Mr. Spokesly, in a state of considerable astonishment, sat by a balconied upper window and tried to get his recent experiences into some sort of focus. That last remark of Mr. Dainopoulos, that he had married one himself, had dislocated his guest's faculties, so that Mr. Spokesly was unable to note clearly by what means he had arrived at his present position, a balconied window on his right and in front of him a woman lying on a sofa. A woman whose brown hair, extraordinarily long and fine, was a glossy pile pressed into the pillow, and whose thin hand he had just relinquished.

"Well," he said, as Mr. Dainopoulos came forward with a lamp, his swart and damaged features giving him the air of a ferocious genie about to perform some nefarious experiment. "Well, I must say, I'm surprised."

Mrs. Dainopoulos continued to gaze straight out into the darkness over the Gulf.

"Of course," agreed her husband, seating himself and reaching for a large briar pipe. "Of course. And I'll bet you'd be still more surprised if you only knew—eh, Alice?" He screwed up one eye and looked prodigiously sly at his wife with the other, his palms slowly rubbing up some tobacco. Mrs. Dainopoulos did not remove her eyes from the darkness beyond the shore. She only murmured in a curt voice:

"Never mind that now, Boris."

"But it ain't anything to be ashamed of, you know," he returned earnestly, packing his pipe in a way that made Mr. Spokesly want to snatch it from him and do it properly.

"I know, but it wouldn't interest Mr. Spokesly, I'm quite certain," she muttered, and she suddenly looked at their visitor and smiled. It reassured that gentleman, as it was intended to do, that he was in no way responsible for this minute difference of viewpoint between husband and wife. Mr. Spokesly smiled, too.

"Don't mind me," he remarked, lighting a cigarette and offering the match to Mr. Dainopoulos. After sucking valiantly for a while and achieving a small red glow in one corner of the bowl, the latter rose and regarded his wife and his guest attentively for a moment.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said at length, and looked at his pipe, which was already out. "I'll go in and see Malleotis for a while. He'll be back by now. And you two can have a little talk before we have supper."

"Well, don't be all night. You know, when you and Mr. Malleotis get talking business——"

The woman on the couch paused, regarding her husband as he bent his head over her. Mr. Dainopoulos suddenly put his pipe in his pocket and put his hands on either side of the pillow. Mr. Spokesly could see nothing save the man's broad, humped shoulders. There was a moment of silence. Mr. Spokesly, very much embarrassed, looked out of the window. When he turned his head again Mr. Dainopoulos was putting on a large tweed cap and walking out of the door.

"I suppose," Mr. Spokesly remarked, and fixed his eyes upon the extremely decorative Scotch travelling rug which covered the woman's limbs, "I suppose he doesn't go off every evening and leave you here." He spoke jocosely. Mrs. Dainopoulos looked out into the darkness. There was a faint colour in her cheeks, as though the sudden revelation of the passion she could evoke had filled her with exquisite shame. Or perhaps pride. Her clear, delicate English face, the mouth barely closed, the short straight nose slightly raised, the brown hair spread in a slight disorder upon the pillow, were surely indicating pride. Some inkling of this possibility came to Mr. Spokesly, and he sat regarding her, while he waited for her to speak, and wondering how a woman like her had come to marry one of these here dagoes. Peculiar creatures, women, Mr. Spokesly thought; knowing nothing whatever about them, it may be mentioned. And when Mrs. Dainopoulos turned to look at him, soon after she began to speak, the prevailing fancy at the back of his mind was "She thinks I don't know anything about the ladies! Fancy that!"

"His business takes him out a good deal," she said in a low voice, "but he wouldn't go if he could help it. To-night is unusual."

"The pleasure is mine," said Mr. Spokesly.

"Not altogether," she smiled, and her speech became perceptibly more racy and rapid. "Don't flatter yourself. Mr. Dainopoulos was thinking of me."

"I dare say he does a good deal of that."

The woman on the sofa laced her fingers lightly and regarded her guest afresh.

"You are saucy," she murmured with a faint smile. Mr. Spokesly smiled more broadly. He was saucy, but he was certainly at home now with his companion. There was in her last speech, in the accent and inflection, something incommunicably indigenous, something no alien ever has or ever will compass.

"No need to ask what part of England you come from," he ventured.

"No?" she queried. "There seems nothing you don't know."

