hough it
were a speaking tube and he was engaged in conversation with someone at
the other end. He even cast his eyes down, and seemed to abandon Mr.
Spokesly entirely. "And another thing. Mr. Bates, he very fond--you
know--very fond of the _mademoiselles_. That's all right. If you like
them, very good. But Mr. Bates, he comes all the time to me. Want
me--you understand? Now, I do no business in that line, none at all. I
don't like it. Plenty men tell you, 'Oh, yes, you come with me.' You
understand? But me, I got my family to think about. _Now_ you
understand?"

"It is not respectable," added Mr. Dainopoulos in a deep tone, and
relapsed into silence and the _narghileh_.

Mr. Spokesly did not reply. Even when they had left the cafe and were
being driven along the _quai_ in the direction of the White Tower, on
their left the dazzle and noise of _cafes-chantant_ and cinemas, on
their right the intense darkness of the Gulf, he did no more than
acquiesce in what Mr. Dainopoulos was saying. For to tell the truth, Mr.
Spokesly was making certain readjustments within himself. Neither Mr.
Bates nor Mr. Dainopoulos was of vital importance to the growth of his
soul, yet they come in here. They were backgrounds on which were
silhouetted combinations novel to him. He had to find room in his mind
for the conception of a shady person who cultivated the domestic
virtues. Mr. Spokesly might be a man of inferior calibre, easily swayed
by the prospect of easy money, but his mind swung naturally to the
equilibriums of respectability. "All that," as he called it, "was a
thing o' the past." He was tired of the shabby and meretricious byways
he had frequented, in moderation, for so long. With more knowledge of
introspection he would have known this as one of the signs of coming
change. Coming events are very often a glorified reincarnation of dead
desires. Dreams come true. Fortunate men recognize them in time.

"Your family?" said Mr. Spokesly, and the man beside him turned towards
him and said:

"When I say 'family' I mean 'my wife.'"

Mr. Spokesly had no definite image in his mind of the domestic
arrangements of a man like Mr. Dainopoulos. The scarlet tarboosh on that
gentleman's head leaned the Englishman's fancy to a harem. In any case,
the Island Race imagine that every Levantine who wears a fez is a Turk,
that every Turk is a polygamist, and finally that polygamy implies a
score or two of wives locked up in cupboards. But the to