ed for--

Again his infernal skipper hanging about. This time he had come with
news that the _Medusa_ was running short of provisions. Would Sir
Owen prefer that they should put in at Palermo or Tunis?

"Tunis, Tunis."

The steerman put down the helm, and the fore and aft sails went over.
Three days later the _Medusa_ dropped her anchor in the Bay of
Tunis, and his skipper was again asking Owen for orders.

"Just take her round to Alexandria and wait for me there," he
answered, feeling he would not be free from England till she was
gone. It was his wish to get away from civilisation for a while, to
hear Arabic, to learn it if he could, to wear a bournous, to ride
Arab horses, live in a tent, to disappear in the desert, yes, and to
be remembered as the last lover of the Mediterranean--that would be
_une belle fin de vie, apres tout_.

Then he laughed at his dreams, but they amused him; he liked to look
upon his story as one of the love stories of the world. Rome had
robbed Dido of her lover and him of his mistress. So far as he could
see, the better story was the last, and his thoughts turned
willingly to the Virgil who would arise centuries hence to tell it.
One thing, however, puzzled him. Would the subject-matter he was
creating for the future poet be spoilt if he were to fall in love
with an Arab maiden, some little statuette carved in yellow ivory?
Or would it be enhanced? Would the future Virgil regard her as an
assuagement, a balm? Owen laughed at himself and his dream. But his
mood drifted into sadness; and he asked if Evelyn should be
punished. If so, what punishment would the poet devise for her? In
Theocritus somebody had been punished: a cruel one, who had refused
to relieve the burden of desire even with a kiss, had been killed by
a seemingly miraculous interposition of Love, who, angered at the
sight of the unhappy lover hanging from the neck by the lintel of
the doorpost, fell from his pedestal upon the beloved, while
he stood heart-set watching the bathers in the beautiful
bathing-places.

But Owen could not bring himself to wish for Evelyn's death by the
falling of a statue of Our Lady or St. Joseph; such a death would be
a contemptible one, and he could not wish that anything contemptible
should happen to her, however cruelly she had made him suffer. No,
he did not wish that any punishment should befall her; the fault was
not hers. And he returned in thought to the end which he had devised
for