"I still went in to see Mrs. Evans of an evening. To tell the truth she fascinated me. I had always held the theory that no married woman could be an absolute fool. It had seemed to me that such contact with the realities of life as marriage involved must leave some austere mark of intelligence, some tinge of altruism, upon the most superficial. She seemed to disprove this. For her the world did not exist save for the 'angel child.' Even her husband was now only the nearly indispensable producer of income. She talked, not of him, or of her family, not of Art or Life or Death or the world to come, not even of Home or the things she had seen in Alexandria. She had seen nothing in Alexandria. She had declined to let Jack take her to Cairo 'because of the expense.' She read no books nor papers. She dressed in perfect propriety. And all the time she talked about the child, one hand near the child, her eyes fixed on the child's movements or repose. I think the voyage was a revelation to Jack. He was finding his place in the world. He was thinking in his honest, clumsy way. He never took his wife for a trip again. He loved his child as much as any man could, but this ingrowing infatuation, to the exclusion of every other desirable thing in the world, was fatiguing. "And Artemisia! She sat in her little spare cabin opening on the saloon, and now and again she would raise her shoulders, draw a deep breath, let them drop again as though in despair, and go on with her sewing. She would laugh at me when I tried to amuse the child and distract it from some preposterous desire. It was not easy. Her tenacity of purpose was appalling. She was yelling one evening for someone to open the great medicine chest that stood by the brass fireplace. I tried the time-honoured ruses for placating the young. I said there was a lion inside who would jump out and eat Babs. I pretended to go and find the key and came back with the news that naughty Mr. Siddons had dropped it into the sea. The brat stopped to breathe for a moment and a faintly human expression came over the stupendously smug little face. I followed this up by a story of how Mr. Siddons had shown me how to make a pin float on the water. I hastily poured some water into a glass, got a piece of blotting paper, laid my pin on it, and waited for the homely trick to succeed. I had no luck somehow. The pin went to the bottom and Babs' opinion of me went with it. She suddenly remembered about the medicine chest and gave a preliminary yell. Mrs. Evans said, 'Oh, Babbsy, darling!' I got up and went out on deck. We were running among the islands. Away to the east-ward I could see the lights of the Roumania Lloyd mail-boat going south. Suddenly two hands grabbed the lappets of my patrol-coat, a dark, fluffy head leaned for a delicious moment against my chest, and Artemisia gurgled, 'Oh, Mister Chief, isn't she just a little fiend?' She had been listening to my blandishments and