contrasted with Haverstock Hill, was
wonderful. And to Evanthia, the victim of sudden little spurts of
girlish posing, pathetic strivings after an imaginary western self, the
invalid woman was a sympathetic angel. She never laughed when Evanthia
pretended an absurd lofty patriotism or inaugurated a season of
ridiculous religious observances, dressing in white and holding a
crucifix to her breast. She did not deride Evanthia's remarkable
travesty of English dress, or Evanthia's embarrassing concoctions in the
kitchen. These gusts of enthusiasm died out, and the real Evanthia
emerged again, a velvet-soft being of sex and sinuous delicacy, of no
country and no creed, at home in the world, a thing of indestructible
loveliness and problematic utility.

And now, while Mr. Spokesly stood at his window gently rubbing his chin
and looking down into the dew-drenched garden, Evanthia was lying in
another room, smoking a cigarette and meditating. She had a very astute
and clearly defined plan in her mind, and she lay thinking how it could
be carried out. Unhampered by so many of our modern educational
distractions and complexes, her mental processes would have exacted the
admiration of the London School of Mnemonics. The apparent impossibility
of leaving Saloniki and reaching Constantinople meant nothing at all to
her. It had always been an almost impossible task to go anywhere if one
were a woman. Women, in her experience, were like expensive automobiles.
They were always owned by somebody, who drove them about and sometimes
ill-treated them and even rode them to destruction, and who lost them if
they were not carefully guarded. Moreover, the parallel, in her
experience, went farther, because she observed that nobody ever thought
less of them because they were costly to run. Evanthia was now like an
ownerless machine of which no one perceived the value or knew how to
start. She had been getting accustomed to the notion that independence
had its pleasures and defects. She lay thinking with quiet efficiency,
until her cigarette was burned down, and then suddenly sprang out of
bed. With extraordinary speed and quietness, she rolled up her great
masses of black hair, slipped into a yellow kimono and Turkish slippers,
and went downstairs. The contrast between her pose, with nothing save
the slow curl of smoke coming from the deep pillow to show she was
alive, and the sharp vitality of her movements in the kitchen, was
characteristic. S