nutriment indeed, and they could not satisfy the child, who failed dismally to understand them.  Through the green blinds came the noise of life and health and merriment; curses too, sometimes, but only the curses of the well fed, and therefore meaningless.  Already the sun fell hot and indomitable on the room, and the atmosphere at their touch became stifling.  Gregorio, swallowing his tears, tore out into the street, shouting up the narrow stairway hysterical words of hope.

How long and shadowless the street seemed!  Every house had its green blinds closely shut; the wind that stirred the dust of the pavements was hot and biting.  Gregorio clinched his hands and strode rapidly onward.  What mattered it to him that behind those green blinds women and men slumbered in comparative comfort?  He had a work to do, and by sunset must carry good tidings to his little world.  For a time his heart was brave as the dry wind scorched the tear upon his cheek.  “Surely,” he thought, weaving his thoughts into a fine marching rhythm, “the great God will help me now, will help me now.”

At midday, after he had tried, with that strange Greek pertinacity that understands no refusals, all the hotels and tourist agencies he had called at the day before, he became weary and disconsolate.  The march had become a dirge; no longer it suggested happiness to be, but failure.  An Englishman threw him a piastre, and he turned into a cafe.  Calling for a glass of wine, he flung himself down on the wooden bench and tried to think.  But really logical thinking was impossible.  For in spite of the sorrow at his heart, the same bright dreams of wealth and happiness came back to mock him.  The piastre he played with became gold, and he felt the cafe contained no luxuries that he might not command to be brought before him.  But as the effects of the red wine of Lebanon evaporated he began to take a soberer though still cheerful view of his position.  It was only when the waiter carried off his piastre that he suddenly woke to fact and knew himself once more a man with a wife and child starving in Alexandria, an alien city for all its wealthy colony of Greeks.  A wave of pity swept over him; not so much for the woman was he sorry, though he loved her too, but for the baby whose future he had planned.  He scowled savagely at the inmates of the cafe, who only smiled quietly, for they were used to poor Greeks who had drunk away their last coin, and pushed past them into the street.

There it was hotter than ever, and he met scarcely any one.  Every one who could be was at home, or in the cool cafes; only Gregorio was abroad.  He determined to make for the quay.  He knew that many ships put into the Alexandrian waters, and there was often employment found for those not too proud to work at lading and unloading.  Quickly, and burning as the kempsin, he hurried through the Rue des Soeurs, not daring to look up at the house wherein he dwelt.  The muffled sounds of voices and guitars