"Well, he was an improvement upon M. Nikitos. Not old either, as I had for some reason imagined. Forty-five, I suppose; a solid, hook-nosed individual with the expensive, well-groomed air we associate with art-dealers. Fine eyes. I put down the picture and sipped my tea. This was all very well, but she had not asked me to come and see her simply to show off, surely.
"'And you've called me all the way from Glasgow to see some pretty clothes?' I asked. She looked hard at me for a moment and then dropped her eyes and smiled. She spoke, and in her voice there was the peculiar bell-like resonance I remarked the first time I heard her pronounce her name.
"'No, Mr. Chief,' she said, 'I have a favour to ask. A great favour. Will you do something for me? You did like me a little, you know.'
"'Oh, are you sure of that?' I enquired, coldly, and she nodded with a sudden rapturous vivacity. I dare say she was. Very little of that nature escapes a woman who exists chiefly by her temperament. I had been sentimental on the cliff and begged her to use me. Well, I was still young enough to feel a thrill because a pretty woman appealed to me, because I had been singled out for that delicate honour. I did what any of you would have done. I consented. And then she told me hurriedly what she wanted me to do. I was ... yes, this was the man. I understood, eh? She had written him from Saloniki. No answer. He did not know she was in London. She could not go, did not want to go for that matter. It was all over for ever. But it was his child. If I went to him, told him I had come from out there and had seen her ... eh? She wanted him to take the child, later, and bring him up. As an Englishman. And I was to come back and tell her what he said.
"And there I was, a respectable, sea-faring person, flying through London in a taxi-cab on a wild-goose chase at the behest of a girl who was rapturously sure I had liked her a little! It was an adventure which disproves the old proverb again. I found myself being carried northward, along streets of an intolerable meanness, past huge vulgar stores, among clanging street-cars and plunging motor-buses. I looked at the address--'Mr. Florian Kelly, 6 Kentish Studios, Kentish Town N. E.' This was Kentish Town. We swung round a corner by a huge terra-cotta subway station, shot up a drab street, turned into a narrow lane, and stopped opposite a tall green wooden wall. I got out, rather dazed, and telling the man to wait, looked about for an entrance. There was a door in the wall with the words 'Kentish Studios' over a bell handle. But the bell handle hung slack and I ventured to open the door. Evidently the taxi-driver had been there before, for he said: 'You'll find Number Six on the right, Sir.' I went in.