ia if she would forget it all when she
got to England she stood by the table, stricken to a sudden and
mysterious immobility and regarded him with wide amber-coloured eyes.
Then she lifted a finger to her lips.

There was a noise below. The iron gate banged. Evanthia, her finger to
her lips, her eyes shining like stars, came to the window and leaned
over. "Art thou come back?" she called in Greek. And the voice of the
young Jew replied:

"Here I am, Madama. I am returned from the city."

"Any news of the Franks at Aidin?" she asked, smiling at Mr. Spokesly
where he sat in silent admiration.

"They are here, Madama. Three, one of them the man you described to me,
young and full of laughter."

"_Aiee!_ A good servant thou art. I will keep thee always." She turned
to her lover.

"Ah, yes!" she sighed. "A house like this in England. And I have forgot
Saloniki now. Supper is ready, _mein Lieber_."

CHAPTER XVI

Years afterwards, when Mr. Spokesly, a cool and established person in
authority in a far distant territory, would turn his thoughts back
occasionally to the great period of his life, he would wonder how long
it might have lasted had he not gone into the city that calm evening,
had he never met that gay and irrepressible young man. There was no
bitterness in his reflections. He saw, in that future time, how far
removed from the firm shores of reality he and Evanthia were floating,
his romantic exaltation supporting them both while she watched him with
a suspicion of amazement in her eyes.

For there was a point in that period in the white stone house on the
mountain side, high above the village in the quiet valley, when Evanthia
herself wondered what was going to happen. She trembled for a while upon
the verge of acceptance and surrender. They would go, she submitting to
his command, and take that chance together which he was for ever
picturing in his mind as a rush for freedom and ultimate happiness.
Almost she lost that poise of spirit which enabled her to mystify and
subjugate him. Almost she succumbed to the genius and beauty of the
place, to the intensity of his emotions and the romantic possibilities
of the future he desired to evoke. For one brief moment, so swiftly
obliterated that he was hardly aware of it before it was gone, she saw
herself united to him, thinking his thoughts, breathing his hopes,
facing with her own high courage the terrors of life in an unknown land,
for ever. He rememb