other, and Margaret
realised that she was not only very fond of him, but that his whole
existence represented something she had lost and wished to get back,
but feared that she could never have again. For many months she had
not felt like her old self till a week ago, when he had come to see
her after she had landed.

They had been in love with each other before she had begun her career,
and she would have married him then, but a sort of quixotism, which
was highly honourable if nothing else, had withheld him. He had felt
that his mother's son had no right to marry Margaret Donne, though she
had told him as plainly as a modest girl could that she was not of the
same opinion. Then had come Logotheti's mad attempt to carry her off
out of the theatre, after the dress rehearsal before her debut, and
Madame Bonanni and Lushington between them had spirited her away just
in time. After that it had been impossible for him to keep up the
pretence of avoiding her, and a sort of intimacy had continued, which
neither of them quite admitted to be love, while neither would have
called it mere friendship.

The most amazing part of the whole situation was that Margaret had
continued to see Logotheti as if he had not actually tried to carry
her off in his motor-car, very much against her will. And in spite of
former jealousies and a serious quarrel Logotheti and Lushington spoke
to each other when they met. Possibly Lushington consented to treat
him civilly because the plot for carrying off Margaret had so
completely failed that its author had got himself locked up on
suspicion of being a fugitive criminal. Lushington, feeling that he
had completely routed his rival on that occasion, could afford to be
generous. Yet the man of letters, who was a born English gentleman on
his father's side, and who was one altogether by his bringing up, was
constantly surprised at himself for being willing to shake hands with
a Greek financier who had tried to run away with an English girl; and
possibly, in the complicated workings of his mind and conflicting
sensibilities, half Anglo-Saxon and half Southern French, his present
conduct was due to the fact that Margaret Donne had somehow ceased to
be a 'nice English girl' when she joined the cosmopolitan legion that
manoeuvres on the international stage of 'Grand Opera.' How could a
'nice English girl' remain herself if she associated daily with
such people as Pompeo Stromboli, Schreiermeyer, Herr Tiefe