"Oh, excuse me, Mrs. Dainopoulos, that ain't fair. I can't sit here and twiddle my thumbs all the evening, can I? That wouldn't be giving you any pleasure as far as I'm aware. The boss didn't reckon I was going to play a mandolin or sing, did he?"

"Well, since you're so clever, what's the answer?"

"Not so very many miles from Charing Cross," he hazarded.

"Wonderful!" she said, laying her head back and smiling. Mr. Spokesly admired the pretty throat. "You ought to be in the secret service. Perhaps you are," she added.

"Of course," he agreed. "They've sent me out to see where all the nice London girls have got to. But am I right?"

She nodded.

"Haverstock Hill," she said quietly.

"No! Do you know Mafeking Road? When I was a kid we lived at sixty-eight."

"Yes, I know it. Don't you live round there now?"

"No, not now. We live down Twickenham way now."

And Mr. Spokesly began to tell his own recent history, touching lightly upon the pathos of Eastern exile, the journey home to join up, and his conviction that after all he would be a fool to go soldiering while the ships had to be kept running. And he added as a kind of immaterial postscript:

"And then, o' course, while I was at home I got engaged."

Mrs. Dainopoulos stared at him and broke into a brief titter behind a handkerchief.

"That's a nice way to give out the information," she remarked. "Anybody'd think getting engaged was like buying a railway ticket or sending a postal order. Is she nice?"

"Well," said Mr. Spokesly, "I think so."

"Very enthusiastic!" commented the lady with considerable spirit. "Dark or fair?"

"Well," he repeated, "I should say dark myself."

"You don't intend to take any chances," Mrs. Dainopoulos retorted. "Haven't you a photo to show me?"

Mr. Spokesly felt his pockets, took out a wallet containing a number of unconvincing documents, some postage stamps and a five-piaster note.

"Matter of fact," he said, "I don't seem to have one with me. I got one on the ship, though," he went on. "Bring it ashore to-morrow."

"Sure you didn't tear it up by mistake or send it away in the laundry?" she demanded, watching him intently.

"Oh, all right, go on with the sarcasm," he protested, but enjoying it very much none the less. "Mr. Dainopoulos, you'll be telling me, has got your hair in a locket, I suppose."

Mr. Spokesly stopped abruptly. He saw an expression of extraordinary radiance on the girl's face as she lay there, her thin pale fingers holding the handkerchief by the corner. It suddenly occurred to Mr. Spokesly that this woman was loved. For the first time in his life he became aware of a woman's private emotional existence. He achieved a dim comprehension of the novel fact that a woman might have her own views of these great matters. He did not phrase it quite like this. He only sat looking at the girl on the sofa and remarking to himself that women were peculiar.

"Wouldn't you do that?" she demanded. The light in her eyes diminished to a steady warm regard.

And Mr. Spokesly began to assert himself once more. Women being so peculiar, there was no sense in being bullied into any of this here sentiment. He was a man of the world about to make a—what was it called? Marriage of convenience ... something like that. Not that exactly, either. Ada was a darned fine girl. This invalid lady seemed to think he didn't know what love was.

"Who? Me?" he ejaculated. "Can't say as I see myself, I admit. Not in my line. Not in any Englishman's line, I don't think. And speaking for myself, Mrs. Dainopoulos, I reckon I'm past that sort of thing, you know. Can't teach an old dog new tricks, can you? I look at it this way: so long as there's enough to keep the pot boiling, it's easy enough to fall in love with anybody, you see, and when you're married ... soon get used to it. Ada and me, we're sensible."

"You've got it all arranged, then," said Mrs. Dainopoulos, smiling faintly and looking out into the darkness once more.

"What's the use o' bein' anything else?" inquired Mr. Spokesly, resuming something of the perfect officer pose, hard-bitten, practical, and matter-of-fact. "All that business o' dyin' o' love, you know, I reckon's so much moon-shine. All right in a novel, o' course, but not in real life. You don't reckon there's anything in it, really, I mean?" he asked doubtfully.

"I think everything's in it," she sighed. "I think it must be horrible, being married, without it. Haven't you felt you couldn't do without her? That you'd die if you didn't get her; work, and do somebody else in the eye for her? Haven't you?"

"That lets me out," he said soberly, lighting a fresh cigarette. "I'm not guilty."

There was a brief silence. Mr. Spokesly was puzzled. He could not fit this experience in with one of the two cardinal points in an Englishman's creed, the belief that no English girl can really love a foreigner. The other, of course, is that no foreign girl is really virtuous.

