recollection of the exact point when the shadow of discontent had begun
to spread itself over his mind. Looking back, it seemed to him that he
had done nothing during that week but enjoy each new aspect of his
position as it was introduced to his notice. Yet here he was, sitting
on a lonely rock, consumed with an unquenchable restlessness, a kind of
trapped sensation. Exactly when and exactly how Fate, that king of
gold-brick men, had cheated him he could not say; but he knew, with a
certainty that defied argument, that there had been sharp practise, and
that in an unguarded moment he had been induced to part with something
of infinite value in exchange for a gilded fraud.

The mystery baffled him. He sent his mind back to the first definite
entry of Mervo into the foreground of his life. He had come up from his
stateroom on to the deck of the little steamer, and there in the
pearl-gray of the morning was the island, gradually taking definite
shape as the pink mists shredded away before the rays of the rising
sun. As the ship rounded the point where the lighthouse still flashed a
needless warning from its cluster of jagged rocks, he had had his first
view of the town, nestling at the foot of the hill, gleaming white
against the green, with the gold-domed Casino towering in its midst. In
all Southern Europe there was no view to match it for quiet beauty. For
all his thews and sinews there was poetry in John, and the sight had
stirred him like wine.

It was not then that depression had begun, nor was it during the
reception at the quay.

The days that had followed had been peaceful and amusing. He could not
detect in any one of them a sign of the approaching shadow. They had
been lazy days. His duties had been much more simple than he had