eral explosion. Athenian public opinion had already been heated to the boilingpoint by the presence of three thousand Allied marines quartered in the principal buildings of the capital and by the Entente's seizure of the post-offices, telegraphs, and police control. At any rate, on December 2 the Allied garrison was overpowered after sharp fighting by the Royalist troops while the Venizelists were hunted down by furious Royalist mobs. The Allies incontinently retired to Piræus, and could not conceal their moral defeat.

So things stood by the middle of December, when the Entente forced on King Constantine a capitulation through the starvation menace of another "commercial blockade."

What the end will be is now a matter of relatively minor importance. The Teutonic conquest of Rumania has solved the Balkan military problem, since no conceivable Entente counter-stroke can henceforth cut the German highroad to the East. That was the vital point at issue, and it has now been decisively settled.

But the plight of poor Greece remains. pitiable to the last degree. However the Balkan struggle may end, Greece has virtually ceased to exist as a self-sustaining nation. Half her territory is in foreign

hands, and, what is even worse, her sons are split into irreconcilable factions the fanatical hatreds of which inhibit national solidarity and may yet forfeit the Hellenic race heritage.

And the saddest part of it all is that Greece herself is little to blame. The chief responsibility for the Greek tragedy must unquestionably be laid at the Allies' door. When the war broke out Greece was their devoted friend. They could have had her aid for the asking if they had only shown themselves resolved to impose their solution of the Eastern question. Greece asked only one condition, a thoroughgoing diplomatic guaranty and reasonable military support. But the Allies persisted in regarding the Balkans as a sort of side-show wherein Greece was to take the vital risks. They refused to recognize the stern fact that self-preservation is the first law of nations as of nature; instead, they termed it treason, and answered with recrimination and ruthless coercion, which outraged Hellenic national honor, reduced the Greeks to despair, and finally drove them into the arms of the Teutons. The Allies stubbornly invoked the phantom of a Germanophile Greece; they ended by making that poor ghost a grim reality.

haps wrong. But not having leisure to think, she took the risk, and in time found herself, as a result of her mistake, to have made an enemy; yes, changed her dear and helpful friend Charlie Hunt into a secret enemy.

In an old palace on Via dei Bardi a stage had been set, filling one fourth of the vast saloon. A goodly representation of Anglo-American society in Florence crowded the rest. Beautifully hand-written programs acquainted these, through thin disguises of name, with the personalities of the performers. Only one name was really mysterious-Lew Dockstader.

After a lively overture by piano, violin, and harp, the three Misses Hunt, in Japanese costume, gave a prettily kittenish rendering of "Three Little Maids from School," selection from one of those Gilbert and Sullivan operettas latterly enchanting both England and America. The tub-shaped Herr Spiegelmeyer, dressed like a little boy and announced as an infant prodigy, played a concerto of prodigious difficulty and length. Lavin, of the tenor voice rich in poetry and prospects, humbled himself to sing, "There was a Lady Loved a Swine," with "Humph, quoth he" almost too realistic. Then came Lew Dockstader.

Now, report had spread that Mrs. Hawthorne was to appear as a negress; no one was prepared to see her appear as a negro. The surprise, when it dawned on this one and the other that that stoveblack face with rolling eyes and big redand-white smile, that burly body incased in old, bagging trousers, those shuffling feet shod in boots a mile too large for them and curling up at the toe, belonged to Mrs. Hawthorne-the surprise was in itself a success. Then, as has been said, Aurora was undeniably in the vein that evening.

She had seen Lew Dockstader, the negro minstrel, once in her life, but at the impressionable age, when you see and remember for good. It had been the great theatrical event of her life. "What, have n't seen Lew Dockstader! Don't know who he is!" thus she still would measure

a person's ignorance of what is best in drama and song. She loved Lew. When she impersonated him she did not try to imitate him; she simply felt herself to be he.

In this character she now told a string of those funny anecdotes which Americans. love to swap. She sang divers songs, pitched in her big, velvety chest tones: "Children, Keep in de Middle ob de Road," "Fluey, Fluey," "Come, Ride dat Golden Mule." With the clumsy nimbleness and innocent love of play of a Newfoundland pup she flung out her enormous feet in the dance.

