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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Challenge, by Vita Sackville-West
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll
+have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
+this ebook.
+
+
+
+Title: Challenge
+
+Author: Vita Sackville-West
+
+Release Date: April 25, 2020 [EBook #61925]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHALLENGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Tim Lindell, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from images made available by the
+HathiTrust Digital Library.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
++-------------------------------------------------+
+|Transcriber's note:                              |
+|                                                 |
+|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.  |
+|                                                 |
++-------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+CHALLENGE
+
+BY
+
+V. SACKVILLE-WEST
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS      NEW YORK
+
+
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+ACABA EMBEO SIN TIRO, MEN CHUAJAÑI;
+LIRENAS, BERJARAS TIRI OCHI BUSÑE,
+CHANGERI, TA ARMENSALLE.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+A man and a woman leaned idly over the balustrade watching the steady
+stream of guests that mounted the magnificent staircase. The marble
+of the balustrade was cool beneath the woman's bare arms, for it was
+summer, and the man, without interrupting his murmur of comment and
+anecdote, glanced admiringly at her, and thought that, in spite of
+her forty years, she, with diamonds in her hair and the great ropes
+of pearls over her shoulders, need not fear comparison with all the
+beauty of London assembled at that ball. Her beauty and dignity
+melted pleasantly, for him, into the wealth of the house, the lights,
+the abundance of flowers, and the distant orchestra. Again the idea
+that this woman, for the asking, would decorate his own house with
+her presence, and would ornament his own distinguished name, played
+flatteringly through his mind. He reflected with gratification that it
+lay within his power to do her this honour. For, a vain man, he never
+questioned but that the favour would lie entirely on his side.
+
+He pointed out to her the famous general on the stairs, escorting his
+daughter; the new American beauty; the young man recently succeeded to
+fabulous estates; the Indian prince who had turned the heads of half
+the women in London. Skilful, she paid him the compliment of interest
+and amusement, letting it be understood that he was himself of far
+greater interest to her than the personages who served as pegs to his
+wit. As he paused once, she revived the conversation:--
+
+'There is a man I have never seen before; that tall, dark man. And the
+handsome woman with him--she must be his wife.'
+
+'Why must she be his wife?' he asked, amused.
+
+'Because I am sure she is the type of woman he would marry, stately and
+correct; am I not right?'
+
+'You are quite right; she is his wife. He has been and still is a
+very successful man; an Under-Secretary at thirty-five, and in the
+Cabinet before he was forty. Many people think that he will be the next
+Viceroy.'
+
+At that moment the man on the stairs looked up, and his eyes met those
+of the woman leaning on the balustrade above.
+
+'What a wonderful face!' she exclaimed, startled, to her companion.
+'Wonderful--but he looks as though he had learnt all the sorrow of the
+world.--He looks--what shall I say?--so weary.'
+
+'Then he has no business to,' he answered with a smile. 'He has
+everything man can wish for: power, wealth, and, as you can see, an
+admirable wife. As usual, however, your perception is unerring: he's
+the most cynical fellow I ever came across. He believes in nothing--and
+is incidentally the only real philanthropist I know. His name is
+perfectly familiar to you. It is Davenant.'
+
+'Oh,' she said, carried away by her interest, 'is that Julian Davenant?
+Of course every one has heard of him. Stay,' she added, searching in
+her memory, 'wasn't there some extraordinary story about him as a young
+man? some crazy adventure he engaged in? I don't remember exactly....'
+
+The man at her side began to laugh.
+
+'There was indeed,' he replied; 'do you remember an absurd tiny
+republic named Herakleion, which has since been absorbed by Greece?'
+
+'Herakleion?' she murmured. 'Why, I have been there in a yacht, I
+believe; a little Greek port; but I didn't know it had ever been an
+independent republic?'
+
+'Dear me, yes,' he said, 'it was independent for about a hundred years,
+and Julian Davenant as a young man was concerned in some preposterous
+revolution in those parts; all his money comes, you know, from his
+vine-growing estates out there. I am a little vague myself as to what
+actually happened. He was very young at the time, not much more than a
+boy.'
+
+'How romantic,' said the woman absently, as she watched Julian Davenant
+shaking hands with his hostess.
+
+'Very romantic, but we all start by being romantic until we have
+outgrown it, and any way, don't you think we are going, you and I,
+rather too much out of our way this evening to look for romance?' said
+the man, leaning confidentially a little nearer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But these two people have nothing to do with the story.
+
+
+
+
+PART I--JULIAN
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+On Sunday, after the races were over, the diplomatic, indigenous, and
+cosmopolitan society of Herakleion, by virtue of a custom they never
+sought to dispute, streamed through the turnstiles of the race-course
+to regain their carriages and to drive for an hour in the ilex avenue
+consecrated to that purpose outside the suburbs of the town. Like the
+angels on Jacob's ladder, the carriages went up one side and down the
+other, at a slow walk, the procession invariably headed by the barouche
+of the French Legation, containing M. Lafarge, chief of the mission,
+his beard spread fan-like over his frock-coat, but so disposed as to
+reveal the rosette in his button-hole, peeping with a coy red eye at
+the passing world; Madame Lafarge, sitting erect and bowing stiffly
+from her unassailable position as dictator to social Herakleion; and,
+on the _strapontin_, Julie Lafarge, repressed, sallow-faced daughter
+of the emissaries of France. Streaming after the barouche came mere
+humanity, some in victorias, some in open cabs, all going at a walk,
+and down the centre rode the young men of the place, and down the
+centre Alexander Christopoulos, who dared all and to whom all was
+forgiven, drove his light buggy and American trotter at a rattling pace
+and in a cloud of dust.
+
+The diplomatic carriages were distinguished by the presence of a
+chasseur on the box, though none so gorgeous as the huge scarlet-coated
+chasseur of the French Legation. It was commonly said that the Danish
+Minister and his wife, who were poor, denied themselves food in order
+to maintain their carriage for the Sunday drive. The rich Greeks, on
+the other hand, from generation to generation, inherited the family
+brake, which was habitually driven by the head of the clan on the box,
+his wife beside him, and his sons and unmarried daughters sitting two
+by two, on the six remaining seats behind. There had been a rush of
+scandal when Alexander Christopoulos had appeared for the first time
+alone in his buggy, his seat in the family brake conspicuously empty.
+There remained, however, his four sisters, the Virgins of Herakleion,
+whose ages ranged from thirty-five to forty, and whose batteries were
+unfailingly directed against the latest arrival. The fifth sister had
+married a banker in Frankfort, and was not often mentioned. There were,
+besides the brakes of the rich Greeks, the wagonettes of the English
+Davenants, who always had English coachmen, and frequently absented
+themselves from the Sunday drive to remind Herakleion that, although
+resident, they were neither diplomatic, indigenous, nor cosmopolitan,
+but unalterably English. They were too numerous and too influential
+to be disregarded, but when the name of Davenant was mentioned in
+their absence, a murmur was certain to make itself heard, discreet,
+unvindictive, but none the less remorseless, 'Ah yes, the English
+Levantines.'
+
+Sunshades were lowered in the ilex avenue, for the shadows of the
+ancient trees fell cool and heavy across the white dust. Through the
+ilexes, the sea glimmered on a lower level, washing idly on the shore;
+vainly blue, for Herakleion had no eyes for the sea. The sea was always
+there, always blue, just as Mount Mylassa was always there, behind the
+town, monotonous and immovable. The sea was made for the transport of
+merchandise and to provide man with fish. No one had ever discovered a
+purpose in Mount Mylassa.
