ng her hands to her magnificent coil of dark
hair, and revealing the poise and vigour of her body. "Ah!" she moaned,
bending over her friend and caressing her. "I am a bad girl, forgetting
how ill you are. Evanthia is a bad, bad girl, with her troubles--and you
have a visitor----" She turned her head for a moment and Mr. Spokesly
was caught unawares in the brilliance of a dazzling yet enigmatic glance
from the amber eyes.

"A friend of my husband's," said Mrs. Dainopoulos. "He is English, you
know, like me. From London. We have been talking of London."

"Ah, yes!" The lingering syllables were a caress, yet there was no more
comprehension in them than in the inarticulate sounds of an animal. The
girl bent her dark head over the blonde masses on the pillow. "Forgive
your bad girl, Alice."

"Oh, all right," said Mrs. Dainopoulos, emerging with an embarrassed
English smile. "Only you must be good now and go back to bed. There's
Boris coming in."

"I am going!" said the girl and started. And then she remembered Mr.
Spokesly sitting there in dumb stupefaction, his gaze following her, and
she turned to make him a bow with a strange, charming gesture of an
out-flung hand towards him. The next moment she dragged the door open
and passed out.

He looked up to see Mrs. Dainopoulos regarding him thoughtfully, and he
made a sudden step forward in life as he realized the ineffectiveness of
any words in his vocabulary to express his emotions at that moment. He
made no attempt to corrupt the moment, however, which was perhaps
another step forward. He sat silent, looking at the glowing end of his
cigarette, endeavouring to recapture the facile equilibrium of mind
which had been his as he followed Mr. Dainopoulos through the gateway an
hour or so before. But that was impossible, for it was gone, though he
did not know it, for ever. He was trying to remember the name Mrs.
Dainopoulos had called her. Evanthia! And once at the beginning, Miss
Solaris. Something like that. Evanthia Solaris. He said to himself that
it was a pretty name, and was conscious at the same time of the
inadequacy of such a word. There was something beyond prettiness in it;
something of a spring morning in the Cyclades, when the other islands
come up out of the mist like hummocks of amethyst and the cicadas shrill
in the long grass under the almond trees. There was in it an adumbration
of youth beyond his experience, a hint of the pulsing and bizarre
vitality of