Jokanian, who was also reaching regularly for the decanter, and who was attempting to forget a national failure in high-sounding poppycock about the autocracy of the proletariat. Mr. Marsh was proud of being an Englishman, in a well-bred way, for he was always insisting "you could not beat that type"; but what was his idea of an Englishman? A person who, strictly speaking, no longer existed. Mr. Marsh was fortunate in having his ideals and illusions preserved in the dry air of the Levant as in a hermetically sealed chamber. The type he spoke of was being very handsomely beaten in all directions and was being rescued from utter annihilation by a very different type--the mechanical engineer, who was no doubt preparing the world for a fresh advance upon its ultimate destruction. Mr. Spokesly, in a rich glow of exaltation, saw these vast and vague ideas parade in his mind as he listened abstractedly to the conversation. But as the wine passed, that cosmic quality passed, too, and he began to hear other things besides theories of evolution. He heard someone remark that they had a very fine piano, a Bechstein grand. Some consul had brought it from Vienna for his musical daughter. But it was impossible to take it with them when he was transferred to Teheran. Another voice desired to know what was done with the musical daughter, and amid laughter they began to push their chairs back, lighting cigarettes and lifting liqueurs to carry them to another room. Looking down into a courtyard which contained, amid much rank vegetation, an empty marble basin surmounted by a one-legged Diana with a broken bow, and a motor car with only three wheels and no engine, Mr. Spokesly leaned out to watch the moon setting over the dark masses of the neighbouring roofs. Behind him the Bechstein grand was surrounded by some half-dozen gentlemen explaining their preferences, laughing, whistling a few notes, and breaking into polite cries of wonder. Suddenly there was a silence, and Mr. Marsh, seated at the instrument and running his hands over the keys in a highly versatile fashion, began "John Peel" in a high thin tenor that sounded as though it came from behind the neighbouring mountain. Thin yet sweet, so that the peculiar sentiment of the song, dedicated "to that type" which Mr. Marsh so much admired, reached Mr. Spokesly as he leaned out and noted the sharp, slender black shapes of the cypresses silhouetted against the dark blue vault of the sky with its incredibly brilliant stars. He smiled and reflected that the moon would be gone in a couple of hours, a red globe over Cordelio. In a few nights it would set before night-fall. He drank his liqueur. A moonless night and he would be away from all this. He wished he were back at Bairakli now. He grudged every moment away from her. He had caught her making little preparations of her own, and when he had chaffed her she had looked at him in an enigmatic way with her