+
+When the French barouche had reached the end of the avenue, it turned
+gravely in a wide circle and took its place at the head of the
+descending carriages. When it had reached its starting-point, the
+entrance to the avenue, it detached itself from the procession and
+continued on its way towards the town. The procession did not follow
+it. Another turn up and down the avenue remained for the procession,
+and the laughter became perceptibly brighter, the smiles of greeting
+more cordial, with the removal of Madame Lafarge's influence. It was
+known that the barouche would pass the race-course at its former
+dignified walk, but that, once out of sight, Madame Lafarge would say,
+'_Grigora_, Vassili!' to the chasseur, that the horses would be urged
+into a shambling trot and that the ladies in the carriage would open
+their sunshades to keep off the glare of the sun which beat down from
+heaven and reverberated from the pavements and the white walls of the
+houses as they drove through the streets of the deserted town.
+
+Deserted, for that part of the population which was not within doors
+strolled in the ilex avenue, looking at the carriages. A few lean
+dogs slept on door-steps where the shadow of the portico fell sharply
+dividing the step into a dark and a sunny half. The barouche rolled
+along the wide quay, where here and there the parapet was broken by a
+flight of steps descending to the water; passed the casino, white, with
+palms and cacti growing hideously in the forecourt; rolled across the
+square _platia_, where a group of men stood lounging within the cool
+and cavernous passage-way of the club.
+
+Madame Lafarge stopped the barouche.
+
+A young man detached himself from the group with a slightly bored
+and supercilious expression. He was tall beyond the ordinary run of
+Frenchmen; had dark eyes under meeting eyebrows in an ivory face, and
+an immensely high, flat, white brow, from which the black wavy hair
+grew straight back, smoothed to the polish of a black greyhound. 'Our
+Persian miniature,' the fat American wife of the Danish Minister,
+called him, establishing herself as the wit of Herakleion, where any
+one with sufficient presumption could establish him or herself in any
+chosen rôle. The young man had accepted the title languidly, but had
+taken care that it should not die forgotten.
+
+Madame Lafarge said to him in a tone which conveyed a command rather
+than proffered a favour, 'If you like, we can drive you to the
+Legation.'
+
+She spoke in a booming voice that burst surprisingly out of the
+compression of a generously furnished bust. The young man, accepting
+the offer, seated himself beside Julie on the _strapontin_ opposite his
+chief, who sat silent and majestically bearded. The immense chasseur
+stood stiffly by the side of the carriage, his eyes gazing unblinkingly
+across the _platia_, and the tips of his long drooping whiskers
+obscuring the braid of his scarlet collar. Madame Lafarge addressed
+herself to the group of men,--
+
+'I did not see you at the races?'
+
+Her graciousness did not conceal the rebuke. She continued,--
+
+'I shall hope to welcome you presently at the Legation.'
+
+With a bow worthy of Theodora, whom she had once been told that she
+resembled, she gave the order to drive on. The loaded barouche, with
+the splendid red figure on the box, rolled away across the dazzling
+square. The French Legation stood back behind a grille in the main
+street of the town, built of white stucco like the majority of the
+houses. Inside, it was cool and dark, the Venetian blinds were
+drawn, and the lighted candles in the sconces on the walls reflected
+pleasantly, and with a curious effect of freshening night, in the
+polished floors. Gilt chairs were arranged in circles, and little
+tables stood about, glitteringly laden with tall tumblers and bottles
+of coloured sirops. Madame Lafarge surveyed these things as she had
+surveyed them every Sunday evening since Julie could remember. The
+young man danced attendance in his languid way.
+
+'The chandeliers may be lighted,' her Excellency said to the chasseur,
+who had followed.
+
+The three stood watching while the candles sprang into little spears
+of light under the touch of the taper, Madame Lafarge contrasting
+displeasedly the lemon sallowness of her daughter's complexion with the
+warm magnolia-like pallor of the secretary's face. The contrast caused
+her to speak sharply,--
+
+'Julie, you had better go now and take off your hat.'
+
+When her submissive daughter had gone, she said,--
+
+'Julie is looking ill. The summer does not suit her. But what is to be
+done? I cannot leave Herakleion.'
+
+'Obviously,' murmured the secretary, 'Herakleion would fall all to
+pieces. Your Sunday evenings,' he continued, 'the races ... your
+picnics....'
+
+'Impossible,' she cried with determination. 'One owes a duty to the
+country one represents, and I have always said that, whereas politics
+are the affairs of men, the woman's social obligation is no less
+urgent. It is a great career, Armand, and to such a career one must be
+prepared to sacrifice one's personal convenience.'
+
+'And one's health ... the health of one's children,' he added, looking
+down at his almond nails.
+
+'If need be,' she replied with a sigh, and, fanning herself, repeated,
+'If need be.'
+
+The rooms began to fill. A little middle-aged Greek, his wrinkled
+saffron face curiously emphasised by the beautiful whiteness of his
+hair and moustaches, took his stand near Madame Lafarge, who in
+speaking to him looked down on the top of his head over the broad
+plateau of her bust.
+
+'These cool rooms of yours,' he murmured, as he kissed her hand. 'One
+cannot believe in the heat of the sun outside.'
+
+He made this remark every other Sunday.
+
+Lafarge came up and took the little Greek banker by the arm.
+
+'I hear,' he said, 'that there is fresh trouble in the Islands.'
+
+'We can leave it to the Davenants,' said Christopoulos with an
+unpleasant smile.
+
+'But that is exactly what I have always urged you not to do,' said the
+French Minister, drawing the little Greek into a corner. 'You know the
+proverbial reputation of the English: you do not see them coming, but
+they insinuate themselves until one day you open your eyes to the fact
+that they are there. You will be making a very great mistake, my dear
+friend, if you allow the Davenants to settle disputes in the Islands.
+Have you forgotten that in the last generation a Davenant caused
+himself to be elected President?'
+
+'Considering that they are virtually kings, I do not see that the
+nominal title of President can make a vast difference.'
+
+Lafarge sent his eyes round the room and through the doorway into the
+room beyond; he saw the familiar, daily faces, and returned to the
+charge.
+
+'You are pleased to be sarcastic, I know. Nevertheless allow me to
+offer you my advice. It is not a question of Kingship or Presidency.
+It is a question of a complete break on the part of the Islands. They
+are small, but their strategic value is self-evident. Remember Italy
+has her eye upon them.... The Davenants are democrats, and have always
+preached liberty to the islanders. The Davenant wealth supports them.
+Can you calmly contemplate the existence of an independent archipelago
+a few miles from your shore?'
+
+A dull red crept under the banker's yellow skin, giving him a suffused
+appearance.
+
+'You are very emphatic.'
+
+'The occasion surely warrants emphasis.'
+
+The rooms were by now quite full. Little centres of laughter had formed
+themselves, and were distinguishable. Alexander Christopoulos had once
+boasted that he could, merely by looking round a room and arguing
+from the juxtaposition of conversationalists, give a fairly accurate
+_résumé_ of what every one was saying. He also claimed to tell from the
+expression of the Danish Excellency whether she was or was not arriving
+primed with a new epigram. He was now at the side of the Danish
+Excellency, fat, fair, and foolish, but good-natured, and having a fund
+of veritable humanity which was lacking in most of her colleagues. The
+careful English of Alexander reached his father's ears through the
+babel,--
+
+'The Empress Eugénie set the fashion of wearing _décolleté_ in the
+shape the water in your bath makes round your shoulders....'