The crimson curtains drew together upon her retreat amid unaffected applause. Recalled, she gave the encore prepared for such an event. Recalled over and over, like singers of topical songs, to hear what she would say next, Aurora, a little off her head with the new wine of glory, exhausted her bag of parlor tricks to satisfy an audience so kind. Then it was that she made her mistake. Recalled still again, she invented on the spot one last thing to do. She recited a poem indelibly learned at public school, giving it first as a newly landed Jewish pupil would pronounce it, then a small Irishman, then a small Italian, finally an English child. To add the latter was her mistake, because her caricature of the English speech was very special.

The sound of it started an idea buzzing in the head of one of her audience-Charlie Hunt, who sat well in front, and in applauding raised his hands above. the level of his head so that actors and audience alike might be encouraged by seeing that he gave the patronage of his approval.

He did not immediately connect Aurora's English accent with a rankling remembered episode, but the thing was burrowing in his subconsciousness, and an arrow of light before long pierced his brain. He reconsidered the conclusion upon which he had rested with regard to the black crow who at the veglione had put to him an impertinent question. Could it be that not the particular lady whom he

had fixed upon in his mind as being fond of Landini, consequently jealous of Mrs. Hawthorne, had by it expressed her spite, but that- He saw in a flash a different possibility.

When the show was over and the performers had issued from the dressingrooms in the clothes of saner moments, Charlie Hunt approached Mrs. Hawthorne, who, flushed with excitement, was looking almost too much like an American Beauty rose. He paid his compliments in a tone tinged with irony, all the while watching her with a penetrating, inquiring, ironical eye. But the irony was wasted. She was too pleasantly engrossed to perceive it.

"Has anybody here seen Mr. Fane?" she asked after a time, when her glances had vainly sought him in every corner.

Estelle told her that she had not set eyes on him the whole evening; and, which was more conclusive, little Lily Foss said he had not been there.

CHAPTER XIV

AURORA, unable to see beyond the footlights, had never dreamed but Gerald was among the audience. Her capers had at moments been definitely directed at him. Discovering that he had kept away, she was not so much hurt as puzzled.

"Who'd have thought he cared enough about it to be so mean!" she said to herself. "Well," she said further, "let him alone. He'll come round in a day or two."

She really expected him that same day. When he did not come, or the day after, or the day after that, she tried to recall passage for passage their talk on the subject of the show. She did not remember his saying anything that amounted to giving her a choice between renouncing it or renouncing his friendship.

Aurora did not know what to think. From hour to hour she looked for a call, a message, a letter, and because the time while waiting seemed long, she neglected to note that the actual time elapsed was not more than Gerald had sometimes al

lowed to pass without her attributing his silence to offense. He had his work, he had other friends; Abbé Johns might be in town again visiting him. This silence, however, had a different value, she thought, from others. They had seemed so much better friends after their confidences that long evening over the fire, she expected more of him than she had done before it.

At other moments she was disposed to find fault with herself. She supposed she was a big, coarse thing, unable to appreciate the feelings of a man who apparently had n't as many thicknesses of skin as other folks.

It was at such a moment, when she made allowances for him, that she thought of writing, making it easy for him to drop his grouch and return. But here Aurora felt a difficulty. Aurora thought well, in a general way, of her powers as a letter-writer, and she was proud of her beautifully legible Spencerian hand; but for such a letter as she wished to send Gerald fine shades of expression were needed beyond what she could compass. She was fond of Gerald: in this letter she must not be too fond, yet she must be fond enough. What hope that a blockhead would strike the exact middle of so fine a line?

She could obviate the difficulty by sending him a formal invitation to dinner. But suppose she should receive formal regrets?

After that the whole thing must be left to him; the tactful letter meant to hurry him back would no longer be possible.

"Oh, bother!" said Aurora, and formed a better, bolder plan.

Aurora had not seen the plays, had not read the books, where the going of the heroine to visit the hero at his house for whatever good reason under the sun has such damaging results for her fair fame. Aurora was innocent of good society's hopeless narrowness on the subject. she made a secret of her plan to Estelle it was merely because Estelle had permitted herself wise words one day, warnings with regard to Gerald, in whom she specifically

If