e feared and sometimes
hated, but who had an inexplicable power over her when they met: the
sort of fateful influence which honest Britons commonly ascribe to all
foreigners with black hair, good teeth, diamond studs, and the other
outward signs of wickedness. Twice, at least, Logotheti had behaved in
a manner positively alarming, and on the second occasion he had very
nearly succeeded in carrying her off bodily from the theatre to
his yacht, a fate from which Lushington and his mother had been
instrumental in saving her. Such doings were shockingly lawless, but
they showed a degree of recklessly passionate admiration which was
flattering from a young financier who was so popular with women that
he found it infinitely easier to please than to be pleased.

Perhaps, if Logotheti could have put on a little Anglo-Saxon coolness,
Margaret might have married him by this time. Perhaps she would have
married Lushington, if he could have suddenly been animated by a
little Greek fire. As things stood, she told herself that she did not
care to take a man who meant to be not only her master but her tyrant,
nor one who seemed more inclined to be her slave than her master.

Meanwhile, however, it was the Englishman who kept himself constantly
in mind with her by an unbroken chain of small attentions that often
made her smile but sometimes really touched her. Any one could cable
'Pleasant voyage,' and sign the telegram 'Tom,' which gave it a
friendly and encouraging look, because somehow 'Tom' is a cheerful,
plucky little name, very unlike 'Edmund.' But it was quite another
matter, being in England, to take the trouble to have carnations of
just the right shade fresh on her cabin table at the moment of her
sailing from New York, and beside them the only sort of chocolates she
liked. That was more than a message, it was a visit, a presence, a
real reaching out of hand to hand.

Logotheti, on the contrary, behaved as if he had forgotten Margaret's
existence as soon as he was out of her sight; and they now no longer
met often, but when they did he had a way of taking up the thread as
if there had been no interval, which was almost as effective as his
rival's method; for it produced the impression that he had been
thinking of her only, and of nothing else in the world since the last
meeting, and could never again give a thought to any other woman. This
also was flattering. He never wrote to her, he never telegraphed good
wishes for a j