The band, or a portion of it, was again at work, playing an inane melody, and upon the small stage two remarkably well-developed and aquiline-featured women of mature age, dressed as very young children in white socks, short skirts which displayed frilled drawers, and muslin bonnets adorned with floating blue and pink ribbons, swayed to and fro and joined their cracked voices in a duet, the French words of which seemed to exhale a sort of fade obscenity.  While they swayed and jigged heavily, showing their muscular legs to the staring audience, they gazed eagerly about, seeking an admiration from which they might draw profit when their infantile task was over.  Presently they retired, running skittishly, taking small leaps into the air, and aimlessly blowing kisses to the night.

“Very fine girls!” murmured John to his young patrons.  “They make much money in Pera.”

One of the young men shrugged his shoulders with a smile.

“Get us two Turkish coffees, John!” he said.  Then he turned to his companion.  “I say, Ellis, have you noticed an English feller—­at least I take him to be English—­who’s sitting over there close to the stage, sideways to us?”

“No; where is he?” asked his companion.

“You see that old Turk with the double chin?”

“Rather.”

“Just beyond him, sitting with a guide who’s evidently Greek.”

“I’ve got him.”

“Watch him.  I never saw such a face.”

A blowzy young woman, in orange color and green, with short tinsel-covered skirts, bounded wearily on to the stage, smiling, and began to sing: 

“Je suis une boite de surprises! 
O la la!  O la la! 
Je suis une boite de surprises.”

Ellis looked across at the man to whom his attention had been drawn.  This man was seated by a little table on which were a siphon, a bottle of iced water, and a tall tumbler nearly half-full of a yellow liquid.  He was smoking a large dark-colored cigar which he now and then took from his mouth with a hand that was very thin and very brown.  His face was dark and browned by the sun, but looked startlingly haggard, as if it were pale or even yellowish under the sunburn.  About the eyes there were large wrinkles, spraying downwards over the cheek bones and invading the cheeks.  He wore a mustache, and was well-dressed in a tweed suit.  But his low collar was not very fresh, and his tie was arranged in a slovenly fashion and let his collar stud be seen.  He sat with his legs crossed, staring at the grimacing woman on the stage with a sort of horribly icy intentness.  The expression about his lips and eyes was more than bitter; it showed a frozen fierceness.

On the other side of the table was seated a lean, meager guide, obviously one of those Greeks who haunt the quays of Constantinople on the look out for arriving travelers.  Now and then this Greek leaned forward and, with a sort of servile and anxious intelligence, spoke to his companion.  He received no reply.  The other man went on smoking and staring at the boite de surprises as if he were alone.  And somehow he seemed actually to be alone, encompassed by a frightful solitude.