Such a life as this invariably calls down the anger of Venus, and Hamilton had worn out by now the patience of the goddess.

The tragedy of Euripides’ Hippolytus is called a myth, but that same tragedy is played out over and over again, year by year, in all time, and is as true now as it was then.  The slighted goddess takes her revenge at last.  As he walked on, the sound of some tom-toms dulled by distance came to his ears.  He hesitated at a crossing where a side alley led down towards the bazaar, then without thought or intention walked down the turning, the music growing louder as he advanced.

It came from a house some way lower down, before the open door of which hung a large white sheet with scarlet letters on it.  Hamilton glanced up and read on it, “Dancing girls from the Deccan.  Admission, six annas.  Walk in.”  He stared dully at it till the red letters danced in the fierce, torrid sunlight, and the flies, finding him standing motionless, came thickly round his face.  A puff of hot wind blew down the street, bringing the dust:  it lifted a corner of the sheet and turned it back from the doorway.  Within looked cool and dark.  The entry was a square of darkness.  He was tired of the sun, the heat, the noise, the dust and the flies.  With no thought other than seeking for shelter, he stepped behind the sheet and was in the darkness; a turnstile barred his way:  on the top of it he laid down his six annas, his eyes too full of the yellow glare of the outside to see whom he paid:  he felt the turnstile yield, and stumbled on in the obscurity.  A hand pushed him between two curtains.  Then he found himself in a low square room, and could see about him again by the subdued light of oil lamps fixed against the wall.  At one end was the small stage, its scarlet curtain now down; in front a row of tin lamps, primitive footlights, and the rest of the room was filled with rows of empty chairs.  Mechanically and without interest, Hamilton went forward and seated himself in the first of these rows.  The tom-toms had ceased:  there was quiet, an interval of rest presumably for the dancers.  It was far cooler than outside, and Hamilton breathed a sigh of relief as he sank into his seat.  The dimness of the light, the quiet, the coolness all pleased him:  he had not known till he sat down how tired he was.  He might have sat there a quarter of an hour, his mind in that state of hopeless blank that supervenes on overmuch unsatisfactory thinking, when suddenly the tom-toms started up again with a terrific rattle, and the scarlet curtain was somewhat spasmodically jerked up, displaying a semicircle of girls seated on European chairs facing the tin lamps.  Two of the seven were African girls, with the woolly hair and jet black skin of their race; they were seated one at each end of the semicircle, dressed in short scarlet skirts, standing out from their waist in English ballet-girl fashion, the upper part of their bodies bare, except for the masses of coloured glass necklaces