She desires me to wait, a month, two, three. I do not understand, but it is as Mademoiselle wishes. And then Captain Macedoine becomes very ill. A terrible misfortune! I work. I think. I sacrifice myself. Mademoiselle is suddenly no longer _distrait_. She commands me to leave the house--I, Stepan Nikitos! You understand, Monsieur, that I have had much to bear. The _Osmanli_, our vessel, entering the harbour, is struck by another vessel, and sinks. Only her mast remains to see above the water. I have to go to Constantinople to get the insurance. Our concessions in Macedonia are no longer secure. And Captain Macedoine too ill to be informed! I struggle against those misfortunes. I am compelled to accept a position on the _Phos_ to earn the rent of my poor room and a little food. I go to Mademoiselle and I find she is gone. Her father receives me as always, with affection; but he grieves to tell me his daughter is married. Well, Monsieur, I have told you that, in Alexandria, I was of necessity a friend of the _demi-vierge_, and I am familiar with the significant change in the tone of these women when they have secured a wealthy lover. When Mademoiselle commanded me to leave the house I was not deceived. It was for me the destruction of my hopes and the birth of a resolution.' "He held his finger horizontal, pointing at my breast, as though his resolution was to take careful aim and shoot. 'Which nothing can kill,' he added, with calmness, and folded his arms on the table. "Now what struck me about these revelations of M. Nikitos, made across the sloppy marble-topped table of the _Odéon_, was what I may call their preoccupied sincerity. He conveyed the impression of being perfectly sincere and yet thinking of something else at the same time. And there was another peculiar thing about it. Although he addressed himself to me with exaggerated directness, I could not rid myself of the conviction that I knew no more of what he was really up to than if I were in a theatre watching him on the stage. For, remember, all the sounds, the cries of the fanatics, the guttural ebullience of the burly person with the silver star, the article for the _Phos_, half written in a spidery Greek script, the whole of the jangling uproar of the city, was within this man's cognizance, while to me it was a mere senseless cacophony. His assumption of lonely despair was not borne out by the subtle air he had of being in with all these people who were chaffering among themselves and applauding the rhetorician with his silver star. And the upshot was that I grew very much afraid of this sinister, shrunken figure whose hopes had been destroyed, and who was nursing with extreme care a new-born resolution 'which nothing could kill.' His singular claim to purity only added to this alarm. One is scarcely reassured by hearing that a man is not only desperate but immaculate. And I did what most of us would do under the circumstances. I got up to go. M. Nikitos