of a King. She had had a
pretty hard life of it in Odessa as a child, and when she was fifteen
she began to divide men into two main classes, the generous and the
stingy. It never entered her head she could live without being dependent
upon men. And then she made a fresh discovery, that generous men were
often foolish and spent their money on women who were monsters of
infidelity. Esther was faithful. Even when she was left with a baby and
no money, when she was under no obligation to treat men with
consideration, she remained one of those who keep their word out of an
allegiance to some obscure instinct for probity. And now she was married
to her Armenian, a serious creature with vague longings after Western
ideas or what he imagined were Western ideas. She was conscious of both
love and happiness as tangible facets of her existence. She had hold of
them, and in her strong capable hands she turned them to good account.
She liked Evanthia because she had that ineluctable quality of
transfiguring an act into a grandiose gesture. When Esther's little boy
came on Sunday to visit his mother, it was Evanthia who swooped upon
him, crushed him to her bosom with an exquisitely dramatic gesture of
motherhood, stroked his sleek dark head and smooth little face, and
forgot all about him an hour later. Esther never did that. When she
looked at her son she seemed to see through the past into the future.
Her kind capable face was grave and abstracted as she watched him. She
seemed to be apprehensive of their security. Her husband did not dislike
the child. But if they could only get to Buenos Aires!

She came with them now and soon they were in the water racing to the end
of the jetty and diving into the flickering green transparency towards
the white sand bottom. He watched the two of them sometimes, while he
sat on the jetty and they tried to pull each other under, noting the
differences of their characters and bodies. Esther was something beyond
his past experience. She had the sturdy muscular form of a strong youth
and the husky voice of a man. As she climbed up towards him, the water
glistening on the smooth sinewy arms and legs, and as she shook the
drops from her eyes with a boyish energy and seating herself beside him
accepted a cigarette, he was conscious of that delicious sensuous
emotion with which a man regards the friend of his beloved without
invalidating for a moment his own authentic fidelity. His love for one
woman