empires, in so far as he was supposed to have no
ascertainable human attributes beyond cupidity and intelligence. A
seneschal! So it fell out that the Grand Duke, whose photograph showed a
much be-whiskered person with very long thin legs and a huge nose, found
himself without a purser one day. Captain Macedoine resigned. Under
ordinary circumstances he would have returned to England and settled on
a small estate in the country. But the circumstances were not ordinary.
He had become the last of his line. The Macedoines had been dwindling
for centuries. Did I believe in hereditary destinies? Families do die
out, you know. So instead of taking the P. L. M. express from Cannes to
Paris and so on to London, he took a passage to New York. First class,
you know. As we reached this particular stage in Captain Macedoine's
reminiscences, a brief and extraordinarily concentrated expression came
into the pale blue eyes fixed on the shadows beyond the bed, his hands
and nostrils remained momentarily rigid, as though a sharp memory had
gone right through him and bereft him of all volition. And his eyes,
closing, seemed to take his life with them and he became a corpse
enjoying, let us say, a siesta. And this paroxysm, which gave me an
uncomfortable feeling that Captain Macedoine was omitting the really
interesting details of his departure from the Grand Duke's yacht, was
construed by the Sarafov women as a symptom of mental anguish; and the
girl, with a gesture almost divine in its exquisite and restrained
impulsiveness, touched his arm. A smile suffused the man's features
before he opened his eyes and turned them upon her with sacerdotal
graciousness. The thing was so unreal that I was lost in a turmoil of
effort to retain my hold upon actuality. The histrionic instinct gives
one strange jolts when viewed close up. And through that turmoil I heard
him telling them, as he had done before often enough no doubt, the story
of how he met his dear Euphrosyne in the old French Quarter. And as he
often said, you know, his dear Artemisia was the living image, you know,
of her dear mother. His hand moved absently and the girl, anticipating
his desire as though they had rehearsed the performance many times,
leaned forward, took a photograph from the table, and handed it to me.
His dear Euphrosyne!

"Well, it wasn't so very like his daughter after all, not really so like
her as Pollyni was like Mrs. Saratov. The woman in the photo was
undeniab