But this girl had merely
touched him gently, and he had been made helpless. It was most
perplexing; and while the custom-house officials were passing his
luggage, he found himself rubbing his arm curiously, as though it were
numb, and looking down at it with an amused smile. He did not comment
on the incident, although he smiled at the recollection of his prompt
obedience several times during the day. But as he was stepping into
the cab to drive to Athens, he saw the offending ruffian pass, dripping
with water, and muttering bitter curses. When he saw Carlton he
disappeared instantly in the crowd. Carlton stepped over to where
Nolan sat beside the driver on the box. "Nolan," he said, in a low
voice, "isn't that the fellow who--"

"Yes, sir," said Nolan, touching his hat gravely. "He was pulling a
valise one way, and the gentleman that owned it, sir, was pulling it
the other, and the gentleman let go sudden, and the Italian went over
backwards off the pier."

Carlton smiled grimly with secret satisfaction.

"Nolan," he said, "you're not telling the truth. You did it yourself."
Nolan touched his cap and coughed consciously. There had been no
detaining fingers on Nolan's arm.

III

"You are coming now, Miss Morris," exclaimed Carlton from the front of
the carriage in which they were moving along the sunny road to Athens,
"into a land where one restores his lost illusions. Anybody who wishes
to get back his belief in beautiful things should come here to do it,
just as he would go to a German sanitarium to build up his nerves or
his appetite. You have only to drink in the atmosphere and you are
cured. I know no better antidote than Athens for a siege of cable-cars
and muddy asphalt pavements and a course of Robert Elsmeres and the
Heavenly Twins. Wait until you see the statues of the young athletes
in the Museum," he cried, enthusiastically, "and get a glimpse of the
blue sky back of Mount Hymettus, and the moonlight some evening on the
Acropolis, and you'll be convinced that nothing counts for much in this
world but health and straight limbs, and tall marble pillars, and eyes
trained to see only what is beautiful. Give people a love for beauty
and a respect for health, Miss Morris, and the result is going to be,
what they once had here, the best art and the greatest writers and
satirists and poets. The same audience that applauded Euripides and
Sophocles in the open theatre used to cross the ro