wn. He saw the wide clean space of matted floors and
the hammock where he would lie and watch the incandescent insects moving
through the night air. He saw himself there, an integral part of an
orderly and reasonable existence. He had no intention of wasting his
life, but he saw that he must have time and quiet to find his bearings
and make those necessary affiliations with society without which a man
is rootless driftage. He saw that the lines which had hitherto held him
to the shore had been spurious and rotten and had parted at the first
tension.

There was time yet. What was it the elderly lieutenant had called her?
"A mill-stone round your neck all your life." No, he could not take that
view. He did not regret that supreme experience of his life. He recalled
the swift derisive gesture she had once flung at him as she spurned his
reiterated fidelity: "You learn from me, to go back to an Englishwoman."
Even now he delighted in the splendid memory of her charm, her delicious
languors and moments of melting tenderness, her anger and sometimes
smouldering rage. No, he did not regret. It was something achieved,
something that would be part of him for ever. He could go forward now
into the future, armed with knowledge and the austere prudence that is
the heritage of an emotional defeat. He looked out across the river and
saw the quick glow of an opened cupola in a foundry on the Surrey Side.
There was a faint smile on his face, an expression of resolution, as
though in imagination he were already in his island home, watching the
glow of a cane-fire in a distant valley.

* * * * *

And eastward, some five thousand miles, in the costly Villa Dainopoulos
on the shores of an ancient sea, Evanthia Solaris pursued the mysterious
yet indomitable course of her destiny. She had arrived back from
"Europe," as has been hinted earlier, in some disarray, alighting from a
crowded train of frowsty refugees, silent, enraged yet reflective after
her odyssey. At her feet followed the young Jew, who incontinently
dropped upon his knees in the road and pressed his lips, in agonized
thankfulness, to his native earth. "_Je deteste les hommes!_" was all
she had said, and Mr. Dainopoulos had spared a moment in the midst of
his many affairs to utter a hoarse croak of laughter. Her story of
Captain Rannie's sudden escape from the problems of living struck him
for a moment, for he had of course utilized his commande