touched his arm. A smile suffused the man's features before he opened his eyes and turned them upon her with sacerdotal graciousness. The thing was so unreal that I was lost in a turmoil of effort to retain my hold upon actuality. The histrionic instinct gives one strange jolts when viewed close up. And through that turmoil I heard him telling them, as he had done before often enough no doubt, the story of how he met his dear Euphrosyne in the old French Quarter. And as he often said, you know, his dear Artemisia was the living image, you know, of her dear mother. His hand moved absently and the girl, anticipating his desire as though they had rehearsed the performance many times, leaned forward, took a photograph from the table, and handed it to me. His dear Euphrosyne!

"Well, it wasn't so very like his daughter after all, not really so like her as Pollyni was like Mrs. Saratov. The woman in the photo was undeniably beautiful, but it was the beauty of the octaroon. The large eyes and the full, sensuous lips expressed with sombre emphasis the great enigma of race. In her daughter this enigma had been transmuted into an intensely personal thing, a seductive mystery that made men love her at the same time that it overshadowed love and filled them with anxiety for their spiritual safety. There was none of her radiant, aggressive insouciance in the photograph. It was the portrait of a clinging and rapacious female. A soft and delicious parasite, the victim of an immense and tragic error. I heard Captain Macedoine, while I sat with the photograph in my hand, telling of the almost incredible happiness of his home life in the little wooden cottage amid the tall grasses out on Tchoupitoulas Street. It all came back to me as I listened. The clangour of the box-cars being switched where the trolley bumped along the docks; the dry and dismal stretch of Poydras Street in the evening, the stark warehouses of Calliope, and then mile on mile of verandahed shabbiness, getting more and more open, with fields and cross-roads running down into mere vague vacancies, or perhaps a shy, solitary cottage. And the extraordinary sunsets over the lake—sunsets like vast flat washes of crimson and gamboge and violet, which were wiped out as by a hasty hand and left the wide-spaced faubourgs a prey to the murmurous onslaught of insects and the hollow boom of enormous frogs. And the two women sat in rapt silence, absorbing the romantic story with its romantic setting. An artificial story, if you like, as everything about Captain Macedoine was artificial. It was almost as if he had achieved his destiny by coming at last to that extraordinary concoction of artificialities which we call New Orleans, where dead civilizations lie superimposed one upon the other like leaves in a rotten old book, where you can cut down through them, from the mail-steamer and the trolley-car and the fake religion, right down to the poisonous swamp and the Voodoo frenzy. It was a place whose very silences were eloquent of sadness and frustrated achievement, and he chose it as the scene of incredible happiness! For he conceived an affection for the city which led him to say in so many words that it was the only possible place to live, in the United States. His patrician up-bringing and cosmopolitan career, it seems, had brought him to the same view of our western civilization as Mrs. Saratov. It was this peculiar notion once more obtruded upon me that stung me into speech with him.

"'You really think that?' 'You prefer this sort of place, for instance, to New England?'

"'Oh there's no comparison,' he returned. 'Here you have absolute freedom. There you are strapped down in a groove and remain there, unless you fancy going to prison.' And he laughed contemptuously, as at some reminiscence.

"'What do you understand by freedom?' I demanded and he bent his gaze moodily upon the shadows as though seeking to elucidate some depressing problem.

"'There are a good many answers to that question,' he said at length, 'but I should say, in my case, that it means deliverance from the Anglo-Saxon's infernal ideas of morality.' The last words came out with what was almost a snarl. He put the things he had been showing us back in the bag and locked it. 'Will you put it back, my dear?' he murmured with a smile. 'We must pick out something for you when ... eh?' The girl gave him an affectionate glance and carried the bag away into the dusk.

"'Then I take it, Captain, you are doing well here?' I observed. He shrugged his shoulders.

"'So-so,' he answered. 'So-so. Political troubles have interfered so far, but it is upon them really that we build, you know. Our losses will be more than made good shortly.'

"'But I was given to understand that the Minister of the Interior declined to authorize the concessions.'

"Captain Macedoine became extremely human. He grinned behind his chunky hand.

"'Pardon me for laughing,' he returned. 'The Minister of the Interior has gone on a long tour in Anatolia, for his health. It is quite possible he will remain down there. It would certainly be a sensible thing to do.'

"'Why, what do you mean?' I asked.

"'Is it possible you do not know?' he said in a pitying tone. 'The English newspapers print a great deal of football news and racing, but a matter like this is passed over in silence. Eh? What? These ladies know. I know. But you don't know. Your captain does not know either, I dare say. Nor your owners. I was prepared for this three months back, I may say. My affiliations with various syndicates enabled me to draw the necessary deductions. I chartered three ships, borrowing the money at very high interest. Those ships are loading stores and ammunition in Glasgow. They will arrive in about three weeks.'

"'Ammunition?' I repeated, rather suspecting his sanity. This was in 1912, remember.

"'Dear me, yes,' he answered with another pitying smile. 'Didn't you know really? There will be war you know. Next week possibly. Perhaps to-morrow. Why,' he added with considerable animation, 'it might start to-night!'"