t his gorge rose in spite of him at
the reference to Englishwomen.

"I don't quite understand," he remarked in a low tone. "How do you
happen to know so much about 'em?"

Mr. Dainopoulos laughed again and handed the fare to the driver. He
stepped out, held a bunch of keys to the light of the carriage lamp, and
selected one. Then he beckoned to Mr. Spokesly to alight.

"I'll tell you, Mister," he said, as he stooped, inserted the key,
turned it, and pushed open the gate. "Because I married one myself."

CHAPTER V

Mr. Spokesly, in a state of considerable astonishment, sat by a
balconied upper window and tried to get his recent experiences into some
sort of focus. That last remark of Mr. Dainopoulos, that he had married
one himself, had dislocated his guest's faculties, so that Mr. Spokesly
was unable to note clearly by what means he had arrived at his present
position, a balconied window on his right and in front of him a woman
lying on a sofa. A woman whose brown hair, extraordinarily long and
fine, was a glossy pile pressed into the pillow, and whose thin hand he
had just relinquished.

"Well," he said, as Mr. Dainopoulos came forward with a lamp, his swart
and damaged features giving him the air of a ferocious genie about to
perform some nefarious experiment. "Well, I must say, I'm surprised."

Mrs. Dainopoulos continued to gaze straight out into the darkness over
the Gulf.

"Of course," agreed her husband, seating himself and reaching for a
large briar pipe. "Of course. And I'll bet you'd be still more surprised
if you only knew--eh, Alice?" He screwed up one eye and looked
prodigiously sly at his wife with the other, his palms slowly rubbing up
some tobacco. Mrs. Dainopoulos did not remove her eyes from the darkness
beyond the shore. She only murmured in a curt voice:

"Never mind that now, Boris."

"But it ain't anything to be ashamed of, you know," he returned
earnestly, packing his pipe in a way that made Mr. Spokesly want to
snatch it from him and do it properly.

"I know, but it wouldn't interest Mr. Spokesly, I'm quite certain," she
muttered, and she suddenly looked at their visitor and smiled. It
reassured that gentleman, as it was intended to do, that he was in no
way responsible for this minute difference of viewpoint between husband
and wife. Mr. Spokesly smiled, too.

"Don't mind me," he remarked, lighting a cigarette and offering the
match to Mr. Dainopoulos. After sucking valiantl