“I tell you, Steindal,” he said, “that you do not understand the nature of a girl brought up in the home atmosphere which surrounded Maggie Hutchinson. Damn it, man, it is that sanctity of hers which renders her attractive to me. What is a pretty face or a fairy-like figure? A mere commodity, a ‘cheap lot, slightly soiled’ in the catalogue of life. _That’s_ the sort of woman _you_ have in your mind, and I don’t want her.” “Sanctity, at Maggie’s age, consists of soap and water and a soft skin. We have a Spanish proverb: ‘_el corazón manda las carnes_’--the heart controls the body, and I know that when a woman’s desires outrun her means she begins to weigh her scruples to see if they are really as heavy as she fancies. Just let Maggie Hutchinson taste success, popularity, the delights of money-spending, and then withdraw the pleasant cup before she has drunk too deeply! Bah! Don’t talk to me of sanctity! To the man of the world, _es de vidrio la mujer_--woman is made of glass!” Steindal, scoffing in the complacency of his knowledge, tilted some champagne down his wide throat. Karl, feverishly anxious to discover what plot these twentieth century ghouls were hatching against a young and innocent girl, concentrated his thoughts on Constantine with some reminiscence of that masterfulness he exhibited as a boy on board the _Ganges_. He carried his intent too far. Constantine suddenly grew livid with fear. He turned in his chair, gazed at the floor, and sprawled over the table, sweeping glass and plates away with a crash. “Look!” he shrieked in an eerie falsetto. “Can’t you see that shark deep down there in the black water? It will devour me! Oh, help, help!” CHAPTER VII “BLOOD IS A VERY PECULIAR JUICE” You know what people think when a man screams out that a shark is threatening him from the black depths of the parquet flooring of a fashionable dining-room. And a shark is a most uncommon feature of such manifestations. Usually the disturbing vision is a rat, or a green imp with red eyes, or even a squirming snake. Indeed, reptiles figure so often in alcoholic apparitions that I have often wondered why there are not more frequent “scenes” in the London Strand, owing to the presence on the kerb of a number of street vendors who cause make-believe serpents to wriggle all day long on a small board. Several ladies rose with startled cries. A passing waiter was so unnerved that he dropped a laden tray, and the crash added to the alarm of those seated at a distance, to whom the hubbub, but not its cause, was audible. The band stopped playing, a clarionet breaking off with a funny squeak in the middle of a cadenza, and, adding fuel each instant to the wild-fire commotion, Constantine sprawled over the table and yelled for succor.