n't think much of you. He
thought you were giving him the glad eye, I'm afraid.'

"'Him!' she queried, and regarded him for a moment. And then she changed
the subject. She wished to know if I was going up to see Artemisia. And
when I hinted at the early hour, she declared that it was a good time.
She would be so glad, she thought. And when she said she was ready,
having bought all she needed, and that a carriage was waiting for her
up the hill near the _Via Egnatia_, I took her basket and we moved on.
And we left Mr. Tonderbeg behind, left him full of the inward rage which
boils up when envy and decorum are run together in our hearts. There was
nothing the matter with him, understand. I mean, there was nothing one
could do for him. He was one of those bland human organisms who simply
fly right off the handle when they encounter a foreign morality. It's an
ethnical problem, I suppose. Why do I tell you of this Tonderbeg?
Irrelevant? Well, but he wouldn't have been, if I had carried out the
momentous scheme I had in mind. I thought you would have grasped that.
And I sometimes wonder whether his respectable mind had not elucidated
some inkling of this from a word perhaps overheard as he passed the
captain's door, on the voyage home, and nursed a grievance against fate
for depriving him of that piquant experience which I had had in store
for him!

"And when we had climbed into the grubby little hired hack, a very
different vehicle from Mr. Kinaitsky's patrician affair, and the die
seemed definitely cast, I found myself recalling again and again a
remark which old Jack Evans had made his own. 'A man's a damn fool to
bother with a gel at all, unless he's going to marry her!' The ripe
fruit of his experience in the world! I had agreed with him, too. I
recalled his short, stout, unromantic figure standing in an
authoritative attitude with his hand on the rail, looking across the
blue glitter of the Mediterranean, seeing nothing of it, dreaming of
that semi-detached affair in Threxford which contained the angel child
and her desiccated mother. It is easy enough and indicative of wisdom to
agree in such cases. But I would remind you that I had no such dream of
the future in _my_ head as I sat beside this foreign girl and drove
along the _Via Egnatia_ to meet Captain Macedoine's daughter once more.
With more experience of the world of sentiment I might possibly have
gone so far as to envisage the probable outcome of the adventure