enough to understand that expression?'

'I happen to have read the story of the Good Samaritan in Greek,'
Logotheti answered. 'Since you are willing that we should be
neighbours, "in the biblical sense," you cannot blame me for saying
that I love my neighbour as myself.'

Once more her instinct told her that the words were meant less
carelessly than they were spoken, though she could not possibly seem to
take them in earnest. Yet her curiosity was aroused, as he intended
that it should be.

'I remember that the Samaritan loved his neighbour, "in the biblical
sense," at first sight,' he said, with a quick glance.

'But those were biblical times, you know!'

'Men have not changed much since then. We can still love at first
sight, I assure you, even after we have seen a good deal of the world.
It depends on meeting the right woman, and on nothing else. Do you
suppose that if the Naples Psyche, or the Syracuse Venus, or the Venus
of Milo, or the Victory of Samothrace suddenly appeared in Paris or
London, all the men would not lose their heads about her--at first
sight? Of course they would!'

'If you expect to have such neighbours as those--"in the biblical
sense"----'

'I have one,' said Logotheti, 'and that's enough.'

Margaret had received many compliments of a more or less complicated
nature, but she did not remember that any one had yet compared her to
two Venuses, the Psyche and the Samothrace Nike in a single breath.

'That's nonsense!' she exclaimed, blushing a little, and not at all
indignant.

'No,' Logotheti answered, imperturbably. 'Besides, neither the Victory
nor the Venus of Syracuse has a head, so I am at liberty to suppose
yours on their shoulders. Take the Victory. You move exactly as she
seems to be moving, for she is not flying at all, you know, though she
has wings. The wings are only a symbol. The Greeks knew perfectly well
that a winged human being could not fly straight without a feathered
tail two or three yards long!'

'How absurd!'

'That you should move like the Victory? Not at all. The reason why I
love my neighbour as myself is that my neighbour is the most absolutely
satisfactory being, from an artistic point of view. I don't often make
compliments.'

'They are astonishing when you do!'

'Perhaps. But I was going on to say that what satisfies my love of the
beautiful, can only be what satisfies my love of life itself, which is
enormous.'

'In other words,' said Margaret,