Sault was working and only muttered his reply. He was not then interested in Ronnie Morelle.
X
He stayed on in the house long after Moropulos had dragged himself to his room and had dressed for the journey. So absorbed was he in his task that the Greek left without his noticing. At seven o'clock he finished, put away his tools in a cupboard, threw a cloth over the safe, and went out, locking the door behind him.
Both Steppe and Moropulos had urged him to live in the house, but though he had few predilections that were not amenable to the necessities of his friends, Sault was firm on this point. He preferred the liberty which his lodgings gave him. Possibly he foresaw the difficulties which might arise if he lived entirely with the Greek. Moropulos had a vicious and an uncertain tongue; was tetchy on some points, grotesquely so, on the question of Greek decadence, although he had lived so long away from his native country that English was almost his mother tongue. Sault could be tactful, but he had a passion for truth, and the two qualities are often incompatible.
A bus carried him to the end of the street where he lodged, and he stopped at a store on the corner and bought a box of biscuits for Christina. She was secretary and reader to him, and he repaid her services with a library subscription and such delicacies as she asked him to get for her. The subscription was a godsend to the girl, and augmented, as it was, by an occasional volume which Evie was allowed to bring from the store library by virtue of her employment, her days were brightened and her dreams took a wider range than ever. The driving force of learning is imagination. By imagination was Christina educated.
Evie sometimes said that she did not understand one half of the words that Christina used. To Mrs. Colebrook her daughter was an insoluble enigma. She associated education with brain fever and ideas above your station, and whilst she was secretly proud of the invalid's learning, she regarded Christina's spinal trouble as being partly responsible for the abnormality. Mrs. Colebrook believed in dreams and premonitions and the sinister significance of broken picture wires. It was part of her creed that people who are not long for this world possess supernatural accomplishments. Therefore she eyed Christina's books askance, and looked upon the extra library subscription as being a wild flight in the face of Providence. She expressed that view privately to Ambrose Sault.
"You have come at a propitious moment, Sault Effendi," said Christina solemnly as he came in. "I have just been taking my last look at the silvery Bosphorus. My husband, taking offense at a kiss I threw to the handsome young sultan as he rose beneath my latticed window, has decreed that tonight I am to be tied in a sack and thrown into the dark waters!"
"Good gracious," said Ambrose. "You have been in trouble today, Christina."
"Not very much. The journey was a lovely one. We went by way of Bergen—and thank you ever so much for that old Bradshaw you got for me. It was just the thing I wanted."