Now, his mind aglow with roseate possibilities, he stepped from the tram
in the neighborhood of Shoreditch, and chartered a taxi-cab. From this
he descended at the corner of Arundel Street and strolled along westward
in the direction of the hotel patronized by Miss Ryland. At a corner
from which he could command a view of the entrance, he paused and
consulted his watch.
It was nearly twenty minutes past ten. Mentally, he cursed Mahara, who
perhaps had caused him to let slip this golden opportunity. But his was
not a character easily discouraged; he lighted a cigarette and prepared
himself to wait, in the hope that the girl had not yet left her friend.
Gianapolis was a man capable of the uttermost sacrifices upon either
of two shrines; that of Mammon, or that of Eros. His was a temperament
(truly characteristic of his race) which can build up a structure
painfully, year by year, suffering unutterable privations in the cause
of its growth, only to shatter it at a blow for a woman's smile. He was
a true member of that brotherhood, represented throughout the bazaars of
the East, of those singular shopkeepers who live by commercial rapine,
who, demanding a hundred piastres for an embroidered shawl from a plain
woman, will exchange it with a pretty one for a perfumed handkerchief.
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