led
transportation charges. And there was the Ottoman Public Debt they had
taken up, paying for it in paper and getting the interest in gold. They
were doing the best they could under the circumstances. He saw their
point of view well enough. He himself had another problem. He had to get
out of it. Mr. Spokesly, as he walked about that shining Levantine city,
as he passed down those narrow tortuous streets into bazaars reeking
with the strange odours of Asiatic life, as he watched the slow
oblivious life of the poor, and the sullen furtiveness of the Greek
storekeepers and shabby French bourgeoisie waiting in line at the custom
house for a chance to buy their morsels of food, saw with penetrating
clarity how impossible it would be for him to remain, even if he did get
a permanent harbour-master's job. No! He finished his glass of wine and
looked round for the decanter. He saw that these people here, for all
their intellectual superiority, their fluent social accomplishments,
their familiarity with philosophical compromises, were simply evading
the facts. They were variants of Mr. Jokanian, who was also reaching
regularly for the decanter, and who was attempting to forget a national
failure in high-sounding poppycock about the autocracy of the
proletariat. Mr. Marsh was proud of being an Englishman, in a well-bred
way, for he was always insisting "you could not beat that type"; but
what was his idea of an Englishman?

A person who, strictly speaking, no longer existed. Mr. Marsh was
fortunate in having his ideals and illusions preserved in the dry air of
the Levant as in a hermetically sealed chamber. The type he spoke of was
being very handsomely beaten in all directions and was being rescued
from utter annihilation by a very different type--the mechanical
engineer, who was no doubt preparing the world for a fresh advance upon
its ultimate destruction. Mr. Spokesly, in a rich glow of exaltation,
saw these vast and vague ideas parade in his mind as he listened
abstractedly to the conversation. But as the wine passed, that cosmic
quality passed, too, and he began to hear other things besides theories
of evolution. He heard someone remark that they had a very fine piano, a
Bechstein grand. Some consul had brought it from Vienna for his musical
daughter. But it was impossible to take it with them when he was
transferred to Teheran. Another voice desired to know what was done with
the musical daughter, and amid laughter they