"That's a nice thing to say!" she retorted, trembling a little with her emotions. "If that's the new way they have at home——"

"Oh, I don't know," he began and he looked at her. "I'm afraid you're getting all upset. I'm sorry, really, I didn't think you'd have been so serious about it. As if it mattered to you!"

"I'm thinking of her," she said with a little hysterical sob. "You mustn't——"

Mr. Spokesly was in a quandary again. If he put Ada's adoration in its true perspective, he would not think very highly of himself. He took no real pleasure in speaking of himself as a promised man even to a married woman. Yet how was he to get this particular married woman in delicate health and extremely robust emotions to see him as a human being and not a monster of cold-blooded caution? And there was another problem. What of this new and astonishing revelation—new and astonishing to him, at any rate—that love, to a woman, is not a mere decoction of bliss administered by a powerful and benevolent male, but a highly complicated universe of subjective illusions in which the lover is only dimly seen as a necessary but disturbing phantom of gross and agonizing ineptitudes? The wonder, however, is not that Mr. Spokesly was slow to discover this, but that he did not live and die, as many men do, without even suspecting it. He nodded his head slightly as he replied:

"You're right in a way," he muttered. "She thinks I'm—well, she thinks I'm brave to go to sea in war-time!" The extreme incongruity of such an hallucination made him giggle.

"She would! You are!" said the woman on the couch, almost irritably. "What do you want to laugh for? Don't you see what you miss?" she added in illogical annoyance.

"That the way you feel about Mr. Dainopoulos?" Mr. Spokesly asked. The woman turned her face so that the lamplight illumined her coiled hair and for a moment she did not reply. Then she said, her face still in the shadow:

"You'd only laugh if I told you."

"No," declared Mr. Spokesly. "Honest I won't. Laugh at meself—yes. But you—that's different."

"But you don't believe in love at first sight, I can see very well."

"I only said I hadn't anything like that happen to me," he replied slowly, pondering. "But I s'pose it has to be something like that in a case like yours."

"I don't understand you."

"Well, you being English, you see, and Mr. Dainopoulos a foreigner."

"As an excuse, I suppose? Father made the same remark, but I never thanked him."

Mr. Spokesly looked at her soberly. Her eyes were bright and resolute, and the lamplight threw into salience the curve of her jaw and chin. A fugitive thought flitted about his mind for a moment and vanished again—whether her father was inconsolable at his daughter's departure.

"You got married at home then?"

"Yes, after Mr. Dainopoulos saved my life."

"Did he?"

"Of course. That's how we met. Didn't you ever hear of the Queen Mab accident? It was in the papers."

"Can't say as I did. I was out East so long, you see. Wait a bit, though——" Mr. Spokesly pondered. "I fancy I remember reading something about it in the home papers; an excursion steamer in collision with a cargo boat, wasn't it?" The girl nodded.

"Down the river. I was in it. My sister—she was drowned. We were going to Southend."

"I see. And Mr. Dainopoulos, he was with you and——"

"No. I'd never seen him then. You see, we were all standing by the paddle-box when the other ship cut into us, my sister Gladys and two boys we'd been keeping company with. It was something awful, everybody screaming and the boat going up in the air. I mean the other end was going down. At last we couldn't stand, so we sat on the paddle-box. Then all of a sudden the boat slid over to one side and we went in."

Mr. Spokesly made a sound expressive of intense sympathy and interest.

"And next thing I knew was somebody was holding me up and he said, 'Don't move! Don't move!' But I couldn't! Something must have hit me when I fell in. I didn't know where then—the water was awfully cold. And then a boat came, and they lifted me in. And then he swam off again to find the others. I don't faint as a rule, but I did then. There were so many, and the screams—oh, it was shocking!

"But the worst was when we got on land again. It was near Woolwich and they turned a chapel or something into a hospital for us. And all the relations of the people on the Queen Mab came down, and Mr. Dainopoulos, who'd taken his landlady's daughter for the excursion, was sitting there in a blanket when the landlady and her husband came in. They hadn't found her. You know bodies don't come up sometimes, especially when a ship turns over. And they caught hold of him, calling out 'Where is our girl? What have you done with our girl?' They screamed at him!"

"Was he engaged to her?" asked Mr. Spokesly.

