r feet, took a deep breath
through her nostrils. I was seeing the human being at last. The lunatic
with the razor was after her. The Bengal tiger was growling near by.

"'Don't be in such a hurry,' I said, sharply, and for the first time
that woman gave me a glance that might be tortured into a faint
semblance of gratitude. 'I am not going into a thing until I've studied
it, and nobody but a madman would commit himself on anybody's mere
say-so. You see Macedoine, Jack, when you go ashore.'

"'You'd better come, too,' he said, rather glumly. 'Old Gruenbaum wants
some coal if you can spare it. Forty ton, he said. It'll be a fiver for
you. Can you let him have it and get to Algiers?'

"'I'll see,' I said. 'I'll go through the bunkers in the morning.' And
we left the dangerous subject for the time being. It was positively
refreshing to get out of the heavy atmosphere charged with Macedoine's
grandiose schemes and Mrs. Evans' premonitions of disaster and beggary
for herself and Babs. That angel child slept through it all on the far
end of the big plush settee, fenced in with a teak bunk-board, one
predatory hand clutching the throat of an enormous teddy bear whose eyes
stared upward with the protruding fixity of strangulation, as though
even in sleep she found it necessary to cause someone or something acute
discomfort. Yes, it was refreshing, for I don't mind admitting that the
petty graft of a five-pound note that I was to get from Gruenbaum for
selling him forty tons of coal was more to me than all the cloudy
millions of Macedoine's imagination. I am as anxious as any one to get
something for nothing, but this Anglo-Hellenic Development Company, in
which I was to get four hundred a year for living in Saloniki, didn't
appeal. In the regions of fancy Macedoine was an incomparable
inspiration; in business I preferred the unimaginative concessionaire.
As I rose to go up on deck, I felt that whether Mrs. Evans was
grateful or not I had earned her approbation. Perhaps she, with her
feminine intuition--or possibly it was only the instinct of
self-preservation--saw the necessity of flattering a poor silly single
man, for she remarked, with her head bent over the child's to touch the
tumbled locks:

"'I'm sure Mr. Spenlove will give you the _best_ advice, dear.'

"And I felt my bosom swell with pride. Oh, women are wonderful! Even an
inferior woman, as Mrs. Evans was, with a soul like a parched pea, and a
heart so narrow that