’In the same way, if you had been killed by a motor-car as you went away from my door, I should have been the cause of your death!’

‘You will be in any case,’ laughed Logotheti, ’but that’s a detail!  I found Mr. Feist in a very bad way.’

‘What was the matter with him?’ asked Margaret.

‘He was committing suicide,’ answered the Greek with the utmost calm.  ’If I were in Constantinople I should tell you that this turbot is extremely good, but as we are in London I suppose it would be very bad manners to say so, wouldn’t it?  So I am thinking it.’

‘Take the fish for granted, and tell me more about Mr. Feist!’

’I found him standing before the glass with a razor in his hand and quite near his throat.  When he saw me he tried to laugh and said he was just going to shave; I asked him if he generally shaved without soap and water, and he burst into tears.’

‘That’s rather dreadful,’ observed Margaret.  ‘What did you do?’

’I saved his life, but I don’t think he’s very grateful yet.  Perhaps he may be by and by.  When he stopped sobbing he tried to kill me for hindering his destruction, but I had got the razor in my pocket, and his revolver missed fire.  That was lucky, for he managed to stick the muzzle against my chest and pull the trigger just as I got him down.  I wished I had brought old Griggs with me, for they say he can bend a good horse-shoe double, even now, and the fellow had the strength of a lunatic in him.  It was rather lively for a few seconds, and then he broke down again, and was as limp as a rag, and trembled with fright, as if he saw queer things in the room.’

‘You sent for a doctor then?’

’My own, and we took care of him together that night.  You may laugh at the idea of my having a doctor, as I never was ill in my life.  I have him to dine with me now and then, because he is such good company, and is the best judge of a statue or a picture I know.  The habit of taking the human body to pieces teaches you a great deal about the shape of it, you see.  In the morning we moved Mr. Feist from the hotel to a small private hospital where cases of that sort are treated.  Of course he was perfectly helpless, so we packed his belongings and papers.’

’It was really very kind of you to act the Good Samaritan to a stranger,’ Margaret said, but her tone showed that she was disappointed at the tame ending of the story.

‘No,’ Logotheti answered.  ’I was never consciously kind, as you call it.  It’s not a Greek characteristic to love one’s neighbour as one’s self.  Teutons, Anglo-Saxons, Latins, and, most of all, Asiatics, are charitable, but the old Greeks were not.  I don’t believe you’ll find an instance of a charitable act in all Greek history, drama, and biography!  If you did find one I should only say that the exception proves the rule.  Charity was left out of us at the beginning, and we never could understand it, except as a foreign