240 The Light That Failed Hong-Kong, and his mouth with the villainous Lingua Franca of the Levant. The heat smote him between the shoulder-blades with the buffet of an old friend, his feet slipped on the sand, and his coat-sleeve was warm as new-baked bread when he lifted it to his nose. Madame Binat smiled with the smile that knows no astonishment when Dick entered the drinking-shop which was one source of her gains. But for a little accident of complete darkness he could hardly realize that he had ever quitted the old life that hummed 1n his ears. Somebody opened a bottle of peculiarly strong Schiedam. The smell reminded Dick of Monsieur Binat, who, by the way, had spoken of art and degradation. Binat was dead; Madame said as much when the doctor departed, scandalized, so far as a ship’s doctor can be, at the warmth of Dick’s reception. Dick was delighted at it. “They remember me here after a year. They have forgotten me across the water by this time. Madame, I want a long talk with you when you’re at liberty. It is good to be back again.” In the evening she set an iron-topped café-table out on the sands, and Dick and she sat by it, while the house behind them filled with riot, merriment, oaths, and threats. The stars came out and the lights of the shipping in the harbor twinkled by the head of the @anals “Yes. The war is good for trade, my friend; but what dost thou do here? We have not forgotten thee.” “I was over there in England and I went blind.” “But there was the glory first. We heard of it here, even here — I and Binat; and thou hast used the head of Yellow ’Tina — she is still alive — so often and so well that “Tina laughed when the papers arrived by the mail-boats. It was always something that we here could recognize in the paintings. And then there was always the glory and the money for thee.”