+
+Lafarge went on,--
+
+'The Davenants are sly; they keep apart; they mix with us, but they do
+not mingle. They are like oil upon water. Where is William Davenant
+now, do you know?'
+
+'He is just arriving,' said Christopoulos.
+
+Lafarge saw him then, bowing over his hostess's hand, polite, but with
+absent eyes that perpetually strayed from the person he was talking to.
+Behind him came a tall, loose-limbed boy, untidy, graceful; he glanced
+at the various groups, and the women looked at him with interest. A
+single leap might carry him at any moment out of the room in which his
+presence seemed so incongruous.
+
+The tall mirrors on the walls sent back the reflection of the many
+candles, and in them the same spectral company came and went that
+moved and chattered in the rooms.
+
+'At least he is not on the Islands,' said Christopoulos.
+
+'After all,' said Lafarge, with a sudden weariness, 'perhaps I am
+inclined to exaggerate the importance of the Islands. It is difficult
+to keep a true sense of proportion. Herakleion is a little place. One
+forgets that one is not at the centre of the world.'
+
+He could not have tracked his lassitude to its origin, but as his
+eyes rested again on the free, generous limbs of the Davenant boy,
+he felt a slight revolt against the babble, the coloured sirops, and
+the artificially lighted rooms from which the sun was so carefully
+excluded. The yellow skin of little Christopoulos gave him the
+appearance of a plant which has been deprived of light. His snowy hair,
+too, soft and billowy, looked as though it had been deliberately and
+consistently bleached.
+
+He murmured a gentle protest to the Minister's words,--
+
+'Surely not, dear Excellency, surely you do not exaggerate the
+importance of the Islands. We could not, as you say, tolerate the
+existence of an independent archipelago a few miles from our shores. Do
+not allow my sarcasm to lead you into the belief that I underestimate
+either their importance, or the value, the compliment of your interest
+in the politics of our country. The friendship of France....'
+
+His voice died away into suave nothings. The French Minister emerged
+with an effort from his mood of temporary discontent, endeavouring to
+recapture the habitual serenity of his life.
+
+'And you will remember my hint about the Davenants?'
+
+Christopoulos looked again at William Davenant, who, perfectly
+courteous but incorrigibly absent-minded, was still listening to Madame
+Lafarge.
+
+'It is a scandal,' she was saying, resuming her conversation in the
+intervals of interruption occasioned by newly-arriving guests, 'a
+scandal that the Museum should remain without a catalogue....'
+
+'I will remember,' said Christopoulos. 'I will tell Alexander to
+distract that youth's attention; one Davenant the less, you follow me,
+to give us any trouble.'
+
+'Pooh! a schoolboy,' interjected the Minister.
+
+Christopoulos pursed his lips and moved his snowy head portentously up
+and down.
+
+'A schoolboy, but nevertheless he probably shares the enthusiasms
+of his age. The Islands are sufficiently romantic to appeal to his
+imagination. Remember, his grandfather ruled there for a year.'
+
+'His grandfather? _un farceur!_' said Lafarge.
+
+Christopoulos assented, and the two men, smiling tolerantly, continued
+to look across at the unconscious boy though their minds were already
+occupied by other things. Madame Lafarge, catching sight of them,
+was annoyed by her husband's aloofness from the social aspect of her
+weekly reception. It pleased her--in fact, she exacted--that a certain
+political atmosphere should pervade any gathering in her drawing-rooms,
+but at the same time she resented a political interview which deprived,
+at once, her guests of a host and herself of a _cavalier servente_. She
+accordingly stared at Christopoulos while continuing her conversation
+with William Davenant, until the little Greek became aware of her gaze,
+and crossed the room obediently to the unspoken summons.
+
+William Davenant moved away in relief; he knew his duty to Madame
+Lafarge, but performed it wearily and without pleasure. It was now
+over for a month, he thought, deciding that he would not be expected
+to attend the three succeeding Sundays. He paused beside his son, who
+had been captured by two of the sisters Christopoulos and who, with
+two Russian secretaries, was being forced to join in a round game.
+The sisters gave little shrieks and peals of laughter; it was their
+idea of merriment. They sat one on each side of Julian Davenant, on a
+small gilt sofa covered with imitation tapestry. Near by, listening
+to the game with a gentle and languorous smile upon his lips, stood
+the Persian Minister, who understood very little French, his fine
+Oriental figure buttoned into the traditional frock-coat, and a black
+lamb's-wool fez upon his head. He was not very popular in Herakleion;
+he did not know enough French to amuse the women, so, as at present, he
+silently haunted the circles of the younger generation, with mingled
+humility and dignity.
+
+William Davenant paused there for a moment, met his son's eyes with
+a gleam of sympathy, then passed on to pay his monthly duty to
+influence and fashion. The Danish Excellency whispered behind her fan
+to Alexander Christopoulos as he passed, and the young man screwed in
+his eyeglass to examine the retreating back of the Englishman. The
+red-coated chasseur came round, gravely offering sandwiches on a tray.
+
+'Uneatable,' said Alexander Christopoulos, taking one and hiding it
+beneath his chair.
+
+The courage of the young man! the insolence!
+
+'Julie will see you,' giggled the Danish Excellency.
+
+'And what if she does?' he retorted.
+
+'You have no respect, no veneration,' she chided him.
+
+'For _maman_ Lafarge? _la bonne bourgeoise!_' he exclaimed, but not
+very loudly.
+
+'Alexander!' she said, but her tone said, 'I adore you.'
+
+'One must be something,' the young Christopoulos had once told
+himself; 'I will be insolent and contemptuous; I will impose myself
+upon Herakleion; my surroundings shall accept me with admiration and
+without protest.'
+
+He consequently went to Oxford, affected to speak Greek with
+difficulty, interlarded his English with American slang, instituted a
+polo club, and drove an American trotter. He was entirely successful.
+Unlike many a greater man, he had achieved his ambition. He knew,
+moreover, that Madame Lafarge would give him her daughter for the
+asking.
+
+'Shall I make Julie sing?' he said suddenly to the Danish Excellency,
+searching among the moving groups for the victim of this classic joke
+of Herakleion.
+
+'Alexander, you are too cruel,' she murmured.
+
+He was flattered; he felt himself an irresistible autocrat and breaker
+of hearts. He tolerated the Danish Excellency, as he had often said in
+the club, because she had no other thought than of him. She, on the
+other hand, boasted in her fat, good-humoured way to her intimates,--
+
+'I may be a fool, but no woman is completely a fool who has realised
+the depths of man's vanity.'
+
+Julie Lafarge, who was always given to understand that one day she
+would marry the insolent Alexander, was too efficiently repressed to
+be jealous of the Danish Excellency. Under the mischievous influence
+of her friend, Eve Davenant, she would occasionally make an attempt to
+attract the young man; a pitiable, grotesque attempt, prompted by the
+desire to compel his homage, to hear herself called beautiful--which
+she was not. So far she did not delude herself that she had succeeded,
+but she did delude herself that it gave him pleasure to hear her
+sing. She stood now beside a little table, dispensing sirops in tall
+tumblers, very sallow in her white muslin, with a locket on a short
+gold chain hanging between the bones of her neck. Her very thin
+brown arms, which were covered with small black hairs, protruded
+ungracefully from the short sleeves of her dress.
