morning
before coming on board. They might not see each other again for some
time, it was understood. The interview had taken place in the little
office in the Rue Voulgaroktono, off the Place de la Liberte, and the
usual crowds had thronged the street while they talked. Mr. Dainopoulos
had gone on with his business, rising continually to change money, and
once he went away for half an hour to look at some rugs. Captain Rannie
had remained coiled up on his chair, smoking cigarette after cigarette,
listening to his owner's remarks, his eyes wandering as though in search
of some clue.

"You understand," Mr. Dainopoulos had said in the course of this
conversation, "I'm doing this for my wife. My wife likes this young lady
very much. Another thing, the young lady's mother, she's married again.
Man with plenty of money. I do his business for him here."

Captain Rannie looked hard at a crack in the linoleum near his foot.

"I'm sure it doesn't make the slightest difference to me. I know nothing
about it, nothing at all. My chief officer was going to say something to
me this morning and I shut him up at once. I knew perfectly well from
the very first there was something like this in the wind and I made up
my mind to have nothing at all to do with it. As master of the vessel
it's impossible ... you can quite understand ... eh?"

"That's all right," replied Mr. Dainopoulos, looking at his open palm.
"No passport. Once you get outside, no matter. The young lady, she give
me a paper. She loves my wife. She gives everything she may have to my
wife."

"Which isn't much, according to what you told me before. You grumbled to
me, and said in so many words she cost you a lot of money to keep for a
companion to your wife."

Mr. Dainopoulos stared hard at his captain's sneering face.

"That was before her mother got married again. Miss Solaris, she tell me
her mother want somebody to look after the farms, by and by."

"I don't want to hear anything about it," burst out Captain Rannie,
turning round in his chair so that he could hear better.

"And she say, she say," went on Mr. Dainopoulos steadily, "her mother
perhaps, you understand, some women have one, two, three, four husband,
you see? Well, her mother want a good man of business. So Miss Solaris
she sign a paper for me. She give everything to my wife."

"Everything! Which is nothing, I've no doubt."

"Ah-h! Not nothing. I sell his tobacco now, and it's not nothing, I can