l meaning after all. As Mrs. Sarafov said to me afterward in the
intense darkness of the street, 'Captain Macedoine, he goes 'way back, I
guess'; and there was a peculiar inflection in her tone which brought to
mind echoing corridors in the house of life.

"Yes, he was a younger son and he went out into an unsympathetic world
as a 'secretary'. Became a land-steward on great estates, secretary to a
London club, which fell on evil days, and was--in short--shut up.
Travelled for a while. I like that. It gave the obliging human
imagination such scope in which to devise a romantic and Byronic
pilgrimage for him. Accepted a post as purser on a grand duke's yacht.
He began to move in exalted circles. Grand duchesses, princesses of
principalities, eccentric millionaires, oriental potentates, and English
nobles with Mediterranean villas came upon the stage and performed
various evolutions which brought them into touch with the Grand Duke's
purser. He was thanked for his services on one occasion by a fat,
pop-eyed voluptuary who has become famous in history for scientific and
cold-blooded political murders. Was offered a cigarette from the
Imperial case which he accepted of course, but did not venture to
smoke. Indeed, murmured Captain Macedoine with a faint smile, he had it
still. 'My dear,' he addressed the girl Pollyni, 'if you will bring me
the bag in the top drawer over there....' She came back into the circle
of light bearing a small black bag of formidably heavy leather, the
handle-straps sewn right round the body of it and the bronze hasp fitted
with a massive brass padlock. It was a bag to inspire awe; and yet it
made me smile. On one side the thick leather had been carefully pared
away in three places. You see, I recognized that bag at once as one of
the specie carriers of the Maracaibo Steamship Company, whose initials
M. S. C. had been removed. It reminded me that after all I had known
this personality, in the making, when he had not yet realized all his
magnificent possibilities. In those days the furtive theft of a leather
bag was all in the day's work. But when I looked at him again I was
almost afraid to believe my own memories and conclusions. He held the
bag before him, his small chunky hands gathered together on the handles,
and gazed into the shadows with an expression of gentle and refined
melancholy upon his face, as though he knew there might be nothing in
the bag after all.

"But there was. There were thi