cious abandon."

* * * * *

"And there, you know," said Mr. Spenlove in a low tone, "the story ought
to finish. That's where, when I recall the whole history of Captain
Macedoine's daughter, I should like it to finish--on a final note of a
supreme memory of that day. I would have had it forever wrapped in the
gracious radiance of romance. Which, I suppose, is more than is granted
to any of us. So, though it would not do for me to break the silence in
which one buries the fragrant bodies of dead moments, there is something
more to tell. Of M. Nikitos, for example, and the reproaches,
courteously worded, of M. Kinaitsky....

"We went for what in England we would call a picnic. Pollyni came back
about ten, in a fresh carriage whose driver had celebrated a day's
contract by coloured ribbons on the horses' head-stalls and a dark red
rose thrust over one of his own ears, in bizarre contrast to the almost
incredible dilapidation of his clothes. An old woman, whose features
were shrivelled to the colour and consistency of a peeled walnut,
placed between our feet a basket out of which stuck the necks of wine
bottles. I didn't ask where we were going, for I didn't care. I
remember, however, demanding an explanation of the heavy explosions
which had begun somewhere in the neighbourhood, and their telling me it
was a blasting party in a quarry just behind the houses and outside the
city wall. And I recall another incident, when we reached the barrier at
the Great Tower, where a squad of fezzed and moustached guards debated
among themselves the wisdom of permitting us to pass out. Very serious,
not to say uneasy, they seemed, the heavy explosions causing them to
look over their shoulders apprehensively even while they held their
bayonets, long, sharp, unpleasant affairs, across the breasts of the
horses. But finally they let us go, and after a half hour or so of the
boulevards we came to a road leading across the plain to a town a few
miles away. That is a memory, too--the wide plain of pale saffron earth,
the dancing blue sea, the turquoise sky piled here and there with
immense snowy billowings of autumn clouds, the girdle of grim and
inaccessible peaks, and the compact little town of white houses buried
in a circular plaque of foliage in the middle distance. And then at the
roadside, squatting on their haunches with their rifles between their
knees, very dusty and enigmatic, lines of soldiers on th