He sat now, the wine stimulating his mind to unwonted activity, listening to the clever conversation of the blond young man. Mr. Spokesly was quite prepared to admire him. It was, he reflected, very wonderful how these chaps learned languages. He wished he could speak these lingos. Here they were, German, Austrian, Armenian, Jew, all speaking English. After all, there lay the triumph. As Mr. Marsh said, you couldn't beat that type. "We" went everywhere and all men adopted "our" language and "our" ideas. He heard the Herr Leutnant's tones as he told Mr. Marsh that he himself admired the English. He had lived among them for years. At one time was engaged to marry an _Engländerinn_. And his conclusion was that they had nothing to fear from any other nation. Their true enemies were within. The hitherto impregnable solidarity of the race was disintegrating. Mr. Spokesly was not clear what this signified. He knew it sounded like the stuff these clever foreigners were always thinking up. When all was said and done, they were all out to do the best they could for themselves. There was Marsh, living as calm as you please in Ottoman territory and making a very decent income in various ways. And there was a young fellow over there, with rich auburn hair flung back from a fine reddish forehead, who had been pointed out to him as the son of a rich old boy who had been there all his life as a Turkey merchant, with great estates and a grand house at Boudja where they were to hold a magnificent garden party to welcome the old General on his arrival from a tour of inspection in Syria. Mr. Spokesly had heard, too, of the way money was made just now, and he smiled at the simplicity of it. There was the material in the cargo of the _Kalkis_, hardware and flour and gasolene. A pretty rake-off some of these intellectual Europeans had made out of that in what they called transportation charges. And there was the Ottoman Public Debt they had taken up, paying for it in paper and getting the interest in gold. They were doing the best they could under the circumstances. He saw their point of view well enough. He himself had another problem. He had to get out of it. Mr. Spokesly, as he walked about that shining Levantine city, as he passed down those narrow tortuous streets into bazaars reeking with the strange odours of Asiatic life, as he watched the slow oblivious life of the poor, and the sullen furtiveness of the Greek storekeepers and shabby French bourgeoisie waiting in line at the custom house for a chance to buy their morsels of food, saw with penetrating clarity how impossible it would be for him to remain, even if he did get a permanent harbour-master's job. No! He finished his glass of wine and looked round for the decanter. He saw that these people here, for all their intellectual superiority, their fluent social accomplishments, their familiarity with philosophical compromises, were simply evading the facts. They were variants of Mr.