books she had been reading. She was the author, as it
were, of innumerable unwritten romances, enthusiastic imitations of
those Mr. Dainopoulos obediently ordered in boxes from London. She
adored those books which, the publisher's advertisement said, made you
forget; and she never took any notice at all of the advertisement, often
on the opposing page, of the London School of Mnemonics which sought to
sell books that made you remember. Yet forget-me-nots were her favourite
flowers. To her, as to Goethe, art is called art because it is not
nature. The phantasmagoria of Balkan life, the tides of that
extraordinary and sinister sea which beat almost up against her windows,
left her untroubled. For her there was no romance without love, and of
course marriage. For Evanthia she cherished a clear, boyish admiration
blended with a rather terrified interest in her volcanic emotional
outbreaks. The difference between the two women can be compared to the
written story and the ferocious transformation of that story known as a
film-version. Mrs. Dainopoulos quite comprehended that Evanthia could do
things impossible for an English girl. Even in her seclusion Mrs.
Dainopoulos had learned that the Cite Saul was not Haverstock Hill. But
she saw no reason why Evanthia should not "find happiness," as she
phrased it, fading out with a baby in her arms, so to speak. She did not
realize that girls like Evanthia never fade out. They are not that kind.
They progress as Evanthia progressed, borne on the crests of aboriginal
impulses, riding easily amid storms and currents which would wreck the
tidy coasting craft of domestic life. They are in short destined to
command, and nothing can sate their appetite for spiritual conflict.

But Mrs. Dainopoulos did not know this. She lay there looking out at the
ineffable beauty of the Gulf, a novel of Harold Bell Wright open on her
lap, dreaming of Evanthia and Mr. Spokesly. How nice if they really and
truly liked each other! And perhaps, when the war was over, they could
all go to England together and see the Tower and Westminster Abbey! This
was the way her thoughts ran. She never spoke this way, however. Her
speech was curt and matter-of-fact, for she was very shy of revealing
herself even to her husband. Her sharp, small intelligence never led her
into the mistake of interfering with other people. Instead she imagined
them as characters in a story and thought how nice it would be if they
only would