And eastward, some five thousand miles, in the costly Villa Dainopoulos on the shores of an ancient sea, Evanthia Solaris pursued the mysterious yet indomitable course of her destiny. She had arrived back from "Europe," as has been hinted earlier, in some disarray, alighting from a crowded train of frowsty refugees, silent, enraged yet reflective after her odyssey. At her feet followed the young Jew, who incontinently dropped upon his knees in the road and pressed his lips, in agonized thankfulness, to his native earth. "_Je déteste les hommes!_" was all she had said, and Mr. Dainopoulos had spared a moment in the midst of his many affairs to utter a hoarse croak of laughter. Her story of Captain Rannie's sudden escape from the problems of living struck him for a moment, for he had of course utilized his commander's record and peculiarities in explaining the disappearance of the _Kalkis_. But the event itself seemed to perplex him not at all. He said, briefly, to his wife in adequate idiom: "He got a scare. He was afraid of himself. In wars plenty of men do that. He think and think, and there is nothing. And that scare a man stiff, when there is nothing." Crude psychology no doubt, yet adequate to explain Captain Rannie's unsuccessful skirmish with life. But Mrs. Dainopoulos was not so callous. She suspected, under Evanthia's hard exterior, a heart lacerated by the bitterness of disillusion. Who would have believed, either, that Mr. Spokesly, an Englishman, would have deserted her like that? Mrs. Dainopoulos was gently annoyed with Mr. Spokesly. He had not behaved as she had arranged it in her story-book fashion. Evanthia must stay with them, she said, stroking the girl's dark head. As she did. Seemingly she forgot both the base Englishman and the Alleman Giaour who had so infatuated her. She remained always with the invalid lady, looking out at the Gulf, watching the transports come and go. And when at last it came to Mr. Dainopoulos to journey south, when the sea-lines were once again open and a hundred and one guns announced the end, she went with them to the fairy villa out at San Stefano that you reach by the Boulevard Ramleh in Alexandria. It was there that Mr. Dainopoulos emerged in a new rôle, of the man whose dreams come true. His rich and sumptuous oriental mind expanded in grandiose visions of splendour for the being he adored. He built pleasaunces of fine marbles set in green shrubberies and laved by the blue sea, for her diversion.