"'We shall never run short of romance,' he declared. 'The great thing is to avoid getting mixed up in it or if you do, you mustn't imagine, as you were about to do, that it can be carried about the world. Of course I know there is a fatal fascination about the idea. I thought of something like that myself at one time. A wonderful experience! But it wouldn't have done.' "'You don't believe in love then?' I asked, curious to know how the brother of seven sisters regarded this matter. "'Oh, love!' he echoed, shrugging again. 'Love is nothing. It happens all the time to everybody. It Is the romantic business I thought you were speaking of.' "'You draw a distinction, then?' "'Why, of course. Look here, I'll tell you. I had a wild, romantic passion once. Think of it, a casualty surgeon in a London hospital, carried away, positively carried away. And the subject of it was an Irish colleen. Yes, I was infatuated simply and solely with that girl's green cloak and hood and her green stockings and black pumps. I have been told since by an Irishman that girls in Ireland never dream of wearing such a rig. That doesn't matter. I had read of Irish colleens, just as you, for example, might have read of Persian princesses or Russian countesses, and the glamour of it carried me away. And this colleen of mine, with her green cloak which she'd got from a theatrical costumier, represented a romantic ideal. Very nice clever sort of girl, a newspaper woman she was. But it wouldn't have done. Never try to make an episode anything else. We parted and I believe she's married now.' "'That about sums it up,' I said. "'It does. Get a night's sleep and you'll see it in the same light. You have had an accumulation of romantic impacts, and I expect a sea-going life leaves one very much at the mercy of stray impressions. A ship's surgeon once remarked to me that no human intellect could survive a nautical training.' And he laughed again. "That," said Mr. Spenlove, "was how he talked. A provocative, positive sort of man. There was, if you will excuse the simile, something antiseptic in his character. I could have driven about and talked to him all day. He was charged with sane opinions on life. Humorous, too. When I suggested that Captain Macedoine might not survive his daughter's death, he made the whimsical remark that illusions of grandeur act like an anæsthetic upon the patient's emotions. And I shall not forget the last remark he uttered as I stood beside his carriage to say farewell. The red roofs and domes of the city stretched away below us and I could see the smoke coming over the warehouse from the _Manola's_ funnel. He had promised to do certain things for me. If you climb up some day to the Protestant cemetery you will find out what some of those things were. And he was good enough to express a hope that I might come to Saloniki again. I replied that I had profited immensely by his conversation and he nodded, saying: