to the one note that commands them all--the call which lightens up faces
sodden with base vices, eyes bleared with long looking into the dark
caverns of crime:

"Buy--buy--buy--buy--buy!"

That is the tune the piper pipes. We would buy, and behold, we must pay.
Then the lights go out, the voices stop, and only the dark tumultuous
streets surround us, and the grime of life is ours again. Whereupon we
go heavily to hard beds of despair, having eaten the cake we bought, and
now must pay for unto Penalty, the dark inordinate creditor. And anon
the morning comes, and then, at last, the evening when the triste bazaars
open again, and the strong of heart and nerve move not from their
doorways, but sit still in the dusk to watch the grim world go by. But
mostly they hurry out to the bazaars once more, answering to the fevered
call:

"Buy--buy--buy--buy--buy!"

And again they pay the price: and so on to the last foreclosure and the
immitigable end.

One of the two standing in the door of the ruined chapel on the Ecrehos
had the nature of those who buy but once and pay the price but once; the
other was of those who keep open accounts in the markets of life. The
one was the woman and the other was the man.

There was nothing conventional in their greeting. "You remembered me!"
he said eagerly, in English, thinking of yesterday.