"Just the same as I was with Georgie Litwell who was drowned. Keeping company."

"And what happened then?"

"Why, we fell in love. That's what I was going to tell you so long as you promised not to laugh. He was in a wholesale tobacco merchant's in Mark Lane then and he took lodgings near us at Haverstock Hill. Those other people behaved as though he'd held their daughter's head under. Really they did. How could he help it? He saved six besides me. It wasn't his fault the boat sank."

"No, of course not. I see now."

"And then, you know, Mother made a fuss because he was foreign. Mother's a Berkshire woman, and she said she'd never thought she'd live to see a child of hers marry a man from goodness knows where. She didn't half go on, I can tell you. And Father had his own way of making me perfectly happy. He'd ask me, how many in the harem already? And I couldn't do a thing, lying on my back helpless. And at last, with the doctor saying I needed a sea-voyage to get my strength back, I thinks to myself, I'll take one; and with the accident insurance I had had the sense to carry ever since I'd started going to business, and what Boris had in the bank, we went. Or came, rather. We've been here ever since and nobody's heard either of us regret it, either."

And as she lay there looking out into the darkness of the Gulf with shining resolute eyes, it was plain that this romantic destiny of hers was a treasured possession. It dominated her life. She had found in it the indispensable inspiration for happiness, an ethical yet potent anodyne for the forfeiture of many homely joys. It was for her the equivalent of a social triumph or acceptance among peeresses of the realm. It is to be suspected that she had ever in her mind a vision of the wonder and awe she had evoked in the souls of the suburban girls among whom she had spent her life, and that this vision supported her and formed the base of a magnificent edifice. And it was an integral part of this edifice that love should be a romantical affair, a flame, noted by all and fed by the adoration of a husband who was harsh to the world, but to her a monster of infatuated fidelity.

Something of this impinged upon Mr. Spokesly's consciousness and he regarded her for a moment with profound respect.

"I should say," he muttered, returning to his cigarette, "you haven't done so badly for yourself."

She gave him an extraordinarily quick look, like a flash of sheet lightning from a calm evening sky, which left him puzzled. He was not aware, at that time, that no woman will ever admit she has bettered herself by marrying a given man. She must retain for ever that shining figure of him she might have loved, a sort of domestic knight-errant in golden armour, who keeps occasional vigils at her side while the weary actuality slumbers in gross oblivion. Mrs. Dainopoulos knew that Mr. Spokesly saw nothing of this. She knew him for what he was, a being entirely incapable of compassing the secrets of a woman's heart. She knew he imagined that love was all, that women were at the mercy of their love for men, and that chivalrous ideas, rusted and clumsily manipulated, were still to be found in his mind. And she saw the fragility and delicate thinness of his love affair with Ada Rivers. Anything could break it, anything could destroy it, she reflected. Those fancies ... of course he said he was engaged; but an engagement, as Mrs. Dainopoulos knew, having lived in a London suburb, was nothing. Yes, anything might make him forget Ada. And as she repeated the word "anything" to herself in a kind of ecstasy, Mrs. Dainopoulos turned her head quickly and listened. There was a sound of someone being admitted.

"So you've met your fate, anyway," she observed to Mr. Spokesly, yet still listening to the distant sound.

"Yes," he said with a smile, "I reckon you can cross me off as caught. What's that? Come back, I s'pose. Time for me to be off, anyway. I'm sure...."

Mrs. Dainopoulos held up her hand. She was still listening with her head slightly inclined, her eyes fixed upon Mr. Spokesly, as though absently pondering the perilous chances of his emotional existence. Cross him off as caught! She smiled again in that lambent heat-lightning way of hers. A woman who spends her life in a reclining seclusion becomes very much of a clairvoyant, an electric condenser of emotions. Mr. Spokesly was agreeably flattered by the intent interest of his companion's gaze. Quite a nice little tÊte-À-tÊte he'd had. It gave him a thrill to sit in intimate exchange of love experiences with an attractive married woman, even if she was an invalid. He felt a bit of a dog. He would write to Ada and tell her. Or would he? Did he want Ada to know anything about this visit to a mysterious house in Macedonia, a house so clandestine and bizarre he could scarcely convince himself that it was the abode of virtue? Did he? Ada was a long way off, in beleaguered England. He suddenly wondered what Ada had to do with this at all. With an ease that rather disturbed him he told himself that you could never tell what might happen nowadays. No use worrying about the future. Why, he might never get home. He dropped the ash from his cigarette into the tray on the table. Someone was coming with a quick decisive step up the stairs. He smiled at Mrs. Dainopoulos, not quite sure why she was holding up her hand. She was thinking "cross him off as caught," and smiling, when the someone arrived at the door and knocked.

