"America! What makes you think of America? You must be losing your mind, Alice." He almost shivered. He was just as well able to make money in America as anywhere else, but what use would it be to him in such a place? It is extremely difficult for the Anglo-Saxon to realize it, but men like Mr. Dainopoulos find occidental institutions a spiritual desolation. He recalled the time when he boarded in Newark, New Jersey, and worked in a felt-hat factory. The house was of wood without even a floor of stone, and he could not sleep because of the vermin. And the food! He experienced afresh the nausea of those meals among the roomers, the bulging haunches of the negroid waitress colliding with his shoulders as she worked round and served the rows and rows of oval dishes dripping with soggy, impossible provender. And the roomers: English, German, and American, with their horrible whiskey and their ever-lasting gibberish of "wop" and "dago," their hints and blustering invitations to join mysterious fraternities which no one seemed to understand or explain. Mr. Dainopoulos must not be censured for withdrawing from all this. He made no claims upon western civilization, and its lack of logic and continuity led him to prefer something less virtuous, perhaps, but also less of a strain upon normal human nature. "You say you don't want to go to America. And I'll say it, too. I've been there, and that was enough for me. I should die there, with the food they give you. It's a fine country, with fine trees in the streets," he added, thinking of an imperial horse-chestnut tree which had thrust a branch bearing pale candles of bloom against his window out there, "and the big men are good men to do business. But not for me. Dirty wood houses and soot coming down all the time on the bed. Like ashes from the engines." "Like London," said Alice, smiling. But Mr. Dainopoulos had been living on a somewhat higher scale in London and he had not noticed the dirt so much. Moreover, he could always get the food he wanted in London. "Well, where?" insisted Alice, humouring him. "There's plenty places," he said soberly, rather faint as he compared their present surroundings with that dream-villa by the blue sea. "Too soon yet to be sure we get there. I got a lot of business to finish up first. And we're all right here for a while. You're not lonesome, darling?" "Oh, no! You saw Evanthia here to-night?" "Yes, I saw her, but she didn't tell me anything." "He's gone away, with the consuls." Mr. Dainopoulos gave a low whistle. "I never thought about that. What'll she do now? That's bad for her, though." "She wants to follow him but I don't think she can. I believe she heard he'll go to Constantinople. She said she'd do anything to get there."