isappearing out of his life.
And he was surprised to find that what lingered his mind was not the
students, dancing like Indians round the bonfire, or at the steps of the
smoking-car fighting to shake his hand, but the man and woman alone in
the cottage stricken with sudden sorrow, standing like two children
lost in the streets, who cling to each other for comfort and at the same
moment whisper words of courage.

Two months Later, at Constantinople, Peter, was suffering from remorse
over neglected opportunities, from prickly heat, and from fleas. And it
not been for the moving-picture man, and the poker and baccarat at the
Cercle Oriental, he would have flung himself into the Bosphorus. In
the mornings with the tutor he read ancient history, which he promptly
forgot; and for the rest of the hot, dreary day with the moving-picture
man through the bazaars and along the water-front he stalked suspects
for the camera.

The name of the moving-picture man was Harry Stetson. He had been a
newspaper reporter, a press-agent, and an actor in vaudeville and in
a moving-picture company. Now on his own account he was preparing an
illustrated lecture on the East, adapted to churches and Sunday-schools.
Peter and he wrote it in collaboration, and in the evenings rehearsed
it with lantern slides before an audience of the hotel clerk, the tutor,
and the German soldier of fortune who was trying to sell the young Turks
very old battleships. Every other foreigner had fled the city, and the
entire diplomatic corps had removed itself to the summer capital at
Therapia.

There Stimson, the first secretary of the embassy and, in the absence
of the ambassador, CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, invited Peter to become his guest.
Stimson was most anxious to be polite to Peter, for Hallowell senior was
a power in the party then in office, and a word from him at Washington
in favor of a rising young diplomat would do no harm. But Peter was
afraid his father would consider Therapia "out of bounds."

"He sent me to Constantinople," explained Peter, "and if he thinks I'm
not playing the game the Lord only knows where he might send me next-and
he might cut off my allowance."

In the matter of allowance Peter's father had been most generous. This
was fortunate, for poker, as the pashas and princes played it at
he Cercle, was no game for cripples or children. But, owing to his
letter-of-credit and his illspent life, Peter was able to hold his own
against men thr