+
+Alexander presented himself before her; she had seen him coming in one
+of the mirrors on the walls. Madame Lafarge cherished an affection for
+these mirrors, because thanks to them her drawing-rooms always appeared
+twice as crowded as they really were.
+
+Alexander uttered his request in a tone at once beseeching and
+compelling; she thought him irresistible. Nevertheless, she protested:
+there were too many people present, her singing would interrupt all
+conversation, her mother would be annoyed. But those standing near by
+seconded Alexander, and Madame Lafarge herself bore down majestically
+upon her daughter, so that all protest was at an end.
+
+Julie stood beside the open piano with her hands loosely folded in
+a rehearsed and approved attitude while the room disposed itself to
+listen, and Alexander, who was to accompany her, let his fingers roam
+negligently over the keyboard. Chairs were turned to face the piano,
+people drifted in from the farther drawing-room, young men leaned in
+the doorways and against the walls. Lafarge folded his arms across
+his chest, freeing his imprisoned beard by an upward movement of his
+chin, and smiled encouragingly and benignly at his daughter. Speech
+dropped into whispers, whispers into silence. Alexander struck a few
+preliminary chords. Julie sang; she sang, quite execrably, romantic
+German music, and out of the roomful of people only three, herself, her
+father, and her mother, thought that she sang well. Despite this fact
+she was loudly applauded, congratulated, and pressed for more.
+
+Julian Davenant, taking advantage of the diversion to escape from the
+sisters Christopoulos, slipped away to one of the window recesses where
+he could partly conceal himself behind the stiff, brocaded curtain.
+Horizontal strings of sunlight barred the Venetian blind, and by
+peeping between its joints he could see the tops of the palms in the
+Legation forecourt, the iron grille which gave on to the main street,
+and a victoria standing near the grille, in the shade, the horse
+covered over with a flimsy, dust-coloured sheet, and the driver asleep
+inside the carriage, a fly-whisk drooping limply in his hand. He could
+hear the shrill squeaking of the tram as it came round the corner, and
+the clang of its bell. He knew that the sea lay blue beyond the white
+town, and that, out in the sea, lay the Islands, where the little
+grapes were spread, drying into currants, in the sun. He returned to
+the darkened, candle-lit room, where Julie Lafarge was singing 'Im
+wunderschönen Monat Mai.'
+
+Looking across the room to the door which opened on to the landing
+at the top of the stairs, he saw a little stir of arrival, which
+was suppressed in order to avoid any interruption to the music. He
+distinguished the new-comer, a short, broad, middle-aged woman,
+out of breath after mounting the stairs, curiously draped in soft
+copper-coloured garments, with gold bangles on her bare arms, and
+a wreath of gold leaves round her dark head. He knew this woman, a
+singer. He neither liked nor disliked her, but had always thought of
+her as possessing a strangely classical quality, all the stranger
+because of her squat, almost grotesque ugliness; although not a dwarf,
+her great breadth gave her the appearance of one; but at the same time
+she was for him the embodiment of the wealth of the country, a kind
+of Demeter of the Islands, though he thought of Demeter as having
+corn-coloured hair, like the crops over which she presided, and this
+woman had blue-black hair, like the purple of the grapes that grew on
+the Islands. He had often heard her sing, and hoped now that she was
+arriving in her professional capacity, which seemed probable, both
+from her dress, and from the unlikelihood that she, a singer and a
+woman of the native people, would enter Madame Lafarge's house as a
+guest, renowned though she was, and fêted, in the capitals of Europe.
+He saw Lafarge tiptoe out to receive her, saw Madame Lafarge follow,
+and noted the faintly patronising manner of the Minister's wife in
+shaking hands with the artist.
+
+Applause broke out as Julie finished her song. The Greek singer
+was brought forward into the room amid a general movement and
+redistribution of groups. Alexander Christopoulos relinquished his
+place at the piano, and joined the Davenant boy by the window. He
+appeared bored and languid.
+
+'It is really painful ... as well listen to a macaw singing,' he said.
+'You are not musical, are you, Julian? You can scarcely imagine what I
+endured. Have you heard this woman, Kato?'
+
+Julian said that he had.
+
+'Quite uneducated,' Christopoulos said loftily. 'Any woman in the
+fields sings as well. It was new to Paris, and Paris raved. You and I,
+my dear Julian, have heard the same thing a hundred times. Shall we
+escape?'
+
+'I must wait for my father,' said Julian, who detested his present
+companion; 'he and I are going to dine with my uncle.'
+
+'So am I,' Christopoulos answered, and, leaning over to the English
+boy, he began to speak in a confidential voice.
+
+'You know, my dear Julian, in this society of ours your father is not
+trusted. But, after all, what is this society? _un tas de rastas._
+Do you think I shall remain here long? not I. _Je me fiche des
+Balcans._ And you? Are you going to bury yourself on those Islands of
+yours, growing grapes, ripening olives? What? That satisfied the old
+generations. What have I to do with a banking house in Herakleion, you
+with a few vineyards near the coast? I shall marry, and spend the rest
+of my life in Paris.'
+
+'You're ambitious to-day,' Julian said mildly.
+
+'Ambitious! shall I tell you why? Yesterday was my twenty-fifth
+birthday. I've done with Herakleion....'
+
+'Conquered it, you mean,' said Julian, 'squeezed it dry.'
+
+The other glanced at him suspiciously.
+
+'Are you laughing at me? Confound your quiet manner, Julian, I believe
+my family is right to mistrust your family. Very well, then: conquered
+it. Believe me, it isn't worth conquering. Don't waste your youth on
+your vineyards, but come with me. Let the Islands go. They are always
+in trouble, and the trouble is getting more acute. They are untidy
+specks on the map. Don't you hear the call of Paris and the world?'
+
+Julian, looking at him, and seeing the laughable intrigue, was
+mercifully saved from replying, for at that moment Madame Kato began
+to sing. She sang without accompaniment, songs of the people, in a
+curiously guttural voice with an occasionally nasal note, songs no
+different from those sung in the streets or, as Christopoulos had
+said, in the fields, different only in that, to this peasant music,
+half melancholy, half emotional, its cadence born of physical labour,
+she brought the genius of a great artist. As she stood there, singing,
+Julian reflected that her song emphasised the something classical,
+something massive, something monumental, about her, which overshadowed
+what might have been slightly grotesque in her appearance. She was,
+indeed, a Demeter of the vineyards. She should have stood singing in
+the sun, not beneath the pale mockery of the candles.
+
+'Entirely uneducated,' Christopoulos said again, shifting his
+shoulders as he leaned against the wall. 'That is why Paris liked her:
+as a contrast. She was clever enough to know that. Contrasts are always
+artistically effective.'
+
+He went off, pleased, to repeat his facile epigram to the Danish
+Excellency. Madame Lafarge was looking round to see whether the
+audience had approved of the innovation. The audience was waiting
+to hear the expression of an opinion which it might safely follow.
+Presently the word, 'Uneducated' was on every lip. Julian remained at
+the window, chained there by his natural reserve and shyness; he looked
+up at the lighted chandeliers, and down at their reflection in the
+floors; he saw the faces of people turned towards him, and the back
+of their heads in the mirrors; he saw Armand, the French secretary,
+with the face of a Persian prince, offering red sirop to Madame Kato.
+He wished to go and speak to her, but his feet would not carry him
+forward. He felt himself apart from the talk and the easy laughter.
+
+Presently Mlle Lafarge, seeing him there alone, came to him with her
+awkward and rather touching grace as a hostess.
