"
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.
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