"'The ship?' he repeated. 'Oh, no, Monsieur. Why should I go down to the ship? I will see you when you return.'
"'Now see here,' I said, touching him on the shoulder, 'you must get all that nonsense out of your head about Miss Macedoine. If she has treated you badly the decent thing to do is to forget it. You may not be the only one, you know.'
"'Forget it?' he asked, like an intelligent child, 'how can one forget it, Monsieur?'
"'What I mean is, you must not annoy her if you ever meet her.'
"'Annoy her?' he repeated in the same tone. 'I should not annoy. Our interview,' he added, reflectively, looking at his disintegrating boots, 'would not take up more than a few moments. Very short. To the point, as you say.' And he regarded me with amusement.
"I left him with a sudden gesture of impatience and he went off toward the offices of the Phos. Words broke out upon him like a rash: it was impossible to preserve one's credulity in the face of his enigmatic fluency. Impossible to maintain a grasp upon common facts and homely eventualities. I walked on past the dock-buildings and came to the station. And I wondered where the Rue Paleologue might be. A cab-driver raised his whip as I halted, and moved slowly over to where I stood. He did not seem to have any clear ideas, but signified by a wealth of gesture that if I would get in he would find out. It was just dusk and I got in. We galloped away with a great deal of whip-cracking and noise of iron tires on the granite sets, past the Odéon again, and onward along the quays. I reflected upon the attitude Nikitos had taken up toward Artemisia, but I could arrive at no opinion. One has very little data for gauging the mentality of a highly sophisticated but immaculate being. And I still retained the impression that she, under the powerful protection of Kinaitsky, would stand in very little danger from the annoyance of a journalist on the Phos. Nevertheless, idealists who take pride in their purity are dangerous, because they are incalculable. It is the only hold we have on most people in these days of extreme personal liberty—the sad but inexorable fact that they are not immaculate. It captured my imagination in spite of my distaste for the man, this conception he had evoked of himself pursuing his way through the unnameable wickedness of Levantine cities, yet bearing within an inviolable chastity. One felt there was something formidable in its mere existence, like vitriol, something not quite human, and therefore to be feared. It was like beholding a white-robed virgin with severe features bearing a palm amidst the groups of courtesans who were strolling along the quays, arm in arm, taking the air before engaging in the business of the evening.
"There was a new twist given to my thoughts when the carriage pulled up and the driver spoke to a couple of these girls who were walking mincingly along in their high-heeled shoes. Evidently inquiring the way. They regarded me with friendly approval, but they shook their heads over the Rue Paleologue. We were about to drive on when one of them put her hand to her head with a gesture of recollection. She spoke to the driver—a musical and resonant torrent of words. We drove on, past the great bulk of the Tour Blanche, on into the darkness.
"For the road here left the quay and began to wind between large houses embowered in trees. Those on the right faced the Gulf. No doubt in one of them Mr. Kinaitsky dwelt with his wealthy Hebrew bride. To the left could be seen avenues turning off. There was a great glare for a moment as we passed a building with tall windows—a factory of some sort. And then, after following this road for some time, we turned up one of the avenues into deeper darkness and a silence broken only by the clink of the harness and the soft sound of hoof and tire on loam and leaves. At the head of this road the carriage stopped, and the driver pointed with his whip, repeating the word Paleologue to intimate that we were there.
"I paid him and moved across the road in the direction indicated, and found my foot striking a hard sidewalk beneath trees. It was very dark. Here and there a grid of light was thrown on the road from a partly shuttered window, or a pale glow would silhouette a woman sitting in a doorway. There were many houses and I did not know the number I wanted. I moved slowly along, hesitating to ask. You see, I was not sure. And the language difficulty troubled me. These people spoke no intelligible word as far as I was concerned. But I was constrained to pause at length, and seeing some seated forms, outside a doorway in the darkness, I began by asking if this were really the Rue Paleologue. A tall woman rose from her chair and said 'Oui, Monsieur,' and I found myself in the dim light from a spacious tiled vestibule, floundering in the middle of whispered explanations. Their eyes seemed very large in the darkness, and their forms tall and ghostly. Suddenly one of the girls stepped into the light and I saw the broad, flat beauty of the Southern Slav. She stood there regarding me, her hands behind her, her chin raised. And then she remarked in a hoarse and musical tone, 'You English?' I said in some surprise that I was and asked if they spoke it. She said 'Why, sure,' and we all laughed.
"Surprising? Well, yes, it was. Because the intonation was not English at all, but American. It was like reading a book in French and Italian and coming suddenly upon a sentence written in italics, in one's own tongue. The very isolation of it, adrift in a waste of partially intelligible expressions, doubles the luminous emphasis of it. I looked at them in astonishment, and they looked at each other and laughed again. And then they led the way into the house.