re out into the street, shouting up the narrow
stairway hysterical words of hope.

How long and shadowless the street seemed! Every house had its green
blinds closely shut; the wind that stirred the dust of the pavements was
hot and biting. Gregorio clinched his hands and strode rapidly onward.
What mattered it to him that behind those green blinds women and men
slumbered in comparative comfort? He had a work to do, and by sunset
must carry good tidings to his little world. For a time his heart was
brave as the dry wind scorched the tear upon his cheek. "Surely," he
thought, weaving his thoughts into a fine marching rhythm, "the great
God will help me now, will help me now."

At midday, after he had tried, with that strange Greek pertinacity that
understands no refusals, all the hotels and tourist agencies he had
called at the day before, he became weary and disconsolate. The march
had become a dirge; no longer it suggested happiness to be, but failure.
An Englishman threw him a piastre, and he turned into a cafe. Calling
for a glass of wine, he flung himself down on the wooden bench and tried
to think. But really logical thinking was impossible. For in spite of
the sorrow at his heart, the same bright dreams of wealth and happiness
came back to mock him. The piastre he played with became gold, and he
felt the cafe contained no luxuries that he might not command to be
brought before him. But as the effects of the red wine of Lebanon
evaporated he began to take a soberer though still cheerful view of his
position. It was only when the waiter carried off his piastre that he
suddenly woke to fact and knew himself once more a man with a wife and
child starving in Alexandria, an alien city for all its wealthy colony
of Greeks. A wave of pity swept over him; not so much for the woman was
he sorry, though he loved her too, but for the baby whose future he had
planned. He scowled savagely at the inmates of the cafe, who only smiled
quietly, for they were used to poor Greeks who had drunk away their last
coin, and pushed past them into the street.

There it was hotter than ever, and he met scarcely any one. Every
one who could be was at home, or in the cool cafes; only Gregorio was
abroad. He determined to make for the quay. He knew that many ships put
into the Alexandrian waters, and there was often employment found
for those not too proud to work at lading and unloading. Quickly, and
burning as the kempsin, he hurried throug