y 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 cafes 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 t