new forces and aspirations. But
of this even the novelist, who trafficked in happy endings, had no
suspicion. He wrote a short story later, a story in which an English
girl who had been carried off by a rascally Greek was rescued by an
English officer who took her home to England and married her.

To the lieutenant the departure of the consuls and the impending
formation of a provisional government were affairs of qualified good. A
provisional government would immediately shriek for the return of all
sequestrated property. It would demand the status of allies, and all
their ships would start a complicated system of espionage and smuggling.
It would be, in his opinion, a series of perfect days. Nobody was honest
nowadays. Not a week ago he had caught naval stores going over the side
of a ship into a local boat, and the guilty party was wearing three
medals, for valour and distinguished service. He sometimes wished they
would put him on a ship again. It gave one a chance to do something
besides play detective anyway. The major spoke again.

"What about a captain for the _Kalkis_? We shall have to have one of our
own men, Mathews."

"Afraid that's not possible," said the lieutenant. "We haven't too many
men, you know. Better send him out with a convoy going to Alex. I might
have had one of those chaps who were rescued the other day off that
transport, but they've all gone home overland. And they won't stay, you
know. All want to get home."

"Can one blame them?" asked the censor. "I read letters in which these
seamen say they have not seen their families for seven or eight months."

"Dear me!" said the major drily. His own family were Indian Civil
Service. "What you might call the hardships of war. Possibly we may find
someone without family ties, Mathews."

The lieutenant smiled and ran his thumb along the blade of the Turkish
dagger.

"Possibly," he replied. He smiled because the major was rather
conspicuous at home for his affairs with married women.

"By the way," said the censor, following some obscure association of
ideas, "I met Morpeth this evening and he was telling me they expected
some new arrivals from Paris at the Omphale."

"Yes, I heard that," said the major, who was not at all interested. "It
will be a riot. Probably three or four. And about thirty or forty Greek,
French, Italian, and Serbian lieutenants, standing round six deep,
making them squiffy on Floka's Monopole. No, thanks. Stale pastry,