For somehow the arrival of that ship was a significant event in more than the accepted sense. It was reserved for Mr. Marsh to perceive the full romantic aspect of the adventure. For others it was a nine-day wonder, an official nuisance or blessing, as suited the official temperament to regard it. To Mr. Spokesly it was an exciting but secondary factor leading up to the greater adventure of departure. It was over-shadowed by the more perplexing problem of explaining himself in a masterless vessel. But Mr. Marsh, after twenty years, during which he had failed to detect anything resembling romance in his life, when he was called out of his bed at dawn that morning to go off as interpreter, saw the matter in a very different light. Indeed he saw it in the light of romance. His first comment when he found time to review his experiences was: "By Jove, you can't beat that type! We shall always rule, always!" and his bosom swelled at the thought of England. But it was his discovery of Captain Rannie which remained with him as the great scene in the play. He could not get it out of his mind. He told everybody about it. He revealed a doubt whether other people fully appreciated the extraordinary experience which had been his when he went down that dark curving stairway, "not having the faintest notion, you know, whether I wouldn't get knocked on the head or perhaps blown to bits," and found the door resisting his efforts. An active intelligent resistance! he declared, precisely as though the man were trying to keep him out. And as time passed and the story developed in his own mind by the simple process of continually repeating and brooding upon it, as an actor's part becomes clearer to him by rendition, Mr. Marsh developed the theory that when he first went down those stairs and tried to get in, the resistance was in truth intelligent and alive. He was explaining this new and intriguing "theory," as he called it, on the following evening when Mr. Spokesly accompanied by the husband of Esther, who was "in the Public Debt," entered the great room on the second floor of the Consulate, a magnificent chamber whose windows opened upon balconies and revealed, above the opposite roofs, rectangles of luminous twilight. Some half-dozen gentlemen were seated on chairs in the dusk about one of the balconies. As the newcomers arrived by a side door a servant came in through the enormous curtains at the far end bearing a couple of many-branched candlesticks and advanced towards a table, thus revealing in some degree the elaborate design and shabby neglect of the place. Huge divans in scarlet satin were ripped and battered, the gilding of the sconces was tarnished and blackened, and the parquetry flooring, of intricate design, was warped and loose under the advancing foot. And above their heads, like shadowy wraiths, hung immense candelabra whose lustres glittered mysteriously in the candlelight under their coverings of dusty muslin.