+
+'You know, I suppose,' she said to him, 'that Madame Kato is a friend
+of Eve's? Will you not come and speak to her?'
+
+Released, he came. The singer was drinking her red sirop by the piano.
+The Persian Minister in the black fez was standing near, smiling gently
+at her with his usual mournful smile.
+
+'You will not remember me, Julian Davenant,' the boy said in a low, shy
+voice. He spoke in Greek involuntarily, feeling that French would be an
+outrage in the presence of this so splendidly Hellenic woman. Armand
+had moved away, and they stood isolated, caressed by the vague smile of
+the Persian Minister.
+
+Kato set down her glass of red sirop on the top of the piano. She
+leaned against the piano talking to the English boy, her arms akimbo,
+as a peasant woman might lean in the doorway of her house gossiping in
+the cool of the evening, her little eyes keen and eager. The muscles
+of her arms and of her magnificent neck curved generously beneath her
+copper draperies, mocking the flimsy substance, and crying out for the
+labour of the vineyards. Her speech was tinged with the faint accent of
+the Islands, soft and slurring. It was more familiar to Julian Davenant
+than the harsher Greek of the town, for it was the speech of the women
+who had brought him up as a child, women of the Islands, his nurses in
+his father's big house in the _platia_ of Herakleion. It murmured to
+him now in the rich voice of the singer beneath the chandelier.
+
+'Eve; I have not seen her yet. You must tell her that I have returned
+and that she must come to my concert on Wednesday. Tell her that I will
+sing one song for her, but that all the other songs must be for my
+audience. I have brought back a new repertoire from Munich, which will
+please Herakleion better, I hope, than the common music it despises.'
+
+She laughed a little.
+
+'It has taken me thirty years to discover that mankind at large
+despises the art of its own country. Only the exotic catches the ear of
+fashion. But Eve has told me that you do not care for music?'
+
+'I like your music,' he said.
+
+'I will tell you why: because you are musically uneducated.'
+
+He looked at her; she was smiling. He wondered whether she had
+overheard a whisper in the humming room.
+
+'I speak without sarcasm,' she added; 'I envy you your early ignorance.
+In fact, I believe I have uttered a paradox, and that the words
+education and music are incompatible. Music is the emotional art, and
+where education steps in at the door emotion flies out at the window.
+We should keep education for literature, painting, architecture,
+and sculpture. Music is the medium to which we turn when these more
+intellectual mediums fail us.'
+
+Julian listened with only half his brain. This peasant, this artist,
+spoke to him with the superficial ease of drawing-rooms; she employed
+words that matched ill with her appearance and with the accent of
+her speech. The native songs were right upon her lips, as the names
+of architecture and sculpture were wrong. He was offended in his
+sensitiveness. Demeter in analysis of the arts!
+
+She was watching him.
+
+'Ah, my young friend,' she said, 'you do not understand. I spoke to you
+as the cousin of Eve, who is a child, but who always understands. She
+is purely sentient, emotional.'
+
+He protested,--
+
+'I have always thought of Eve as exceptionally sophisticated.'
+
+Kato said,--
+
+'You are right. We are both right. Eve is childlike in many ways, but
+she is also wise beyond her years. She will grow, believe me, into a
+woman of exceptional attraction, and to such women existence is packed
+with danger. It is one of Providence's rare pieces of justice that they
+should be provided with a natural weapon of self-defence. To a lion
+his claws,' she said, smiling, 'and to the womanly woman the gift of
+penetration. Tell me, are you fond of Eve?'
+
+Julian was surprised. He replied, naïf again and like a schoolboy,--
+
+'She's my cousin. I haven't thought much about her. She's only a
+child. I haven't seen her yet either. I arrived from England this
+morning.'
+
+They were more than ever isolated from the rest of the room. Madame
+Lafarge, talking to Don Rodrigo Valdez, the Spanish Minister, who had
+a birdlike head above his immensely high white collar, glanced now and
+then resentfully at the singer, but otherwise the room was indifferent.
+The sunlight between the cracks of the Venetian blinds had grown
+fainter, and the many candles were coming into their own. A few people
+had already taken their leave. An excited group of men had gathered
+round little Christopoulos, and the words 'local politics' shrieked
+from every gesture.
+
+'I shall not be expected to sing again,' said Kato with a slight return
+to her ironical manner. 'Will you not come with Eve to my concert on
+Wednesday? Or, better, will you come to my house on Wednesday evening
+after the concert? I shall be alone, and I should like to talk to you.'
+
+'To me?' broke from him, independently of his will.
+
+'Remember,' she said, 'I am from the Islands. That is my country, and
+when my country is in trouble I am not indifferent. You are very young,
+Mr Davenant, and you are not very often in Herakleion, but your future,
+when you have done with Oxford and with England'--she made a large
+gesture--'lies in the Islands. You will hear a great deal about them; a
+little of this I should like you to hear from me. Will you come?'
+
+The patriot beneath the artist! He would come, flattered, important;
+courted, at his nineteen years, by a singer of European reputation.
+Popularity was to him a new experience. He expanded beneath its warmth.
+
+'I will come to the concert first with Eve.'
+
+William Davenant, in search of his son, and light-hearted in his
+relief at the end of the monthly duty, was bowing to Madame Kato, whom
+he knew both as a singer and as a figure of some importance in the
+troubled politics of the tiny State. They had, in their lives, spent
+many an hour in confabulation, when his absent-minded manner left
+the man, and her acquired polish the woman. He deferred to her as a
+controlling agent in practical affairs, spoke of her to his brother
+with admiration.
+
+'A remarkable woman, Robert, a true patriot; sexless, I believe, so far
+as her patriotism lies. Malteios, you say? well, I know; but, believe
+me, she uses him merely as a means to her end. Not a sexless means?
+Damn it, one picks up what weapons come to one's hand. She hasn't a
+thought for him, only for her wretched country. She is a force, I tell
+you, to be reckoned with. Forget her sex! Surely that is easy, with
+a woman who looks like a toad. You make the mistake of ignoring the
+people when it is with the people that you have to deal. Hear them
+speak about her: she is an inspiration, a local Joan of Arc. She works
+for them in Paris, in Berlin, and in London; she uses her sex, for them
+and for them alone. All her life is dedicated to them. She gives them
+her voice, and her genius.'
+
+Madame Kato did not know that he said these things about her behind
+her back. Had she known, she would have been surprised neither at
+the opinions he expressed nor at the perception which enabled him to
+express them, for she had seen in him a shrewd, deliberate intellect
+that spoke little, listened gravely, and settled soberly down at length
+upon a much tested and corroborated opinion. Madame Lafarge, and the
+women to whom he paid his courtly, rather pompous duty in public,
+thought him dull and heavy, a true Englishman. The men mistrusted him
+in company with his brother Robert, silence, in the South, breeding
+mistrust as does volubility in the North.
+
+The rooms were emptier now, and the candles, burning lower, showed long
+icicles of wax that overflowed on to the glass of the chandeliers. The
+tall tumblers had been set down, here and there, containing the dregs
+of the coloured sirops. Madame Lafarge looked hot and weary, drained
+of her early Sunday energy, and listening absently to the parting
+compliments of Christopoulos. From the other room, however, still came
+the laughter of the Christopoulos sisters, who were winding up their
+round game.
+
+'Come, Julian,' said William Davenant, after he had spoken and made his
+farewells to Madame Kato.
