me. If she had sent me to fetch the Cham of Tartary's cap or a
hair of the Prester John's beard, I would have telephoned forthwith to
Rogers to pack a suit-case and book a seat in the Orient express.

What would have happened next Heaven alone knows--for we could not have
gone on gazing at each other until I backed myself out at the door by
way of leave-taking--had not Anticlimax arrived in the person of Mr.
Anastasius Papadopoulos in his eternal frock-coat. But his gloves were
black.

As usual he fell on his knees and kissed his lady's hand. Then he rose
and greeted me with solemn affability.

"_C'est un privilege de rencontrer den gnadigsten Herrn_," said he.

Confining myself to one language, I responded by informing him that
it was an honour always to meet so renowned a professor, and inquired
politely after the health of Hephaestus.

"Ah, Signore!" he cried. "Do not ask me. It is a tragedy from which I
shall never recover."

He sat down on a footstool by the side of Madame Brandt and burst into
tears, which coursed down his cheeks and moustache and hung like drops
of dew from the point of his imperial.

"Is he dead?" asked Madame.

"I wish he were! No. It is only the iron self-restraint that I possess
which prevented me from slaying him on the spot. But poor Santa Bianca!
My gentle and accomplished Angora. He has killed her. I can scarcely
raise my head through grief."

Lola put her great arm round the little man's neck and patted him like a
child, while he sobbed as if his heart would break.

When he recovered he gave us the details of the tragic end of Santa
Bianca, and wound up by calling down the most ingeniously complicated
and passionate curses on the head of the murderer. Lola Brandt strove to
pacify him.

"We all have our sorrows, Anastasius. Did I not lose my beautiful horse
Sultan?"

The professor sprang to his full height of four feet and dashed away his
tears with a noble gesture of his black-gloved hand.

Base slave that he was to think of his own petty bereavement in the face
of her eternal affliction. He turned to me and bade me mark her serene
nobility. It was a model and an example for him to follow. He, too,
would be brave and present a smiling face to evil fortune.

"Behold! I smile, carissima!" he cried dramatically.

We beheld--and saw his features (smudged with tearstains and the dye
from the black gloves which he obviously wore out of respect for the
deceased Santa Bianca)