a rather amusing amazement that love was apparently the antithesis instead of the complement of happiness. Now how could that be? And yet he admitted he had never seen his brother display any rapture over his love affair with the doctor's daughter. Took it very much as a matter of course. Oh, a very nice girl, very nice. But ... he would fall silent, his chin on his hand, recalling the memory of Artemisia as she had seemed to him, an alluring and unattainable desire. "Yes, it was interesting, and it fed my interest in her. I was too experienced, I suppose, to expect to see her again, but it amused me to brood upon her destiny. And it was a wish to learn something about that strange trio that took me up to Grünbaum's one afternoon when we arrived, and I had the privilege of an interview with the concessionaire himself. Surrounded by attentive minions, who had full 'confidence in his dispositions' he reposed, with the urbane placidity of a corpulent idol, in the curve of his great horseshoe desk. The yellow blinds were down over the tall windows against the westering sun, and the statue with the arm broken short gleamed like old ivory. It was startling to see a student's sword and long German pipe hanging crossed on the wall beside that ancient piece of statuary. Grünbaum confessed, when I spoke of them, to being 'largely cosmopolitan,' though loyal of course to the Hellenic Government and his consular obligations to Great Britain. When I made mention of Macedoine, he frowned heavily and admitted that he had 'taken the necessary steps.' The concessions in the Saloniki hinterland would be dealt with by the Paris House 'with a view to safe-guarding our interests.' No doubt the railroad to Uskub would in time render such concessions extremely valuable. M. Nikitos doubtless obtained this information surreptitiously from the official archives. But it was necessary that these financial dispositions should be in the hands of Western Europeans, since western capital was inevitably attracted to such enterprises. He himself was a man of western ideas. Educated in Berlin and Paris, he had been trained in affairs in Lombard Street. Our banking system was sound and our climate ferocious--so he summed us up more or less adequately. As regards the future of M. Macedoine he could tell me nothing. No doubt that gentleman would be fully occupied in setting his new venture on its feet. Oh, of course, these things occasionally prospered; but in the long run, stability of credit was essential. This, M. Macedoine, as far as could be ascertained, did not command.