+
+Together they went down the stairs and out into the forecourt, where
+the hotter air of the day greeted them after the coolness of the house,
+though the heat was no longer that of the sun, but the closer, less
+glaring heat of the atmosphere absorbed during the grilling hours of
+the afternoon. The splendid chasseur handed them their hats, and they
+left the Legation and walked slowly down the crowded main street of the
+town.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The town house of the Davenants stood in the _platia_, at right angles
+to the club. On the death of old Mr Davenant--'President Davenant,' as
+he was nicknamed--the town and the country properties had been divided
+between the two inheriting brothers; Herakleion said that the brothers
+had drawn lots for the country house, but in point of fact the matter
+had been settled by amicable arrangement. William Davenant, the elder
+of the brothers, widowed, with an only son away for three-quarters of
+the year at school in England, was more conveniently installed in the
+town, within five minutes reach of the central office, than Robert,
+who, with a wife and a little girl, preferred the distance of his
+country house and big garden. The two establishments, as time went on,
+became practically interchangeable.
+
+The rue Royale--Herakleion was so cosmopolitan as to give to its
+principal thoroughfare a French name--was at this hour crowded with
+the population that, imprisoned all day behind closed shutters, sought
+in the evening what freshness it could find in the cobbled streets
+between the stucco houses. The street life of the town began between
+five and six, and the Davenants, father and son, were jostled as they
+walked slowly along the pavements, picking their way amongst the small
+green tables set outside the numerous cafés. At these tables sat the
+heterogenous elements that composed the summer population of the place,
+men of every nationality: old gamblers too disreputable for Monte
+Carlo; young Levantines, natives, drinking absinthe; Turks in their red
+fezzes; a few rakish South Americans. The trams screamed discordantly
+in their iron grooves, and the bells of the cinema tinkled unceasingly.
+Between the tramlines and the kerb dawdled the hired victorias, few
+empty at this time of day, but crowded with families of Levantines,
+the men in straw hats, the women for the most part in hot black, very
+stout, and constantly fanning their heavily powdered faces. Now and
+then a chasseur from some diplomatic house passed rapidly in a flaming
+livery.
+
+Mr Davenant talked to his son as they made their way along.
+
+'How terrible those parties are. I often wish I could dissociate myself
+altogether from that life, and God knows that I go merely to hear what
+people are saying. They know it, and of course they will never forgive
+me. Julian, in order to conciliate Herakleion, you will have to marry a
+Greek.'
+
+'Alexander Christopoulos attacked me to-day,' Julian said. 'Wanted me
+to go to Paris with him and see the world.'
+
+He did not note in his own mind that he refrained from saying that
+Madame Kato had also, so to speak, attacked him on the dangerous
+subject of the Islands.
+
+They turned now, having reached the end of the rue Royale, into the
+_platia_, where the cavernous archway of the club stained the white
+front of the houses with a mouth of black. The houses of the _platia_
+were large, the hereditary residences of the local Greek families. The
+Christopoulos house stood next to the club, and next to that was the
+house of the Premier, His Excellency Platon Malteios, and next to that
+the Italian Consulate, with the arms of Italy on a painted hatchment
+over the door. The centre of the square was empty, cobbled in an
+elaborate pattern which gave the effect of a tessellated pavement; on
+the fourth side of the square were no houses, for here lay the wide
+quay which stretched right along above the sea from one end of the
+town to the other.
+
+The Davenant house faced the sea, and from the balcony of his bedroom
+on the second floor Julian could see the Islands, yellow with little
+white houses on them; in the absolute stillness and limpidity of the
+air he could count the windows on Aphros, the biggest island, and the
+terraces on the slope of the hills. The first time he had arrived from
+school in England he had run up to his bedroom, out on to the balcony,
+to look across the _platia_ with its many gaudily striped sunblinds,
+at the blue sea and the little yellow stains a few miles out from the
+shore.
+
+At the door of the Davenant house stood two horses ready saddled in
+the charge of the door-keeper, fat Aristotle, an islander, who wore
+the short bolero and pleated fustanelle, like a kilt, of his country.
+The door-keepers of the other houses had gathered round him, but as Mr
+Davenant came up they separated respectfully and melted away to their
+individual charges.
+
+The way lay along the quays and down the now abandoned ilex avenue. The
+horses' hoofs padded softly in the thick dust. The road gleamed palely
+beneath the thick shadows of the trees, and the water, seen between
+the ancient trunks, was almost purple. The sun was gone, and only the
+last bars of the sunset lingered in the sky. At the tip of the pier of
+Herakleion twinkled already the single light of phosphorescent green
+that daily, at sunset, shone out, to reflect irregularly in the water.
+
+They passed out of the avenue into the open country, the road still
+skirting the sea on their left, while on their right lay the strip of
+flat country crowded in between Mount Mylassa and the sea, carefully
+cultivated by the labourers of the Davenants, where the grapes hung
+on the festooned branches looped from pole to pole. William Davenant
+observed them critically, thinking to himself, 'A good harvest.'
+Julian Davenant, fresh from an English county, saw as with a new eye
+their beauty and their luxuriance. He rode loosely in the saddle, his
+long legs dangling, indisputably English, though born in one of the
+big painted rooms overlooking the _platia_ of Herakleion, and reared
+in the country until the age of ten. He had always heard the vintage
+discussed since he could remember. He knew that his family for three
+generations had been the wealthiest in the little state, wealthier
+than the Greek banking-houses, and he knew that no move of the local
+politics was entirely free from the influence of his relations. His
+grandfather, indeed, having been refused a concession he wanted from
+the government, had roused his Islands to a declaration of independence
+under his own presidency--a state of affairs which, preposterous as it
+was, had profoundly alarmed the motley band that made up the Cabinet in
+Herakleion. What had been done once, could be repeated.... Granted his
+concession, Julian's grandfather had peaceably laid down the dignity of
+his new office, but who could say that his sons might not repeat the
+experiment?
+
+These things had been always in the boy's scheme of life. He had not
+pondered them very deeply. He supposed that one day he would inherit
+his father's share in the concern, and would become one of the heads of
+the immense family which had spread like water over various districts
+of the Mediterranean coasts. Besides the Davenants of Herakleion,
+there were Davenants at Smyrna, Davenants at Salonica, Davenants at
+Constantinople. Colonies of Davenants. It was said that the Levant
+numbered about sixty families of Davenants. Julian was not acquainted
+with them all. He did not even know in what degree of relationship they
+stood to him.
+
+Every time that he passed through London on his way to school, or,
+now, to Oxford, he was expected to visit his great-uncle, Sir Henry,
+who lived in an immense house in Belgrave Square, and had a business
+room downstairs where Julian was interviewed before luncheon. In this
+room hung framed plans of the various Davenant estates, and Julian, as
+he stood waiting for Sir Henry, would study the plan of Herakleion,
+tracing with his finger the line of the quays, the indent of the
+_platia_, the green of the race-course, the square which indicated the
+country house; in a corner of this plan were the Islands, drawn each in
+separate detail. He became absorbed, and did not notice the entrance of
+Sir Henry till the old man's hand fell on his shoulder.
+
+'Ha! Looking at the plan, are you? Familiar to you, what? So it is
+familiar to me, my boy. Never been there, you know. Yet I know it. I
+know my way about. Know it as though I had seen it.'
+
+He didn't really know it, Julian thought--he didn't feel the sun
+hot on his hands, or see the dazzling, flapping sunblinds, or the
+advertisements written up in Greek characters in the streets.
