"No, there was no regret that I could perceive. 'I had to get something to do,' she remarked, naïvely. Her father and the lieutenant, M. Nikitos, found themselves up against mysterious and unsuspected difficulties. The boiler of the _Osmanli_ collapsed and needed extended repair. The proposal that she should marry M. Nikitos was never seriously raised again. 'No, she had never had any intention ... that little shrimp!' They took a house and lived a while on credit. She had to do something. Her father lived in a sort of trance, dealing with the difficulties which beset his schemes like a child playing with bricks continually falling down. She had to do something, she reiterated, moving her gold bracelets to and fro on her wrist. And yet she was unable to do anything--at first. She was in the _Jardin de la Tour Blanche_ when Kinaitsky spoke to her. He, a man of wealth, of the world, a vigorous connoisseur of life, was at that time emotionally at large. He had had a furious row with a Syrian dancer ... so on and so forth. And he understood in a flash. It was plain that Artemisia would develop into one of those women who waste no time over dunderheads. When I said, reasonably enough, for she wore a wedding ring, 'Then you are not really married?' she clicked her tongue against her teeth and shrugged her shoulders. Oh, she was practising on me! I could see that. She thought, I suppose, that I was proof against her; but how she would have tortured young Siddons, for example, in love with her, young, sensitive, chivalrous, full of faith in the nobility of womanhood. Yes, Kinaitsky understood. He knew women. Fortunate man! He sent her a large sum of money, and told her to write to him when she was free. He had a big house fronting the Gulf. She turned Nikitos out to shift for himself, took charge of the house he had taken for them in the _Rue Paleologue_, and 'got through somehow,' as she put it. She was vague about this episode, which was not surprising. There was a certain art in the way she broke off with 'Mr. Chief, you can understand I was glad....' and rose to ring for tea. 'Yes,' she said, when she came back, 'and then I found myself free to--to do something.' "'Something, as you told me, I would not approve of?' I suggested. She broke into a smile and put her hand caressingly on my arm. "'Don't be cross,' she whispered, sweetly. 'I've had a rotten time, Mr. Chief. You know everything's been against me from the first.' "And while I sat there looking out over the golden mist of the river and succumbing to the magic of her voice, her presence, and the romantic glamour of her destiny, she began to hum an old air, watching me with a faint, derisive smile. 'Do you know that song?' she asked, and began to sing the words. "'_Ah! Toncouton! Mo connin toi; To semble Morico: Y 'a pas savon Qui assez blanc Pour laver to la peau._'" "'Where did you hear that?' I asked, for I knew it, a Creole song.