shrank back,
doubtful even of the power of her father to carry her through."

CHAPTER III

Mr. Spenlove, sitting forward in his deck chair, felt in his pocket for
his cigarette-case and looked round satirically into the profound shadow
of the awning. He still preserved the appearance of a man talking to
himself, but the fancy crossed his mind, as he glanced at the long
horizontal forms in the deck chairs, that he was addressing a company of
laid-out corpses. The air was very still, but a light breeze on the open
water beyond the nets, and the full splendour of a circular moon,
reminded him of an immense sheet of hammered silver. But Mr. Spenlove
did not look long at the AEgean. He swivelled round a little and pointed
with the burnt-out match at the large plain building he had indicated at
the beginning of his story. It was not a beautiful building. It had the
rectangular austerity of a continental customs house or English
provincial "Athenaeum." It was built close to the cliff and the outer
wall was provided with a flight of stairs which ascended, in a
mysterious and disconcerting manner, to the second floor. All this was
clearly visible in the brilliant moonlight, and even the long valley
behind, with its dim vineyards and clumps of almond, olive, and fig
trees half concealing the square white houses that dotted the
perspective, were subtly indicated against the enormous background of
the tunnelled uplands and bare limestone peaks. Mr. Spenlove held the
match out for a moment and then flicked it away.

"Romantic, isn't it? This was how it looked the night we anchored, and
Artemisia came up to me as I stood by the engine-room skylights with my
binoculars. It was she who pointed out to me how romantic it was. I
asked her why. I said: 'This place is simply an iron mine. To-morrow
they'll put us under those tips you see sticking out of the cliff there
and a lot of frowsy Greeks will run little wooden trucks full of red
dust and boulders and empty them with a crash into the ship. And
there'll be red dust in the tea and the soup and in your hair and eyes
and nose and mouth. And there'll be nothing but trouble all the time.
Very romantic!' So I sneered, but she wasn't taken in by it a bit. She
looked through the glasses, and laughed. 'Oh, it's beautiful!' she
murmured, 'beautiful, beautiful.'

"I said, 'How do beautiful things make you feel?' and she turned on me
for a moment. 'You know,' she said, and was silent