lar fortune. Always, moreover, he
conceived the woman he did not know as a creature of extraordinary
gifts. Evanthia Solaris seemed to have eluded classification because,
without possessing any gifts at all beyond a certain magnetism
bewilderingly composed of feminine timidity and tigerish courage, she
had inspired in him a strange belief that she would bring him good
fortune. This was the kind of woman she was. She went much farther back
into the history of the world than Ada Rivers. Ada was simply a modern
authorized version of Lady Rowena or Rebecca of York. She accepted man,
though what she really wanted was a knight. Evanthia had no use for
knights, save perhaps those of Aristophanes. She, too, accepted men; but
they had to transform themselves quickly and efficiently into the
votaries of a magnetic goddess. Sighs and vows of allegiance were as
nothing at all to her. She had a divinely dynamic energy which set men
going the way she wanted. The gay young devil who had been sent packing
with the consuls and who was now sitting in his hotel in Pera was
wondering at his luck in escaping from her and scheming how to get back
to her at the same time. Yet so astute had she been that even now he did
not suspect that she was scheming, too, that she was in an agony at
times for the loss of him, and talked to Mrs. Dainopoulos of killing
herself. She was scheming as she came walking among the grass-plats at
the base of the Tower and saw Mr. Spokesly descend from a carriage and
take a seat facing the sea. She came along, as she so often did in her
later period, at a vital moment. She came, in her suit of pale saffron
with the great crown of black straw withdrawing her face into a
magically distant gloom, and holding a delicate little wrap on her arm
against the night, for the sun was going down behind the distant hills
and touching the waters of the Gulf with ruddy fire. She saw him sitting
there, and smiled. He was watching a ship going out, a ship making for
the narrow strait between the headland and the marshes of the Vardar,
and thinking of his life as it was opening before him. He took out a
cigarette and his fingers searched a vest-pocket for matches. They
closed on the emerald ring and he held the cigarette for a while unlit,
thinking of Evanthia, and wondered how he could make the gift. And as he
sat there she seemed to materialize out of the shimmering radiance of
the evening air, prinking and bending forward with an enc