“Just give me your name, please, if you wish,” the pale one said, clearing as dry a throat as ever gave passage to words.  Indeed, Bedient could only think of some one stepping upon nut-shells to compare with that voice.  The sentence was spoken in answer to his glance about for a register or something of the sort....  No questions were asked regarding price, baggage, nor the nature of the quarters desired.  A Chinese servant appeared, and took the case from Bedient’s man, who was sent down to quarter in the city.  The guest followed the Oriental.  The stillness and vast proportions of the structure; the endless darkened halls robed in tapestries and animate with oils; the heavy fragrance from the gardens, crushed out of blossoms by the fierce heat; rugs of all the world’s weaving, from the golden fleeces of Persia to fire-lit Navajos; a glimpse to the left, of a room walled with books, and sunk into an Egypt of silence; an acreage of covered billiard-tables through a vast door to the right—­a composite of such impressions made the moment memorable.  Bedient could only think of a king’s winter palace—­in summer....  He left the servant to return a moment to the desk.

“Have you a list of the men-guests?” he asked.

The pale one looked disturbed; or possibly it was disappointment that his colorless features expressed, as if such affairs were for the lesser servants of the establishment, and not in the province of gentlemanly dealings.

“No, we have no such list,” he said.  “Later in the day, when it is cooler, however, most of our guests are abroad, and you will doubtless have little difficulty in finding him whom you seek.  You will become familiar in a few hours with our little peculiarities of management.  There is little to complain of in the way of service, I believe——­”

Rejoining the Chinese, Bedient was led to an apartment, the elegance of detail and effect of which was imperial, no less.  With relief he stepped out of his riding clothes, bathed in a deliciously tempered shower, and sat down to think.  The chair folded about him like a cool soft arm.  The whole atmosphere was to him embarrassingly sensuous.  The city was below, shadowed in the swift-falling night; the harbor lay in purple silence, the sun had sunk in a blood-orange sky.

A smile came to his lips at the heavy seriousness of life all about him; vice clinging tenaciously to world-forms, and leaning upon the purchasable beauty of marble and figured walls, its hollowness sustained with the perfections of service.  Then he looked across the dark harbor to the sweep of deep red which alone remained of the sunset, thinking of Beth and the dividing sea and the dividing world, and why it had happened so.  He was ashamed because he could not think of the great work he had dreamed of doing for women, because Beth meant Women to him now, and he was not for her....  Would the visions of service ever come back?