uite willing to be treated with deference for the sake of the more
tangible advantages of present fortune. In Mrs. Rushmore's garden of
celebrities, he at once took his place as a rare bird.

He crossed the lawn beside Margaret, indeed, with the air and assurance
of a magnificent peacock. He was perhaps a shade less over-dressed than
when she had seen him last, but there was an astonishing lustre about
everything he wore, and even his almond-shaped eyes were bright almost
to vulgarity; but though he tired the sight, as a peacock does in the
sun, it was impossible not to watch him.

'What a handsome man Logotheti is!' exclaimed a Roumanian poetess, who
was there.

'What an awful cad!' observed a fastidious young American to the
English officer who was still on his way to India, and was very
comfortable at Mrs. Rushmore's.

The Englishman looked at Logotheti attentively for nearly half a minute
before he answered.

'No,' he said quietly. 'That man is not a cad, he is simply a rich
Oriental, dressed up in European clothes. I've met that sort before,
and they are sometimes nasty customers. That fellow is as strong as a
horse and as quick as a cat.'

Meanwhile the Greek and Margaret reached a seat near the little pond
and sat down. She did not know that he had watched every one of her
movements with as much delight as if Psyche, made whole and alive, had
been walking beside him. He had not seemed to look at her at all, and
he did not begin the conversation by making her compliments.

'I should have left a card on Mrs. Rushmore the day after I met you,'
he began in a rather apologetic tone, 'but I was not quite sure that
she knew about your visit to our friend, and she might have asked who I
was and where you had met me. Besides, as she is an American, she would
have thought I was trying to scrape acquaintance.'

'Hardly that. But you did quite right,' Margaret answered. 'Thank you.'

He was tactful. She leaned back a little in the corner of the seat and
looked at him with an air of curiosity, wondering why everything he had
said and done so far had pleased her so much better than his
appearance. She was always expecting him to say something blatant or to
do something vulgar, mainly because he wore such phenomenal ties and
such gorgeous pins. To-day he displayed a ruby of astonishing size and
startling colour. She was sure that it must be real, because he was so
rich, but she had never known that rubies could be so