"What makes you so sure?" asked Mr. Spokesly.
Mr. Dainopoulos was not prepared to answer that question in English. He found that English, as he knew it, was an extraordinarily wooden and cumbersome vehicle in which to convey those lightning flashes and glares and sparkles of thought in which most Latin intelligences communicate with each other. You could say very little in English, Mr. Dainopoulos thought. He could have got off some extremely good things about Evanthia Solaris in the original Greek, but Mr. Spokesly would not have understood him. If he were to take a long chance, however, by saying that the vulture up in the sky sees the dead mouse in the ravine, he was not at all sure of the result.
"Aw," he said in apology for his difficulty, "the ladies, they like the pretty rings."
"I can see you don't like her," said Mr. Spokesly, smiling a little.
"My friend," said Mr. Dainopoulos, and he turned his black, bloodshot eyes, with their baggy pouches of skin forming purplish crescents below them, on his companion. "My friend, I'm married. Women, I got no use for them, you unnerstand? You no unnerstand. By and by, you know what I mean. My wife, all the time she sick, all the time. She like Miss Solaris. All right. For my wife anything in the world. But me, I got my business. By and by, ah!"
"What about by and by?" asked Mr. Spokesly, curious in spite of himself. He began to think Mr. Dainopoulos was a rather interesting human being, a remarkable concession from an Englishman.
Mr. Dainopoulos did not reply immediately. He had a vision splendid in his mind, but it was hazy and vague in details. His somewhat oriental conception of happiness was tempered by an austere idealism inspired by his wife. He could never have achieved his ambition, let us say, in Haverstock Hill, London N., or Newark, N. J. He demanded a background of natural features as a setting for his grandiose plans for the future. No westerner could understand his dreams, for example, of a black automobile with solid silver fittings and upholstery of orange corded silk, in which his wife could take the air along a magnificent corniche road flanked by lemon-coloured rocks and an azure sea. Other refinements, such as silken window-blinds, striped green and white, keeping the blinding sparkle of that sea from invading the cool recesses of voluptuous chambers, came to him from time to time. But he could not talk about it. He did not even speak to his wife of his dream. He believed she knew without his telling her. She knew nothing about it, imagining that he was merely concocting some little surprise such as buying a cottage in the country down in Warwickshire, where she believed her people came from in the days of William the Fourth. Buying cottages was not her husband's idea of solidifying a position, however. For him, living in a hovel while making money was justified by frugality and convenience, but retiring to a cottage would be a confession of defeat.
So he did not enlighten Mr. Spokesly. He paused awhile and then remarked that he hoped to get finished with business some day. No one could possibly take exception to this.
They did not see the officer who had been so anxious for Mr. Spokesly to visit the Persian Gulf during the coming summer. That gentleman had gone to see a dentist, it appeared, and a young writer informed them that it would be all right so long as the captain of the vessel was British.
"Yes, he's British all right—Captain Rannie—he's got a passport," said Mr. Dainopoulos. And when he was asked when he would be ready to load, he said as soon as the Captain gave him a berth.