corralled from
friendly houses built about the Citadel, for these were mostly families
with military traditions. One carried on his curved back a newly
slaughtered sheep, the bright red blood dribbling from the gashed
gullets, and the animal's eyes looking back at us with an expression of
intelligent comprehension, as though it were fully aware of the whole
business. In the clear light of early morning there was a good deal of
the automaton about all of us. And as we crossed the road where it
debouched upon the quays and started to walk out of the city by the
deserted barrier, a short and determined-looking person in a
tight-fitting blue tunic looked out of the door of the Tower and eyed us
critically. And I really believe the only reason why he neglected to
tell one of his men to put an experimental bullet into us was the fact
that the girl still had her hand on my arm. And she carried her parasol.
We walked on and presently we were out of sight of the sea and the
Tower. Across the blue sky large companies of billowing white clouds
were gathering from the mouth of the Gulf. Suddenly Miss Sarafov
murmured without taking her eyes from the ground.

"'Was that man dead?'

"Now," said Mr. Spenlove, "you may call me fanciful and overwrought, but
I read into that simple question a secret desire to accustom my mind to
the idea of death as a frequent and common sort of affair. I looked at
her suspiciously and she raised her eyes to mine full of a clear
feminine candour. She may have known that my morose taciturnity came
from a consciousness that she had divined the fundamental flaw in my
emotional equipment and was using it for her own purposes, but she did
not show it. And while I was debating the question with myself, I heard
her add, in a shy, delicate tone, 'There is a little garden just here,
on the water.'

"And from that moment I let her have her way and followed her lead. We
crossed the street. I heard her say it was too early to go to the _Rue
Paleologue_, which might be true, but struck me as irrelevant. And then
my attention was drawn to a high square house standing in a dusty yard
and decorated with a long board bearing the words _Ecole Universelle_.

"'I was at school there before we went to America,' Miss Saratov
remarked, poking at the place with her parasol. 'It was a good school
then, very solid instruction,' she added, 'but now it isn't any good.'

"'Is the instruction no longer sufficiently solid?' I ask