y way.
Pollyni must go with me and show me a short route to a landing-stage
where I could get a boat. We stood in the clear darkness of the high,
narrow sidewalk, and I could feel the girl move closer to me as she
lifted her chin and smiled into my eyes. What? Lyrical? Well, I can tell
you that you would have been lyrical, too, doctor. I was thirty-five,
you know, and I had never been in close contact with beautiful women
before. Just as Artemisia had her own secret lure, a lure founded on her
exquisite, derisive humour and her sombre heritage, so this
extraordinarily seductive and friendly young person, an entrancing
character composed of Eastern mystery and Western frankness, appealed
irresistibly to the connoisseur in a man. She was sex, and nothing but
sex, yet she maintained without effort the role of being merely a dear
friend of Captain Macedoine's daughter.

"'You must come again,' said Mrs. Sarafov, drawing her shawl round her
fine shoulders. 'We don't often see people from the other side. In the
afternoon, eh? And Miss Macedoine, she'll come over.'

"'Then you don't think there will be any trouble?' I asked. 'Any
fighting, I mean.'

"'We never interfere in politics,' she answered, drily. 'So long as you
mind your own business and let them fight it out among 'emselves, you're
safe enough here, I should say.'

"'What is it all about?' I demanded.

"'That's more than I can tell you,' she answered with disarming candour.
'Taxes mostly, I guess. But you have to pay 'em to somebody.' And then
she added cryptically: 'I don't know as we'll be any better off if they
was to win.'

"Well, we talked a little longer and then the girl, who had run into the
house for a shawl, stepped along beside me with her long, sure-footed
stride and we started up the dark street. There were very few lights
about now and from time to time she put her hand on my arm as we came to
a gap in the sidewalk.

"'And so,' I said in a low tone, 'you are a great friend of Miss
Macedoine, I understand.'

"'Oh, yes,' she said. 'I like her very much. She tells me everything.'

"'Everything?' She nodded, leaning forward and looking up at me in a
certain demure, elvish fashion.

"'Yes!' she replied, dwelling on the word with tremendous emphasis.
'Everything. About you, when you come to see her in London, you know.
Oh, she like you. She like you very much. When she know you have come,
she'll be crazy.'

"'But you know,' I protested, 'you kn