But Logotheti, who knew something of men, and had dealt with some very accomplished experts in fraud from New York and London to Constantinople, had his doubts about the truth of what he had heard, and understood at once why the usually reticent American had talked so much about himself.  Van Torp, he was sure, was in love with the singer; that was his weak side, and in whatever affected her he might behave like a brute or a baby, but would certainly act with something like rudimentary simplicity in either case.  In Logotheti’s opinion Northern and English-speaking men might be as profound as Persians in matters of money, and sometimes were, but where women were concerned they were generally little better than sentimental children, unless they were mere animals.  Not one in a thousand cared for the society of women, or even of one particular woman, for its own sake, for the companionship, and the exchange of ideas about things of which women know how to think.  To the better sort, that is, to the sentimental ones, a woman always seemed what she was not, a goddess, a saint, or a sort of glorified sister; to the rest, she was an instrument of amusement and pleasure, more or less necessary and more or less purchasable.  Perhaps an Englishman or an American, judging Greeks from what he could learn about them in ordinary intercourse, would get about as near the truth as Logotheti did.  In his main conclusion the latter was probably right; Mr. Van Torp’s affections might be of such exuberant nature as would admit of being divided between two or three objects at the same time, or they might not.  But when he spoke of having the ‘highest regard’ for Madame Cordova, without denying the facts about the interview in which he had asked her to marry him and had lost his head because she refused, he was at least admitting that he was in love with her, or had been at that time.

Mr. Van Torp also confessed that he had entertained a ‘high regard’ for the beautiful Mrs. Bamberger, now unhappily insane.  It was noticeable that he had not used the same expression in speaking of Lady Maud.  Nevertheless, as in the Bamberger affair, he appeared as the chief cause of trouble between husband and wife.  Logotheti was considered ‘dangerous’ even in Paris, and his experiences had not been dull; but, so far, he had found his way through life without inadvertently stepping upon any of those concealed traps through which the gay and unwary of both sexes are so often dropped into the divorce court, to the surprise of everybody.  It seemed the more strange to him that Rufus Van Torp, only a few years his senior, should now find himself in that position for the second time.  Yet Van Torp was not a ladies’ man; he was hard-featured, rough of speech, and clumsy of figure, and it was impossible to believe that any woman could think him good-looking or be carried away by his talk.  The case of Mrs. Bamberger could be explained; she might have had beauty, but she could have had little else