romo was
gone we opened our wallets, made ourselves comfortable, disposed all our
money about us in the body-belts we had bought at Genoa and went out,
unopposed and apparently unremarked.

Through the lively streets of Marseilles, in the mellow glow of the
evening sunshine, we made for the harborside, Agathemer nosing the air
like a dog on the scent. Presently he remarked:

"We are not far from what I am looking for."

And he turned up a side street to our right. As we took turn after turn
each street was less savory and more disreputable than the last till we
were in a sort of alley populated it seemed by slatternly trulls and
trollops.

"This," said Agathemer, "is the quarter of the town I am after, but not
quite the part of it I want."

At the end of the alley he questioned a boy, a typical Marseilles street
gamin. The lad nodded and led us still to our right, doubling back. After
two or three turns Agathemer was for dismissing him. But the lad insisted
on convoying us to some definite destination he had in mind.

Agathemer displayed a coin.

"Take that and get out and you are welcome to it," he said. "If you do not
agree to get out and to take it, you get nothing."

The boy eyed his face, took the coin, and vanished.

Unescorted we strolled along a clean street, all whitewashed blank lower
walls and latticed overhanging balconies; in the walls every door was
fast; through the lattices I thought I discerned eyes watching us.

Ahead of us a lattice opened and two faces looked out. In fact two girls
leaned out. Their type was manifest: well-housed, well clad, well fed,
luxurious, loose-living, light-hearted minxes.

One was plump, full-breasted, merry-faced, with intensely black and glossy
hair, a brunette complexion and in her cheeks a great deal of brilliant
color, which I afterwards found was all her own, but which at first I took
for paint. She wore a gown of a yellow almost as intense as the garb of
the priests of Cybele in the Gardens of Verus. Its insistent yellow was
intensified and set off by a girdle of black silk cords, braided into a
complicated pattern, and by shoulder-knots of black silk, with dangling
fringes, and by black silk lacings along her smocked sleeves.

Her companion was tall and slender and melancholy faced, her hair a dull
reddish-gold or golden-red, her face without color and a bit freckled, her
gown of pale blue.

The black-haired girl called:

"You've had a long ride and