r, unfortunately. I have desired to go for years, and hope to go
some day."

"In Smyrna you may see such rooms; possibly in Port Said--certainly
in Cairo. In Constantinople--yes! But perhaps in Paris; and--who
knows?--Sir Richard Burton explored Mecca, but who has explored London?"

Helen Cumberly watched him curiously.

"You excite my curiosity," she said. "Don't you think"--turning to
Denise Ryland--"he is most tantalizing?"

Denise Ryland distended her nostrils scornfully.

"He is telling... fairy tales," she declared. "He thinks... we are...
silly!"

"On the contrary," declared Gianapolis; "I flatter myself that I am too
good a judge of character to make that mistake."

Helen Cumberly absorbed his entire attention; in everything he sought to
claim her interest; and when, ere taking their departure, the girl
and her friend walked around the studio to view the other pictures,
Gianapolis was the attendant cavalier, and so well as one might judge,
in his case, his glance rarely strayed from the piquant beauty of Helen.

When they departed, it was Gianapolis, and not Olaf van Noord, who
escorted them to the door and downstairs to the street. The red lips
of the Eurasian smiled upon her circle of adulators, but her eyes--her
unfathomable eyes--followed every movement of the Greek.

XXVII

GROVE OF A MILLION APES

Four men sauntered up the grand staircase and entered the huge
smoking-room of the Radical Club as Big Ben was chiming the hour of
eleven o'clock. Any curious observer who had cared to consult the
visitor's book in the hall, wherein the two lines last written were not
yet dry, would have found the following entries:

VISITOR RESIDENCE INTROD'ING
MEMBER
Dr. Bruce Cumberly London John Exel
M. Gaston Paris Brian Malpas

The smoking-room was fairly full, but a corner near the big open grate
had just been vacated, and here, about a round table, the four disposed
themselves. Our French acquaintance being in evening dress had perforce
confined himself in his sartorial eccentricities to a flowing silk
knot in place of the more conventional, neat bow. He was already upon
delightfully friendly terms with the frigid Exel and the aristocratic
Sir Brian Malpas. Few natures were proof against the geniality of the
brilliant Frenchman.

Conversation drifted, derelict, from one topic to another, now seized
by this current of thoug