"Why didn't you get married before you left England?" she asked quickly, and added in louder tone, "Come in!"

In sharp contrast to the rapid movements without, the door opened with extreme cautiousness, and at first nothing could be seen save the hand on the knob. Mr. Spokesly had been thrown into some disorder of mind by that last question. Why hadn't he, anyway? It was something he had never decided. Why had they not done what thousands had done in England, which was simply to marry on the spot and sail a week, or perhaps a few days, later? Why had he not taken the hazards of war? He had more, far more, than many of those girls and boys at home. It was at this point, facing for the first time the unconscious evasions of life, that he found himself facing something else, a girl with a startled and indignant light in her eyes. He uncrossed his legs and began to rise as Mrs. Dainopoulos said, "Come in, Evanthia. It is all right."

She came in, letting the door swing to as she moved with a long rapacious stride towards the sofa. It was obvious she was preoccupied with some affair of intense importance to herself. Once Mr. Spokesly's presence had been indicated she became again absorbed in her errand. Her amber-coloured eyes, under exquisitely distinct brows, were opaque with anger, and she held one hand out with the fingers dramatically clenched, as though about to release a thunderbolt of wrath. The gesture was as antique as it was involuntary. One heard drums muttering and the gathering of fierce Ægean winds as she came on, and leaning forward, flung out both hands in a passionate revelation of sorrow. Mr. Spokesly sat down again, embarrassed and fascinated. He could not take his eyes from her. She was something new in his experience; a woman with passion and the power to express it. Such women are almost non-existent in England, where sentiment is regarded as legal tender for passion. He regarded her with a kind of stupefaction, as though he had never set his eyes on a woman before. One might say with approximate truth that he had not. His ways had lain among the artificial products of his age. In trepidation he realized, as he sat there watching the movements of this girl, that he would not know what to do with a woman like that. He sat there and listened.

"Gone?" repeated Mrs. Dainopoulos.

"Yes, they are all gone. The French sent soldiers. And they would not let me go to speak to him."

"But where will they go?"

The girl, whose eyes were bent upon the carpet at her feet, shrugged her shoulders violently.

"Who knows that? To Sofia; or to Constantinople. Oh, I would have gone, too. These pigs, pigs, pigs of French! Not a word! And he is gone!" She dragged a chair from the table, and sat down suddenly, thrusting her chin over her arm and staring at the floor. There was a moment's silence, while Mr. Spokesly sat in doubt and Mrs. Dainopoulos looked out over the Gulf.

"Gone!" muttered the girl again sullenly.

"Don't do that, dear. It is very bad for you when you get in such rages!" Mrs. Dainopoulos spoke in a soft cool tone, like a recumbent sybil whose knowledge of rage and sorrow was vast. The girl's foot swung to and fro more and more rapidly, the red Turkish slipper slapping the floor, "You will hear from him after a little."

"Ah, if they let him write. But these French! With their beards and hats like cooking pots! They see everything. Of course he will write, but that is no good. He cannot send anything."

An expression of disappointment crossed the other woman's face as she patted the girl's shoulder.

"Wait a little," she said. "You can't tell yet."

"I would have given a thousand drachma to have got to the train," said the girl moodily. "And I would give a million to get to Constantinople. This place stifles me. I hate it ... hate it."

She stood up suddenly, raising her hands to her magnificent coil of dark hair, and revealing the poise and vigour of her body. "Ah!" she moaned, bending over her friend and caressing her. "I am a bad girl, forgetting how ill you are. Evanthia is a bad, bad girl, with her troubles—and you have a visitor——" She turned her head for a moment and Mr. Spokesly was caught unawares in the brilliance of a dazzling yet enigmatic glance from the amber eyes.

"A friend of my husband's," said Mrs. Dainopoulos. "He is English, you know, like me. From London. We have been talking of London."

"Ah, yes!" The lingering syllables were a caress, yet there was no more comprehension in them than in the inarticulate sounds of an animal. The girl bent her dark head over the blonde masses on the pillow. "Forgive your bad girl, Alice."

