"Well, if she wants to go to Constantinople, she might be able to," he said, pondering. "I heard to-day a ship might be going down to the Islands. There's always a chance. I'll see. But if she's got any sense she'll go back to her mother. That feller Lietherthal is good company but he'll go back to Munich by-and-by." "She doesn't love him, I am almost sure." "Evanthia, she don't love anybody except herself. I told you that." "She loves me," said Alice. "Well, p'raps she does, but you know what I mean." "That gentleman this evening, Mr. Spokesly, he was interested in her." "He's got a young lady in London," said Mr. Dainopoulos. "Has he?" she murmured absently. "Do you think he'll come to-morrow night?" "Yes, I think so. I bet you're goin' to have Evanthia in, too." "Well, perhaps he'll fall in love with her," she whispered delightedly. "What, and him with a young lady in London!" "I don't think he's very fond of his young lady in London." "Well, how do you know that? Women...." "Never mind. It's easy to tell if a man is in love," she answered, watching him. He held her tightly for a moment. "Not so easy to tell about a woman," he said into her hair. "Is it, my little wife, my little wife?" "Why, don't you know yet?" she bantered, giving him that secret, fragrant, ambiguous smile. "My little wife!" he repeated in a tense whisper. And as he said it, he felt in his heart he would never know. CHAPTER VII It was evening and the _Tanganyika_, a tall unwieldy bulk, for she had only a few hundred tons in her, lay at anchor waiting for her commander, who was ashore getting the ship's papers. She was about to sail for Alexandria, carrying back, through an area infested with enemy submersibles, some of the cargo already discharged and reloaded in the southern port. This apparently roundabout method of achieving results had in it neither malice nor inefficiency. Those who have had anything to do with military matters will understand the state of affairs, and the seemingly insane evolutions of units proceeding blindly upon orders from omnipotent commanders. The latter had ever before them the shifting conditions of a dozen theatres of war, and to them it was nothing that a crate of spark-plugs, for example, sorely needed in Persia, should be carried to and fro over the waters of the Ægean, or that locomotives captured from an Austrian transport and suitable for the Macedonian railroads should be rusting in the open air in Egypt. These men, scoured clean and pink as though with sand and boiling water every morning, in their shining harness and great gold-peaked hats, moved swiftly in high-powered motor cars from one consultation to another, the rows of medal ribbons glowing on their breasts like iridescent plumage. They lived in a world apart. For them it was inevitable that a whole fleet of ships should be no more than a microscopic point in some great curve named Supply. Behind them was a formidable element called Politics, a