II

The street in which Mr. Blunt lived presented itself to our eyes, narrow, silent, empty, and dark, but with enough gaslamps in it to disclose its most striking feature a quantity of flagpoles sticking out above many of its closed portals. It was the street of Consuls and I remarked to Mr. Blunt that coming out in the morning he could survey the flags of all nations almostexcept his own. (The U. S. consulate was on the other side of the town.) He mumbled through his teeth that he took good care to keep clear of his own consulate.

`Àre you afraid of the consul's dog?'' I asked jocularly. The consul's dog weighed about a pound and a half and was known to the whole town as exhibited on the consular forearm in all places, at all hours, but mainly at the hour of the fashionable promenade on the Prado.

But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in my ear: ``They are all Yankees there.''

I murmured a confused `Òf course.''

Books are nothing. I discovered that I had never been aware before that the Civil War in America was not printed matter but a fact only about ten years old. Of course. He was a South Carolinian gentleman. I was a little ashamed of my want of tact. Meantime, looking like the conventional conception of a fashionable reveller, with his operahat pushed off his forehead, Captain Blunt was having some slight difficulty with his latchkey; for the house before which we had stopped was not one of those manystoried houses that made up the greater part of the street. It had only one row of windows above the ground floor. Dead walls abutting on to it indicated that it had a garden. Its dark front presented no marked architectural character, and in the flickering light of a street lamp it looked a little as though it had gone down in the world.

The greater then was my surprise to enter a hall paved in black and white marble and in its dimness appearing of palatial proportions. Mr. Blunt did not turn up the small solitary gasjet, but led the way across the black and white pavement past the end of the staircase, past a door of gleaming dark wood with a heavy bronze handle. It gave access to his rooms he said; but he took us straight on to the studio at the end of the passage.

It was rather a small place tacked on in the manner of a leanto to the garden side of the house.

A large lamp was burning brightly there. The floor was of mere flagstones but the few rugs scattered about though extremely worn were very costly. There was also there a beautiful sofa upholstered in pink figured silk, an enormous divan with many cushions, some splendid armchairs of various shapes (but all very shabby), a round table, and in the midst of these fine things a small common iron stove. Somebody must have been attending it lately, for the fire roared and the warmth of the place was very grateful after the bonesearching cold blasts of Page 11

mistral outside.

The Arrow of Gold

II

9

Mills without a word flung himself on the divan and, propped on his arm, gazed thoughtfully at a distant corner where in the shadow of a monumental carved wardrobe an articulated dummy without head or hands but with beautifully shaped limbs composed in a shrinking attitude, seemed to be embarrassed by his stare.

As we sat enjoying the _bivouac_ hospitality (the dish was really excellent and our host in a shabby grey jacket still looked the accomplished manabouttown) my eyes kept on straying towards that corner. Blunt noticed this and remarked that I seemed to be attracted by the Empress.