"It is 'Only fools and Englishmen walk in the sun.'"
"Ah," said Curtis, laughing. "I remember now that I have heard it, but it was not exactly like that. It was 'fools and foreigners' when I heard it. Now I understand why you Turks are called the 'French of the orient.' It is because of your politeness."
Hassan Bey protested feebly and drowsily. Sleep, more powerful in the orient even than politeness, was overcoming him. He settled himself comfortably against the trunk of the olive tree; his head lolled to one side and his mouth dropped open.
"It would be a pity to wake him," said Curtis. The relaxed features looked tired and old. "He's not a bad sort, as Turks go, and he does look done up."
"He's a brave man," said Lindbohm. "Let him sleep for a little while," and the Swede, sitting down upon a flat rock, with his face between his palms, gazed at a little patch of sea, glittering far away, like a lake among mountains.
Curtis lay down upon his back, with his fingers interlocked behind his head, and watched the innumerable twinkling of the pale green olive leaves above him.
"I've been in this island so long," he mused, "that I don't believe I shall be able to go around the world. Shame, too, as the governor had sort of set his heart on it. I haven't spent much money in Crete, it's true, but I promised to be back and take hold in the office."
Closing his eyes, he could see the great shoe factory, as plainly as though it were there before him, the neatly fenced enclosure and the path by which the small army of employees came and went every day. There was the office, a one-story building painted white, that stood near the gate. He looked into the front room, and there, on high stools, writing in great ledgers, sat his father's clerks, an old man and four younger ones. And in the little private office was his father. There he sat tilted back in his swing-chair, a young appearing man, cheerful, prosperous, shrewd; not an educated man, but his son's most intimate companion. Curtis laughed as he thought of the "Trilby Club" of which his father was president. They made Welsh Rabbits, played penny ante and sang rollicking songs. There was a club house where they met in summer and ate fish dinners.
Then his mind reverted to Panayota. He always saw her in thought with a jug upon her shoulder, standing on the edge of a precipice.
"I wonder what the governor will think of Panayota?" he muttered. His father was the high priest of common sense in the Curtis household. From infancy he had respected his father's judgment and feared his good-natured ridicule. John Curtis had been brought up as an exemplification of the motto, "My son will never make a fool of himself," and, so far, he had been the pride of his father's heart.