"Oh, all right," said Mrs. Dainopoulos, emerging with an embarrassed English smile. "Only you must be good now and go back to bed. There's Boris coming in."

"I am going!" said the girl and started. And then she remembered Mr. Spokesly sitting there in dumb stupefaction, his gaze following her, and she turned to make him a bow with a strange, charming gesture of an out-flung hand towards him. The next moment she dragged the door open and passed out.

He looked up to see Mrs. Dainopoulos regarding him thoughtfully, and he made a sudden step forward in life as he realized the ineffectiveness of any words in his vocabulary to express his emotions at that moment. He made no attempt to corrupt the moment, however, which was perhaps another step forward. He sat silent, looking at the glowing end of his cigarette, endeavouring to recapture the facile equilibrium of mind which had been his as he followed Mr. Dainopoulos through the gateway an hour or so before. But that was impossible, for it was gone, though he did not know it, for ever. He was trying to remember the name Mrs. Dainopoulos had called her. Evanthia! And once at the beginning, Miss Solaris. Something like that. Evanthia Solaris. He said to himself that it was a pretty name, and was conscious at the same time of the inadequacy of such a word. There was something beyond prettiness in it; something of a spring morning in the Cyclades, when the other islands come up out of the mist like hummocks of amethyst and the cicadas shrill in the long grass under the almond trees. There was in it an adumbration of youth beyond his experience, a hint of the pulsing and bizarre vitality of alien races, a vitality fretted into white wrath by her will and her desire, as the serene breath of the morning is suddenly lashed into a tempest by the howling fury of an Ægean white squall. She was gone, yet the room was still charged with her magnetic presence, so that Mr. Dainopoulos came in quietly, put down his tweed cap, and seated himself beside his wife, and Mr. Spokesly scarcely noticed his arrival.

As he became aware of outside phenomena once more—and he was rather frightened to discover how his thoughts had flown out into the unknown darkness in search of the girl—he saw that Mr. Dainopoulos was preoccupied and anxious. They were speaking in a low tone and in a foreign tongue, Mr. Spokesly noted. He recalled a story he had read in a magazine some little time before—a story of an Englishman who had a most miraculous command of foreign languages, who overheard a conversation which revealed a plot to destroy the British Army. The plot was revealed by the simple process of torturing a beautiful girl of neutral origin who was to be forced to marry a brutal enemy colonel. It did not occur to Mr. Spokesly to reflect that beautiful girls are usually eager to marry colonels of any denomination, or that colonels do not usually blend love and espionage. But he did notice the extreme improbability of an Englishman being a linguist. It made the tale seem unreal and artificial. Especially when the story added that he was a naval officer of good family who afterwards married the beautiful neutral and settled in a castle in Dalmatia. Fanciful! Mr. Spokesly knew enough of naval officers to doubt the dÉnouement. He himself, for that matter, would rather live in a bungalow in Twickenham than in Dalmatia. As for foreign girls—he rubbed his chin, puzzled over his own blurred sensations. Mr. Dainopoulos was speaking again. The woman lay back, looking up at the high ceiling, an expression of calm and careful consideration on her face, which was illuminated sharply, like an intaglio, by the lamp. And Mr. Spokesly experienced a shock to discover that they were not speaking of the girl at all. They seemed to have forgotten her existence. They looked at him and so brought him into the conversation.

"I'll have to be getting back," he remarked, rising once more.

Mr. Dainopoulos went to the door and spoke in a low harsh tone into the darkness.

"I'll get you a boat," he said. "There's no boats allowed after dark, but I have a friend on the French Pier. He'll put you on board. Another night, you must come and eat supper. I have had plenty business to-night. I have to go out again later, too. You understand what I tell my wife? Well, the consuls have had to go home. The German and Austrian and Bulgar Consuls went away to-night. I do a good bit of business, you understand, with all these people, and I got to go and see a friend of mine about it. So—will you have coffee——? I'll get you a boat first, and you can come to-morrow night, eh?"

