r's record and
peculiarities in explaining the disappearance of the _Kalkis_. But the
event itself seemed to perplex him not at all. He said, briefly, to his
wife in adequate idiom: "He got a scare. He was afraid of himself. In
wars plenty of men do that. He think and think, and there is nothing.
And that scare a man stiff, when there is nothing." Crude psychology no
doubt, yet adequate to explain Captain Rannie's unsuccessful skirmish
with life.

But Mrs. Dainopoulos was not so callous. She suspected, under Evanthia's
hard exterior, a heart lacerated by the bitterness of disillusion. Who
would have believed, either, that Mr. Spokesly, an Englishman, would
have deserted her like that? Mrs. Dainopoulos was gently annoyed with
Mr. Spokesly. He had not behaved as she had arranged it in her
story-book fashion. Evanthia must stay with them, she said, stroking the
girl's dark head.

As she did. Seemingly she forgot both the base Englishman and the
Alleman Giaour who had so infatuated her. She remained always with the
invalid lady, looking out at the Gulf, watching the transports come and
go. And when at last it came to Mr. Dainopoulos to journey south, when
the sea-lines were once again open and a hundred and one guns announced
the end, she went with them to the fairy villa out at San Stefano that
you reach by the Boulevard Ramleh in Alexandria. It was there that Mr.
Dainopoulos emerged in a new role, of the man whose dreams come true.
His rich and sumptuous oriental mind expanded in grandiose visions of
splendour for the being he adored. He built pleasaunces of fine marbles
set in green shrubberies and laved by the blue sea, for her diversion.

He had automobiles, as he had resolved, of matchless black and
cream-coloured coachwork, with scarlet wheels and orange silk
upholstery. He imported a yacht that floated in the harbour like a great
moth with folded wings. Far out on the breakwater he had an enormous
bungalow built of hard woods upon a square lighter, with chambers for
music and slumber in the cool Mediterranean breeze, while the thud and
wash of the waves against the outer wall lulled the sleeper to antique
dreams. He did all this, and sat each day in the portico of the great
marble Bourse, planning fresh acquisitions of money. His wife lay in her
chair in her rose-tinted chamber at San Stefano, looking out upon the
blue sea beyond the orange trees and palms, smiling and sometimes
immobile, as though stunned by thi