+
+Sir Henry went on with his sermon.
+
+'You don't belong there, boy; don't you ever forget that. You belong
+here. You're English. Bend the riches of that country to your own
+purpose, that's all right, but don't identify yourself with it. Impose
+yourself. Make 'em adopt your methods. That's the strength of English
+colonisation.'
+
+The old man, who was gouty, and leaned his hands on the top of a stick,
+clapped the back of one hand with the palm of the other and blew out
+his lips, looking at his great-nephew.
+
+'Yes, yes, remember that. Impose yourself. On my soul, you're a
+well-grown boy. What are you? nineteen? Great overgrown colt. Get your
+hair cut. Foreign ways; don't approve of that. Big hands you've got;
+broad shoulders. Loosely put together. Hope you're not slack. Can you
+ride?'
+
+'I ride all day out there,' said Julian softly, a little bewildered.
+
+'Well, well. Come to luncheon. Keep a head on your shoulders. Your
+grandfather lost his once; very foolish man. Wonder he didn't lose
+it altogether. President indeed! stuff and nonsense. Not practical,
+sir, not practical.' Sir Henry blew very hard. 'Let's have no such
+rubbish from you, boy. What'll you drink? Here, I'll give you the best:
+Herakleion, 1895. Best year we ever had. Hope you appreciate good wine;
+you're a wine-merchant, you know.'
+
+He cackled loudly at his joke. Julian drank the wine that had ripened
+on the slopes of Mount Mylassa, or possibly on the Islands, and wished
+that the old man had not so blatantly called him a wine-merchant. He
+liked Sir Henry, although after leaving him he always had the sensation
+of having been buffeted by spasmodic gusts of wind.
+
+He was thinking about Sir Henry now as he rode along, and pitying
+the old man to whom those swags of fruit meant only a dusty bottle,
+a red or a blue seal, and a date stamped in gold numerals on a black
+label. The light was extraordinarily tender, and the air seemed almost
+tangible with the heavy, honeyed warmth that hung over the road. Julian
+took off his gray felt hat and hung it on the high peak of his saddle.
+
+They passed through a little village, which was no more than a score of
+tumbledown houses sown carelessly on each side of the road; here, as
+in the rue Royale, the peasants sat drinking at round tables outside
+the café to the harsh music of a gramophone, with applause and noisy
+laughter. Near by, half a dozen men were playing at bowls. When they
+saw Mr Davenant, they came forward in a body and laid eager hands on
+the neck of his horse. He reined up.
+
+Julian heard the tumult of words: some one had been arrested, it was
+Vassili's brother. Vassili, he knew, was the big chasseur at the French
+Legation. He heard his father soothing, promising he would look into
+the matter; he would, if need be, see the Premier on the morrow. A
+woman flung herself out of the café and clasped Julian by the knee.
+They had taken her lover. Would he, Julian, who was young, be merciful?
+Would he urge his father's interference? He promised also what was
+required of him, feeling a strange thrill of emotion and excitement.
+Ten days ago he had been at Oxford, and here, to-day, Kato had spoken
+to him as to a grown man, and here in the dusk a sobbing woman was
+clinging about his knee. This was a place in which anything, fantastic
+or preposterous, might come to pass.
+
+As they rode on, side by side, his father spoke, thinking aloud. An
+absent-minded man, he gave his confidence solely in this, so to speak,
+unintentional manner. Long periods, extending sometimes over months,
+during which his mind lay fallow, had as their upshot an outbreak of
+this audible self-communion. Julian had inherited the trait; his mind
+progressed, not regularly, but by alternate stagnation and a forward
+bound.
+
+'The mistake that we have made lies in the importation of whole
+families of islanders to the mainland. The Islands have always
+considered themselves as a thing apart, as, indeed, historically,
+they always were. A hundred years is not sufficient to make them
+an intrinsic part of the State of Herakleion. I cannot wonder that
+the authorities here dislike us. We have introduced a discontented
+population from the Islands to spread sedition among the hitherto
+contented population of the mainland. If we were wise, we should ship
+the whole lot back to the Islands they came from. Now, a man is
+arrested on the Islands by the authorities, and what happens? He is the
+brother of Vassili, an islander living in Herakleion. Vassili spreads
+the news, it flies up and down the town, and out into the country. It
+has greeted us out here already. In every café of the town at this
+moment the islanders are gathered together, muttering; some will get
+drunk, perhaps, and the municipal police will intervene; from a drunken
+row the affair will become political; some one will raise the cry of
+"Liberty!", heads will be broken, and to-morrow a score of islanders
+will be in jail. They will attribute their imprisonment to the general
+hostility to their nationality, rather than to the insignificant brawl.
+Vassili will come to me in Herakleion to-morrow. Will I exercise my
+influence with Malteios to get his brother released? I shall go,
+perhaps, to Malteios, who will listen to me suavely, evasively.... It
+has all happened a hundred times before. I say, we ought to ship the
+whole lot back to where they came from.'
+
+'I suppose they are really treated with unfairness?' Julian said, more
+speculation than interest in his tone.
+
+'I suppose a great many people would think so. The authorities are
+certainly severe, but they are constantly provoked. And, you know, your
+uncle and I make it up to the islanders in a number of private ways.
+Ninety per cent. of the men on the Islands are employed by us, and it
+pays us to keep them devoted to us by more material bonds than mere
+sentiment; also it alleviates their discontent, and so obviates much
+friction with Herakleion.'
+
+'But of course,' said Julian quickly, 'you don't allow Malteios to
+suspect this?'
+
+'My dear boy! what do you suppose? Malteios is President of Herakleion.
+Of course, we don't mention such things. But he knows it all very well,
+and winks at it--perforce. Our understanding with Malteios is entirely
+satisfactory, entirely. He is on very wholesome terms of friendly
+respect to us.'
+
+Julian rarely pronounced himself; he did so now.
+
+'If I were an islander--that is, one of a subject race--I don't think
+I should be very well content to forgo my liberty in exchange for
+underhand compensation from an employer whose tactics it suited to
+conciliate my natural dissatisfaction.'
+
+'What a ridiculous phrase. And what ridiculous sentiments you
+occasionally give vent to. No, no, the present arrangement is as
+satisfactory as we can hope to make it, always excepting that one flaw,
+that we ought not to allow islanders in large numbers to live upon the
+mainland.'
+
+They turned in between the two white lodges of the country house,
+and rode up the drive between the tall, pungent, untidy trees of
+eucalyptus. The house, one-storied, low, and covered with wistaria and
+bougainvillea, glimmered white in the uncertain light. The shutters
+were flung back and the open windows gaped, oblong and black, at
+regular intervals on the upper floor. On the ground level, a broad
+veranda stretched right along the front of the house, and high French
+windows, opening on to this, yellow with light, gave access to the
+downstairs rooms.
+
+'Holà!' Mr Davenant called in a loud voice.
+
+'Malista, Kyrie,' a man's voice answered, and a servant in the white
+fustanelle of the Islands, with black puttees wound round his legs, and
+red shoes with turned-up toes and enormous rosettes on the tip, came
+running to hold the horses.
+
+'They have taken Vassili's brother, Kyrie,' he said as Mr Davenant gave
+him the reins.
+
+Julian was already in the drawing-room, among the chintz-covered sofas,
+loaded little tables, and ubiquitous gilt chairs. Four fat columns,
+painted to represent lapis-lazuli, divided the room into two halves,
+and from their Corinthian capitals issued flames made of red tinsel
+and painted gray smoke, which dispersed itself realistically over the
+ceiling.
