s were replicas of Constantinople, cosmopolitan rookeries
where one could meet interesting men. Saloniki immediately became a
charming place for Evanthia Solaris. The young man was the vice-consul.
His father was a wealthy ship-chandler at Stettin, and he himself had
been everywhere. It was he who first confirmed her vague gropings after
what one might call, for want of a better word, gentility. She was
shrewd enough to suspect that the crude and disorderly squabbling in the
Pera villa, or the grotesque bullying on the tobacco plantation, were
not the highest manifestations of human culture. As has been hinted, she
was sure there were people in the world who lived lives of virtuous
ease, as opposed to what she had been accustomed. Their existence was
confirmed by her new friend. He was the first man she had liked. Later
she became infatuated with him. In between these two periods she learned
to love someone in the world besides herself.

It would not do to say that she, in her barbaric simplicity, assumed
that all Englishwomen lay on their backs and had angelic tempers. But
she did arrive at a characteristically ecstatic conclusion about Mrs.
Dainopoulos. That lady was so obviously, so romantically genteel that
Evanthia sometimes wanted to barter her own superb vitality for some
such destiny. She never considered for a moment, until she met Mr.
Spokesly, the chances of being adored as Mr. Dainopoulos adored his
wife. She knew Mr. Dainopoulos would never dream of adoring a woman like
herself. She regarded him with dislike because he betrayed no curiosity
about herself and because he obviously knew too much to be hoodwinked by
her arts. He even ignored her rather amusing swagger when she paraded
her new acquisition, a handsome vice-consul. She knew he would not have
tolerated her at all had not his wife expressed a desire to have her
remain. Mrs. Dainopoulos had no intention of countenancing evil; but she
had been humane enough to see, when Evanthia told her story, how
impossible it was for a girl with such a childhood to have the remotest
conception of Western ideals. Mrs. Dainopoulos, in fact, belonged to the
numerous class of people in England who manage "to make allowances," as
they call it, for others. And possibly, too, Evanthia, with her bizarre
history and magical personality, possibly even her naive assumption that
she was destined to be mistress of men, appealed to the Englishwoman's
flair for romance. Evanthia,