"She sat in a tense, eager pose looking up into my face, a pose that suddenly relaxed and she sighed. I did not see it then, in my exalted mood of idealized emotion; but I don't suppose a woman values any reputation less than one for altruistic charm. Probably because she is aware of its inevitably spurious nature. Miss Sarafov sighed, and the intense vitality of her features was obscured for an instant as by a shadow. An idea seemed to strike her and she looked intently at me again.
"'Women don't matter much to you,' she observed, quietly, and fell silent again.
"And here again," said Mr. Spenlove, "was a picture which comes back to me now—the scene in that little kiosque, a circular chamber crowded with the brilliant and disturbing reflections of the sunlight on the surface of the sea, shadow and gleam moving in complex rhythm across our faces and figures as we sat there, two beings destined to be forever strangers. She came into view for a little space, and vanished again, a mysterious, alluring, and magical presence, yet conveying no hint of any misfortune. She gave the impression of an easy and felicitous balance of forces, a complex of resilient strength, to which we poor Anglo-Saxons rarely attain. And sitting in the dancing reflections of the sunlights, she seemed a veritable emanation of the spirit of enchanted desire. I see her now, confronting the obscure motives of my behaviour in good-humoured sadness, while an ancient person in baggy black trousers and dingy scarlet sash tottered forward with a copper tray bearing tiny cups and a brass pot with a long handle.
"And in direct sequence, not very clear but clear compared with the shadowy oblivion that intervened, comes a picture of him whom I have called more than once a master of illusion. And I suppose he has a right to the title for he maintained the pose to the end of the chapter. I had imagined that it would be a painful duty to break the news of his daughter's death to him. I saw myself offering my condolences and soothing a father's anguish. I pictured an old man bowed with grief. But it did not happen that way at all. I forgot that masters of illusion have no use for facts, not even for such facts as grief or death, until they have been transmuted into some strange emotional freaks which will inspire the spectator with awe. And Fate, who is something of an illusionist herself, plays into the hands of such as he.
"I remember, for instance, sitting heavily in Mrs. Sarafov's front room, and telling that handsome, self-possessed woman in a few brief words what had happened to Captain Macedoine's daughter. How a wounded soldier's rifle, discharged by accident in our direction, had left us paralyzed and aghast at the inconceivable efficacy and finality of its achievement. I remember that, and then I remember following her into Captain Macedoine's house. About nine o'clock, I should say. And Mrs. Sarafov must have sent a messenger in advance, for Captain Macedoine already knew what I had to say. We stood in the vestibule near the foot of the stairs, Mrs. Sarafov whispering that he was being treated by his doctor with special baths. The doctor came every morning, I was informed in a respectful tone. And while we stood there, we heard a commotion upstairs, and a strange procession began to descend the narrow and shallow steps. I remember turning away hurriedly from a picture on the wall, a stark, angular composition of muscular male nudes in attitudes registering classical grief, of the body of Hector being brought back to the city—and finding Captain Macedoine, supported by a lean man in a frock coat and by two women, coming down. And perhaps it was the contemplation of that picture which called to my mind with irresistible force another picture, seen many years before. It was a picture of vivid colouring and violently complex action—the Emperor Vitellius coming down a steep, narrow street with the mob and the soldiery hacking and yelling and spitting around him, his gross corpulence rolling and rearing and staggering, the rich robes ripping away from the creases of sleezy tissue, the bright blood spurting from neck and arms, the eyes rolling wide, in a naked horror of dissolution, toward the flawless blue of a Roman sky. And the recollection was not so irrelevant as you might imagine. Captain Macedoine wore a voluminous bath robe of dark purple and he wore sandals on his feet. As he descended he rolled and staggered, and his supporters rolled and staggered to maintain themselves and him, all this commotion giving the little group the complicated activity of a crowd of people wrestling with an old man in a purple robe. And Mrs. Sarafov advanced to assist him, running up several steps and raising an arm, as though to strike, but with the real intention of support. I remember, too, the small wayward feet and the thick, smooth, hairless calves beneath the robe, strange in one so decrepit. I daresay, you know, he would have been something of that sort in that part of the world twenty generations earlier. Perhaps there was something aback of his adumbrations concerning his ancient lineage. Perhaps he was not simply a ship chandler in a small way, but the reincarnation of some sinister pro-consul who sat on the terrace of his marble villa among the distant ranges, and watched with a contemptuous and intellectual sneer the hordes of peasantry as they trudged into the cities to sacrifice their daughters to the savage and inexorable Cabirian deities. I had that fantastic notion as they paused at the foot of the stair and he moved his head slowly from side to side, the mouth pursed, the eyes set in a stony, unseeing stare, the bathrobe of purple towelling slipping from one shoulder. And then they moved forward again, away from me, into a room sparsely set with French furniture and dominated by a lofty chandelier still shrouded in its summer muslin, and the door swung to, leaving me to contemplate the picture in its tarnished frame of the body of Hector being brought back to Troy.
"And I must have sat there, in a sort of cane lounge, for a long time, since when we emerged from the doorway, the doctor and I, the Rue Paleologue was a shadowless glare of thin sunshine. He had come out of that room with bent head, closing the door absently and advancing toward the lounge where reposed his hat and stick beside me, when he took occasion to glance at me. Immediately he became alert and active.
"'You have sustained a shock,' he murmured, counting my pulse.
"'Is that it?' I returned, and he smiled, taking a capsule of white powder from his wallet and handing it to me. A carafe stood on a table near by. He poured out a glass of water.
"'Looks like it,' he remarked in excellent colloquial idiom; 'put this on your tongue and wash it down with some water. Feel better? Come out into the fresh air. Take a drive with me if you like.'
"'I want to talk to you,' I explained, as I followed him out. He hailed a man standing by a carriage several doors away and conversing with a servant.