began to push their chairs
back, lighting cigarettes and lifting liqueurs to carry them to another
room.

Looking down into a courtyard which contained, amid much rank
vegetation, an empty marble basin surmounted by a one-legged Diana with
a broken bow, and a motor car with only three wheels and no engine, Mr.
Spokesly leaned out to watch the moon setting over the dark masses of
the neighbouring roofs. Behind him the Bechstein grand was surrounded by
some half-dozen gentlemen explaining their preferences, laughing,
whistling a few notes, and breaking into polite cries of wonder.
Suddenly there was a silence, and Mr. Marsh, seated at the instrument
and running his hands over the keys in a highly versatile fashion, began
"John Peel" in a high thin tenor that sounded as though it came from
behind the neighbouring mountain. Thin yet sweet, so that the peculiar
sentiment of the song, dedicated "to that type" which Mr. Marsh so much
admired, reached Mr. Spokesly as he leaned out and noted the sharp,
slender black shapes of the cypresses silhouetted against the dark blue
vault of the sky with its incredibly brilliant stars. He smiled and
reflected that the moon would be gone in a couple of hours, a red globe
over Cordelio. In a few nights it would set before night-fall. He drank
his liqueur. A moonless night and he would be away from all this. He
wished he were back at Bairakli now. He grudged every moment away from
her. He had caught her making little preparations of her own, and when
he had chaffed her she had looked at him in an enigmatic way with her
bright amber eyes, her beautiful lips closed, and gently inhaling
through her nostrils. What an amazing creature she was! He would sit and
watch her in the house, entranced, oblivious of time or destiny. He
wished Mrs. Dainopoulos could know of his happiness. He never suspected
that when Mrs. Dainopoulos at length heard of this episode, it was
expressed in a single shrug of the shoulders and a faint vanishing
smile. The song ended with a tinkle:

"_Oh, I ken John Peel, from my bed where I lay,
As he passed with his hounds in the morning!_"

and there was a murmur of applause. Mr. Spokesly, looking out into the
darkness, clapped and lit another cigarette. He was startled by a great
crash of chords. The young man, a cigar in his teeth, his head enveloped
in a blue cloud of smoke, was seated at the piano. Mr. Spokesly turned
and watched him. Mr. Marsh came over to