!« I give her all the details and we
talk for two hours across a large brass bowl containing a little water placed
between us, lighting cigarettes and dropping them, innumerable, puffed at, yet
untasted in the overwhelming interest of the conversation. Found her very quick
in taking the points and very intelligent in her suggestions. All formality soon
vanished between us and before very long I discovered myself sitting
cross-legged, too, while I held forth on the qualities of different
Mediterranean sailing craft and on the romantic qualifications of Dominic for
the task. I believe I gave her the whole history of the man, mentioning even the
existence of Madame Léonore, since the little café would have to be the
headquarters of the marine part of the plot.
    She murmured, »Ah! Une belle Romaine,« thoughtfully. She told me that she
liked to hear people of that sort spoken of in terms of our common humanity. She
observed also that she wished to see Dominic some day; to set her eyes for once
on a man who could be absolutely depended on. She wanted to know whether he had
engaged himself in this adventure solely for my sake.
    I said that no doubt it was partly that. We had been very close associates
in the West Indies from where we had returned together, and he had a notion that
I could be depended on, too. But mainly, I suppose, it was from taste. And there
was in him also a fine carelessness as to what he did and a love of venturesome
enterprise.
    »And you,« she said. »Is it carelessness, too?«
    »In a measure,« I said. »Within limits.«
    »And very soon you will get tired.«
    »When I do I will tell you. But I may also get frightened. I suppose you
know there are risks, I mean apart from the risk of life.«
    »As for instance,« she said.
    »For instance, being captured, tried, and sentenced to what they call the
galleys, in Ceuta.«
    »And all this from that love for ...«
    »Not for Legitimacy,« I interrupted the inquiry lightly. »But what's the use
asking such questions? It's like asking the veiled figure of fate. It doesn't
know its own mind nor its own heart. It has no heart. But what if I were to
start asking you - who have a heart and are not veiled to my sight?« She dropped
her charming adolescent head, so firm in modelling,
