evening, and was admitted after a parley by a middle-aged
servant-woman.

"Madama gone to bed?" he asked, picking up a large cat that was rubbing
herself against his leg, and putting her out into the garden.

"No, she's not gone to bed. She said she would wait for you to come
home."

"All right. You can go to bed then," he retorted.

The woman shot the bolts and picked up the cheap pink glass lamp without
answering. Mr. Dainopoulos made his way upstairs. There was no light in
the room looking out over the sea. In their chamber beyond, a
night-light, very small and rose-coloured, was burning on a small table
below a picture of the Virgin, as though it were a shrine. It took the
place of one, for his wife made the most of his rather dilapidated
devoutness, and often left a candle burning there. There was an ulterior
motive in her action which she had never formulated exactly even to
herself. This was the appeal which a strange and sensuous religion made
to her romantic instinct. She would always be Church of England herself;
but the impression made by candles and an ikon upon her girl-friends in
Haverstock Hill in North London was always before her. She could hear
them breathe the word "ikon," and then draw in their breath in an
ecstasy of awe. And the thought of it gave her pleasure.

But she was not in the chamber and he returned to the other room in
search of her.

She was lying as before, her eyes closed and her hands clasped lightly
over the tartan rug. A screen had been opened and stationed between her
and the window. This was the hour to which his thoughts went forward
occasionally during the day of chaffering on the front, or in his
blue-distempered office with its shabby chestnut fittings in the Cite
Saul. To the western cynic there was a rich humour in the sheer
fortuitousness of their meeting in the midst of a drowning multitude. To
him it was not humorous at all. To him it was significant of a profound
fatality. To him it confirmed his inherited faith in omens and the
finger of God. She was a common enough type of woman in most things, yet
she embodied for him a singular ideal of human achievement. He knew of
nothing in the world comparable with her, and the knowledge that she was
his was at times almost unbelievable. Whether she loved him was a
question he never faced. He believed it, and doubted, and believed
again. He knew by instinct that it was not a matter of importance as was
the fact of possess