recognised the veil as
one he had given her. The headdress was not classic, and he did not
think it becoming to the Victory of Samothrace.

He also had remembered her birthday and he had a small offering in
his pocket, but he could not give it to her before the others.
Schreiermeyer would probably insist on looking at it and would guess
its value, whereas Logotheti was sure that Margaret would not. He
would give it to her when they were alone, and would tell her that it
was nothing but a seal for her writing-case, a common green stone of
some kind with a little Greek head on it; and she would look at it and
think it pretty, and take it, because it did not look very valuable to
her unpractised eye. But the 'common green stone' was a great emerald,
and the 'little Greek head' was an intaglio of Anacreon, cut some two
thousand and odd hundred years ago by an art that is lost; and the
setting had been made and chiselled for Maria de' Medici when she
married Henry the Fourth of France. Logotheti liked to give Margaret
things vastly more rare than she guessed them to be.

Margaret offered her visitors tea, and she and Logotheti took theirs
while the others looked on or devoured the cake and bread and butter.

'Tea?' repeated Signor Stromboli. 'I am well. Why should I take tea?
The tea is for to perspire when I have a cold.'

The Signorina Baci-Roventi laughed at him.

'Do you not know that the English drink tea before dinner to give
themselves an appetite?' she asked. 'It is because they drink tea that
they eat so much.'

'All the more,' answered Stromboli. 'Do you not see that I am fat? Why
should I eat more? Am I to turn into a monument of Victor Emanuel?'

'You eat too much bread,' said Schreiermeyer in a resentful tone.

'It is my vice,' said the tenor, taking up four thin slices of bread
and butter together and popping them all into his mouth without the
least difficulty. 'When I see bread, I eat it. I eat all there is.'

'We see you do,' returned Schreiermeyer bitterly.

'I cannot help it. Why do they bring bread? They are in league to make
me fat. The waiters know me. I go into the Carlton; the head-waiter
whispers; a waiter brings a basket of bread; I eat it all. I go into
Boisin's, or Henry's; the head-waiter whispers; it is a basket of
bread; while I eat a few eggs, a chicken, a salad, a tart or two, some
fruit, cheese, the bread is all gone. I am the tomb of all the bread
in the world. So I get fat. The