alien races, a vitality fretted into white wrath by her will
and her desire, as the serene breath of the morning is suddenly lashed
into a tempest by the howling fury of an AEgean white squall. She was
gone, yet the room was still charged with her magnetic presence, so that
Mr. Dainopoulos came in quietly, put down his tweed cap, and seated
himself beside his wife, and Mr. Spokesly scarcely noticed his arrival.

As he became aware of outside phenomena once more--and he was rather
frightened to discover how his thoughts had flown out into the unknown
darkness in search of the girl--he saw that Mr. Dainopoulos was
preoccupied and anxious. They were speaking in a low tone and in a
foreign tongue, Mr. Spokesly noted. He recalled a story he had read in a
magazine some little time before--a story of an Englishman who had a
most miraculous command of foreign languages, who overheard a
conversation which revealed a plot to destroy the British Army. The plot
was revealed by the simple process of torturing a beautiful girl of
neutral origin who was to be forced to marry a brutal enemy colonel. It
did not occur to Mr. Spokesly to reflect that beautiful girls are
usually eager to marry colonels of any denomination, or that colonels do
not usually blend love and espionage. But he did notice the extreme
improbability of an Englishman being a linguist. It made the tale seem
unreal and artificial. Especially when the story added that he was a
naval officer of good family who afterwards married the beautiful
neutral and settled in a castle in Dalmatia. Fanciful! Mr. Spokesly knew
enough of naval officers to doubt the _denouement_. He himself, for that
matter, would rather live in a bungalow in Twickenham than in Dalmatia.
As for foreign girls--he rubbed his chin, puzzled over his own blurred
sensations. Mr. Dainopoulos was speaking again. The woman lay back,
looking up at the high ceiling, an expression of calm and careful
consideration on her face, which was illuminated sharply, like an
intaglio, by the lamp. And Mr. Spokesly experienced a shock to discover
that they were not speaking of the girl at all. They seemed to have
forgotten her existence. They looked at him and so brought him into the
conversation.

"I'll have to be getting back," he remarked, rising once more.

Mr. Dainopoulos went to the door and spoke in a low harsh tone into the
darkness.

"I'll get you a boat," he said. "There's no boats allowed after dark,
but I ha