ort of polite and poignant
regret that he should see fit to cumber the earth, which had happened,
by a singular and unexplained destiny, to be their heritage. Association
with them, under such circumstances as he encountered, was provocative
of considerable thought. To men like him, the confused product of a
hundred diverging stocks, from Illyrian to Copt, the phenomenon of these
blond and disdainful beings, who came always in ships and were
apologetic even in their invasions, bore the mark of something
supernatural, since the contemplation of them in their own land filled a
normal Latin with inarticulate contempt. Mr. Dainopoulos had no pride.
He would have found it an embarrassing impediment in his business. But
he did devote an occasional moment of leisure to wondering how men could
so impose their eccentric habit of thought upon the nations, and why he,
for example, should be directed to obtain his personal ideals from a
distant island in the northern seas.

The servant appeared on the landing, and Mr. Dainopoulos immediately
went up.

The Berlin architect, no doubt in anticipation of invading armies, had
exhausted his ingenuity in the facade and the reception rooms, and the
chambers above were left in a state of disturbing starkness. Mr.
Dainopoulos was led along corridors that chilled the heart with their
bare rectangular perspectives, and was halted at length before a door
behind which the voices of men could be heard in conversation. And in
reply to a knock a slightly querulous voice intoned, "Come in, come in!"
as though in infinite but weary patience with elementary intelligences.
Mr. Dainopoulos stepped in.

Three men occupied the room. A naval lieutenant sat on the bed smoking a
cigarette, a young man who did not raise his eyes to glance at the
intruder. The owner of the room was a major, who was seated at a small
escritoire near the window, and whose belt and cap hung over a chair. He
was a man of thirty-odd, as clean as though he had been scoured and
scraped in boiling water, the small absurd moustache as decorative as a
nail-brush, and with a look of capable insolence in his blue-gray eyes.
A small safe at his side was open and he remained stooping over this as
he looked up and saw Mr. Dainopoulos standing by the door. The other man
was in civilian tweeds, astride of a chair with his arms on the back,
smoking a large curved meerschaum pipe. A clean-shaven circular-faced
man of doubtful age, he was the