"'You needn't have said that,' I said, unsteadily, 'and you needn't tell him anything of the sort. Tell him just whatever you please and I will back you up and make it the truth.' "'What makes you say I needn't have said it?' she asked, looking full at me. 'You asked, didn't you?' "'Well, it hurt me for one thing,' I told her, 'and for another, being bitter won't help matters. Do you suppose I haven't a pretty good idea of your situation here? And if I hadn't had any intention of helping you, why should I have come? I promised you I would always be your friend, because I had never met any one so forlorn. And I will keep that promise to the limit. And now,' I added, 'suppose I told you what happened last night.' "She sat perfectly still, watching me while I recounted my singular adventure with M. Kinaitsky. It was only when I mentioned what he had said of her being quite free to dispose of herself that she gave a quick, sarcastic shrug. "'I know,' she said. 'So he told me when he got married. But this is a funny place, I can tell you. You think I can walk out of this house and do what I like, get a job, rent a house? I can't. He knows well enough I'm stuck here unless I go to the _Omphale_ or the _Ottoman House_, or one of those horrible places. And then,' she added, 'it wouldn't be long before I'd be sitting in the _Odéon_ half the night and wishing I was dead.' "'You know,' I said, severely, 'that if you had the slightest intention of doing anything of the sort you wouldn't breathe a word of it to me of all people.' "For a moment she held out, smirking a little. "'You fancy yourself,' she said, quoting a by-gone London phrase. "'To that extent,' I insisted. 'What do you suppose I came up here for? Why did I wander all over Saloniki last night trying to find you? To hear you say things like that? What do you suppose I am made of? Listen!' "I don't suppose men often tell a woman the things I told her then, but it was imperative that I should clear away the difficulties between us. I had to convince her that I was not to be humbugged by her fatal inherited proclivity for a grandiose emotional rôle, a proclivity for playing up to some mysterious imaginary being which she labelled herself and strove to erect in the mind of her protagonist. It wouldn't do. There was something numbing in the spectacle of her attempt to present herself as already a painted shadow in the purlieus of a Levantine city. In the long blue dressing gown, against a lemon-tinted stone wall, the morning sun irradiating the exquisite, exotic face, she had an adult air, so to speak, an air of lovely maturity and grave virtue. I would say she looked much more like a saint than a sinner, if I could reach any satisfactory conclusions as to the nature of a saint. I talked, as they say, straight, and the culmination of my invective was a blunt statement about her intelligence.