A girl of fifteen with a downcast disdainful countenance came in with a tray and set it on the table. One eyelash flickered towards Mr. Spokesly as she turned and made her way out. He looked at her entranced, noting her slovenly dress, the holes in her stocking, and the ugly slippers that slip-slopped as she moved her small feet. He noted these uncouth garnitures within which she moved with the restless yet indolent rhythm of a captive queen. His mind, as he drank the strong coffee and the tiny glass of cognac, was in a state of unusual exaltation. Never before had he faced an immediate future so fraught with glittering yet unrecognizable possibilities. Mr. Dainopoulos might be a rascal, yet he possessed the power to call up familiar spirits. As he sat there leaning towards the table, his hand abstractedly on the bottle of cognac, thinking deeply of his multifarious concerns, his dexterous dealings in and out among men who slew one another daily, he resembled some saturnine yet benevolent magician about to release a formidable genie who would fill the room with fuliginous vapour. Mr. Spokesly felt his scalp twitching with anticipation. He stepped across to say good-bye to Mrs. Dainopoulos.

"I never expected this," he said simply. "I've had a very pleasant time."

"Come to supper to-morrow," she said, smiling, "Always glad to see anybody from the Old Country."

"Sorry your lady friend couldn't stay," he muttered. "Like to see more of her. Well ... I'll say good-night."

He smiled as he went down the staircase behind the preoccupied Mr. Dainopoulos. He smiled because he could see, by virtue of his exalted mood, that the smug phrases which had always been adequate for his emotions, sounded foolish and feeble. Like to see more of her! Did he? It made him dizzy to think of, though, for all that. It made the simple business of returning to that house an adventure of the soul. Nor did the phrase "lady friend" describe her. He was comfortably vague as to the actual constituents of a lady. A lady was perhaps described as a woman with whom it was impossible to be wholly at ease. Yes, he whispered to himself, but for a different reason. He felt defeated in his attempts to stabilize his impressions. He had no comparisons. It was like comparing a bottle of wine with a bottle of milk. Even Ada.... He moved so abruptly as he followed close on the heels of Mr. Dainopoulos that the latter looked at him in inquiry, and thought a remark was necessary.

"We can fix our little business any time before you go away," he murmured.

But Mr. Spokesly was not thinking of the little business just then. He found himself suddenly confronting the conviction in his mind that his Ada had been little more than a shining reflector of his own image. Ada, in beleaguered England, seemed very far away and her personality lost whatever distinction and magnetism it may have had while he was with her. He saw with perfect clarity a new truth beyond that first one—that Mrs. Dainopoulos had been aware of all this while she had plied her gentle smiling questions. Had she meant anything, then? How could one plumb the mind of a woman? There was something almost sinister in the notion that she had known all along how he was situated, how he felt, and let him sit there while a girl like an indignant enchantress came in and worked some sort of spell upon him. He began to wonder if the girl was real; whether he had not dreamed she was there. He was aghast at the insensibility of Mr. Dainopoulos who was leading the way across the street, his head bent and his damaged features set in a meditative scowl. In what way could one account for it? A woman like that! A woman already with a power over himself that frightened him. Ada! He thought of Ada almost as a refuge from this new emotion assaulting his heart. There was safety with Ada. He knew, within reasonable limits, the range of which she was capable, the tone and timbre of her soul. Here, he comprehended with surprising readiness, he would be called on to do something more than talk conventionally of love. It was all very well, he could see, to jog along from year to year, having a little fun here and there, and getting engaged and even married; but it was no more than the normal function of a human organism. Beyond that he could see something ruthless, powerful, and destructive. He experienced an extraordinary feeling of elation as he walked beside Mr. Dainopoulos towards the street car. He was perplexed because he would have liked to tell Ada the cause of this elation. He had a fugitive but marvellously clear view of Ada's position in the matter. She was away in the future, in a distant and calm region to which he had not yet gained admission. There was something he had to go through before he could get Ada. And while they jangled slowly along the quay, and Mr. Dainopoulos mumbled in his ear the difficulties imposed upon himself by the departure of the consuls, Mr. Spokesly caught a glimpse of what men mean by Fate. Though he knew it not, the departure of the consuls was an event of prime importance to himself. It was an event destined to precipitate the grand adventure of his life. Ada, in beleaguered England, would find her mechanically perfect existence modified by the departure of the consuls. Something he had to go through. He stared out at the shaded lights of the cafÉs and failed to notice that he no longer desired the tarnished joys of the seafaring boulevardier. Here was a new motive. The facile and ephemeral affairs of his life were forgotten in their sheer nothingness. He drew a deep breath, wondering what lay in store for him.

