greyness of his moody eye became as blue as the sea. The professional
straightness of his figure relaxed into the elastic grace of an athlete.
He was a pipe to be played on: an actor with the ambitious brain of a
diplomatist; as weak as water, and as strong as steel; soft-hearted to
foolishness or unyielding at will.

Now, if the devil had sent a wise imp to have watch and ward of this man
and this maid, and report to him upon the meeting of their ways, the
moment Philip took Guida's hand, and her eyes met his, monsieur the
reporter of Hades might have clapped-to his book and gone back to his
dark master with the message and the record: "The hour of Destiny is
struck."

When the tide of life beats high in two mortals, and they meet in the
moment of its apogee, when all the nature is sweeping on without command,
guilelessly, yet thoughtlessly, the mere lilt of existence lulling to
sleep wisdom and tried experience--speculation points all one way. Many
indeed have been caught away by such a conjunction of tides, and they
mostly pay the price.

But paying is part of the game of life: it is the joy of buying that we
crave. Go down into the dark markets of the town. See the long, narrow,
sordid streets lined with the cheap commodities of the poor. Mark how
there is a sort of spangled gaiety, a reckless swing, a grinning
exultation in the grimy, sordid caravanserai. The cheap colours of the
shoddy open-air clothing-house, the blank faded green of the coster's
cart; the dark bluish-red of the butcher's stall--they all take on a
value not their own in the garish lights flaring down the markets of the
dusk. Pause to the shrill music of the street musician, hear the
tuneless voice of the grimy troubadour of the alley-ways; and then hark