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He found it like being perpetually in a comic opera and playing a part in one. For only the scenic artist would dare to paint houses in such yellow, pink, and cobalt-blue; only a “producer” who had never ventured farther from Broadway than the Atlantic City boardwalk would have conceived costumes so mad and so magnificent. Instinctively he cast the people of Zanzibar in the conventional roles of musical comedy.

His choruses were already in waiting. There was the Sultan’s body-guard in gold-laced turbans, the merchants of the bazaars in red fezzes and gowns of flowing silk, the Malay sailors in blue, the black native police in scarlet, the ladies of the harems closely veiled and cloaked, the market women in a single garment of orange, or scarlet, or purple, or of all three, and the happy, hilarious Zanzibari boys in the color God gave them.

For hours he would sit under the yellow-and-green awning of the Greek hotel and watch the procession pass, or he would lie under an umbrella on the beach and laugh as the boatmen lifted their passengers to their shoulders and with them splash through the breakers, or in the bazaars for hours he would bargain with the Indian merchants, or in the great mahogany hall of the Ivory House, to the whisper of a punka and the tinkle of ice in a tall glass, listen to tales of Arab raids, of elephant poachers, of the trade in white and black ivory, of the great explorers who had sat in that same room–of Emin Pasha, of Livingstone, of Stanley. His comic opera lacked only a heroine and the love interest.

When he met Mrs. Adair he found both. Polly Adair, as every one who dared to do so preferred to call her, was, like himself, an American and, though absurdly young, a widow. In the States she would have been called an extremely pretty girl. In a community where the few dozen white women had wilted and faded in the fierce sun of the equator, and where the rest of the women were jet black except their teeth, which were dyed an alluring purple, Polly Adair was as beautiful as a June morning. At least, so Hemingway thought the first time he saw her, and each succeeding time he thought her more beautiful, more lovely, more to be loved.

He met her, three days after his arrival, at the residence of the British agent and consul-general, where Lady Firth was giving tea to the six nurses from the English hospital and to all the other respectable members of Zanzibar society.

“My husband’s typist,” said her ladyship as she helped Hemingway to tea, “is a copatriot of yours. She’s such a nice gell; not a bit like an American. I don’t know what I’d do in this awful place without her. Promise me,” she begged tragically, “you will not ask her to marry you.”

Unconscious of his fate, Hemingway promised.

“Because all the men do,” sighed Lady Firth, “and I never know what morning one of the wretches won’t carry her off to a home of her own. And then what would become of me? Men are so selfish! If you must fall in love,” suggested her ladyship, “promise me you will fall in love with”–she paused innocently and raised baby-blue eyes, in a baby-like stare–“with some one else.”

Again Hemingway promised. He bowed gallantly. “That will be quite easy,” he said.

Her ladyship smiled, but Hemingway did not see the smile. He was looking past her at a girl from home, who came across the terrace carrying in her hand a stenographer’s note-book.

Lady Firth followed the direction of his eyes and saw the look in them. She exclaimed with dismay:

“Already! Already he deserts me, even before the ink is dry on the paper.”

She drew the note-book from Mrs. Adair’s fingers and dropped it under the tea-table.