They left the car and passed through the gates of the dock, along roadways almost incredibly muddy, to where transports worked in the cautious twilight of blue electrics and picket-boats moved up and down gently where they were made fast to the steps, their red and green side-lights giving the quiet stealthy hustle of the quays an air of brisk alertness. Tall negroes, in blue-gray uniforms and red fezzes, moved in slow lines loaded with sections of narrow-gauge track and balks of timber, or pushed trucks of covered material. At a desk in a wooden office sat a French ajutant, a blinding tungsten globe illuminating the short black hairs rucked up over his stiff braided collar and reflecting from an ivory-bald spot on his head as he spoke into a telephone. Mr. Dainopoulos slid sideways into the room and sat down on a bench by the door. The officer's eye flickered towards his visitor and he lifted a hand slightly to indicate recognition. Mr. Spokesly stepped in and sat down. On the wall was a drawing cut from the Vie Parisienne, a nude, with exaggerated limbs and an enormous picture-hat, riding on a motorcycle. The shriek, as of a soul in torment, of a French locomotive, brought a scowl to the officer's face as he conversed with his friends at the Cercle Militaire. Ringing off with a fat chuckle he demanded in rapid French how his old one was making it. The old one, who was Mr. Dainopoulos, made no definite complaint, but commented on the fact that a man could not sit in Floka's and take a little drink with a friend without a certain person, with a luxuriant beard, taking especial note of it. The ajutant threw himself back in his chair, tipped it, his heels grinding the boards, and grunted. That, he mumbled, was only to be expected of PÈre Lefrote. Well, what was it now? Mr. Dainopoulos indicated his companion, an officer from the English ship arrived to-day, now anchored in the rade. "What ship?" muttered the officer, looking Mr. Spokesly over as though he were some unsavoury mongrel. From Alexandria, said Mr. Dainopoulos, skilfully evading such an impossible word as Tanganyika. "Ah-ha!" crowed the officer, transferring his cold regard to his old one. So the old one was on that game again. By the sacred blue, he was a great old cock. And the officer, getting up, expressed his conviction very fast that if the truth were only revealed, the old one could do a neat business in poulets de luxe as well. What? The truculent officer, halting at the door, his thumb and finger busy with his moustache, looked back over his shoulder at his old one. No, said the latter, he merely repeated what he had said so many times. He knew none of those creatures, though he admitted three had arrived on the transport JumiÈges that morning. Was that so? Where were they, then? At the Omphale or the Tour Blanche? Come now! Mr. Dainopoulos lit a cigarette and as he trod carefully on the smoking match murmured his conviction that the ladies, whom a friend of his had seen land at Venizelos Steps, entered automobiles, and might not be found at the Omphale for some time. The officer drummed at the door and nodded. True, but the old one knew of some ravishing creature surely who would respond to the delicate attentions of a lonely exile. A marraine, in fact. But the old one had no such clients. He was a man of business purely. And if it could be arranged his friend here would like to be put on board.

The officer, a frustrated and disappointed sensualist, whose imagination was tantalized but never fed by the fact that he was in the fabled Orient, the abode of lovely Circassians and other houris, nodded agreement. He owed Mr. Dainopoulos a few hundred francs and would have been at a loss even if that gentleman had suddenly produced a beautiful and expensive woman for his amusement. He was ever dreaming of a tremendous affaire, but he was too close-fisted a Norman from Darnetal to spend much on a sweetheart.

"True," he remarked and then called out into the darkness. "Yes," he said, turning his head into the light, "the chaloupe is going off now. Let your friend tell the patron the ship he wants." And he returned to this desk, yawned, and took up a copy of Excelsior. What a life, eh, my old one!

Mr. Spokesly pointed out the black bulk of the Tanganyika, and as the launch slid along the grating, stepped up and reached his room. The night-watchman said, "Chief steward he no back yet." Mr. Spokesly turned in. He switched out his light and lay for a while thinking with more precision and penetration than even the London School of Mnemonics would have ventured to guarantee. He had some difficulty in identifying himself with the man who had gone ashore with Archy Bates that evening. And he slid away into the deep sleep of the healthy seafarer with a novel notion forming at the back of his mind. Suppose he was ashore in Saloniki, what would happen then? If by some turn of the wheel he found himself there? He might be sick, for instance, and go to the hospital and be left behind. There was no dream, but he saw it—a storm and great toil and anxiety, and in the midst of it a girl awaiting the outcome of his exertions with enigmatic amber eyes.