+
+He stood in the window, absently looking out into the garden across the
+veranda, where the dinner table was laid for six. Pots of oleander and
+agapanthus stood along the edge of the veranda, between the fat white
+columns, with gaps between them through which one might pass out into
+the garden, and beyond them in the garden proper the fruit gleamed on
+the lemon-trees, and, somewhere, the sea whispered in the dusk. The
+night was calm and hot with the serenity of established summer weather,
+the stars big and steady like sequins in the summer sky. The spirit
+of such serenity does not brood over England, where to-day's pretence
+of summer will be broken by the fresh laughter of to-morrow's shower.
+The rose must fall to pieces in the height of its beauty beneath the
+fingers of sudden and capricious storm. But here the lemons hung,
+swollen and heavily pendulous, among the metallic green of their
+leaves, awaiting the accomplished end of their existence, the deepening
+of their gold, the fuller curve of their ripened luxuriance, with the
+complacency of certainty; fruit, not for the whim of the elements,
+but progressing throughout the year steadfastly towards the hand and
+the basket of the picker. Here and there the overburdened stem would
+snap, and the oblong ball of greenish-gold would fall with a soft and
+melancholy thud, like a sigh of regret, upon the ground beneath the
+tree; would roll a little way, and then be still. The little grove
+stretched in ordered lines and spaces, from the veranda, where the
+windows of the house threw rectangles of yellow light on to the ground
+in the blackness, to the bottom of the garden, where the sea washed
+indolently against the rocks.
+
+Presently he would see Eve, his eyes would meet her mocking eyes, and
+they would smile at one another out of the depths of their immemorial
+friendship. She was familiar to him, so familiar that he could
+not remember the time when, difficult, intractable, exasperating,
+subtle, incomprehensible, she had not formed part of his life. She
+was as familiar to him as the house in the _platia_, with its big,
+empty drawing-room, the walls frescoed with swinging monkeys, broken
+columns, and a romantic land and seascape; as the talk about the
+vintage; as the preposterous politics, always changing, yet always,
+monotonously, nauseatingly, pettishly, the same. She was not part of
+his life in England, the prosaic life; she was part of his life on
+the Greek seaboard, unreal and fantastic, where the most improbable
+happenings came along with an air of ingenuousness, romance walking
+in the garments of every day. After a week in Herakleion he could not
+disentangle the real from the unreal.
+
+It was the more baffling because those around him, older and wiser
+than he, appeared to take the situation for granted and to treat it
+with a seriousness that sometimes led him, when, forgetful, he was off
+his guard, to believe that the country was a real country and that
+its statesmen, Platon Malteios, Gregori Stavridis, and the rest, were
+real statesmen working soberly towards a definite end. That its riots
+were revolutions; that its factions were political parties; that its
+discordant, abusive, wrangling Chamber was indeed a Senate. That its
+four hundred stout soldiers, who periodically paraded the _platia_
+under the command of a general in a uniform designed by a theatrical
+costumier in Buda-Pesth, were indeed an army. That the _platia_ itself
+was a forum. That the society was brilliant; that its liaisons had the
+dignity of great passions. That his aunt, who talked weightily and
+contradicted every one, including herself--the only person who ever
+ventured to do such a thing--was indeed a political figure, an Egeria
+among the men in whose hands lay the direction of affairs. In his more
+forgetful moments, he was tempted to believe these things, when he saw
+his father and his Uncle Robert, both unbending, incisive, hard-headed
+business men, believing them. As a rule, preserving his nice sense of
+perspective, he saw them as a setting to Eve.
+
+He was beginning to adjust himself again to the life which faded with
+so extraordinary a rapidity as the express or the steamer bore him
+away, three times a year, to England. It faded always then like a
+photographic proof when exposed to the light. The political jargon
+was the first to go--he knew the sequence--'civil war,' 'independent
+archipelago,' 'overthrow of the Cabinet,' 'a threat to the Malteios
+party,' 'intrigues of the Stavridists,' the well-known phrases that,
+through sheer force of reiteration, he accepted without analysis; then,
+after the political jargon, the familiar figures that he saw almost
+daily, Sharp, his father's chief clerk; Aristotle, the door-keeper,
+his tussore fustanelle hanging magisterially from the rotundity of
+his portentous figure; Madame Lafarge, erect, and upholstered like a
+sofa, driving in her barouche; the young men at the club, languid and
+insolent and licentious; then, after the familiar figures, the familiar
+scenes; and lastly Eve herself, till he could no longer recall the
+drowsy tones of her voice, or evoke her eyes, that, though alive with
+malice and mockery, were yet charged with a mystery to which he could
+give no name. He was sad when these things began to fade. He clung on
+to them, because they were dear, but they slipped through his fingers
+like running water. Their evanescence served only to convince him the
+more of their unreality.
+
+Then, England, immutable, sagacious, balanced; Oxford, venerable and
+self-confident, turning the young men of the nation as by machinery out
+of her mould. Law-abiding England, where men worked their way upwards,
+attaining power and honour in the ripeness of years. London, where the
+houses were of stone. Where was Herakleion, stucco-built and tawdry,
+city of perpetually-clanging bells, revolutions, and Prime Ministers
+made and unmade in a day? Herakleion of the yellow islands, washed by
+too blue a sea. Where?
+
+Eve had never been to England, nor could he see any place in England
+for her. She should continue to live as she had always lived, among
+the vines and the magnolias, attended by a fat old woman who, though
+English, had spent so many years of her life in Herakleion that her
+English speech was oddly tainted by the southern lisp of the native
+Greek she had never been able to master; old Nana, who had lost the
+familiarity of one tongue without acquiring that of another; the ideal
+duenna for Eve.
+
+Then with a light step across the veranda a young Greek priest came
+into the room by one of the French windows, blinking and smiling in
+the light, dressed in a long black soutane and black cap, his red hair
+rolled up into a knob at the back of his head according to the fashion
+of his church. He tripped sometimes over his soutane as he walked,
+muscular and masculine inside that feminine garment, and when he did
+this he would gather it up impatiently with a hand on which grew a
+pelt of wiry red hairs. Father Paul had instituted himself as a kind
+of private chaplain to the Davenants. Eve encouraged him because she
+thought him picturesque. Mrs Robert Davenant found him invaluable as a
+lieutenant in her campaign of control over the peasants and villagers,
+over whom she exercised a despotic if benevolent authority. He was
+therefore free to come and go as he pleased.
+
+The population, Julian thought, was flowing back into his recovered
+world.
+
+England and Oxford were put aside; not forgotten, not indistinct, not
+faded like Herakleion was wont to fade, but merely put aside, laid away
+like winter garments in summer weather. He was once more in the kingdom
+of stucco and adventure. Eve was coming back to him, with her strange
+shadowy eyes and red mouth, and her frivolity beneath which lay some
+force which was not frivolous. There were women who were primarily
+pretty; women who were primarily motherly; women who, like Mrs Robert
+Davenant, were primarily efficient, commanding, successful, metallic;
+women who, like Kato, were consumed by a flame of purpose which broke,
+hot and scorching, from their speech and burned relentlessly in their
+eyes; women who were primarily vain and trifling; he found he could
+crowd Eve into no such category. He recalled her, spoilt, exquisite,
+witty, mettlesome, elusive, tantalising; detached from such practical
+considerations as punctuality, convenience, reliability. A creature
+that, from the age of three, had exacted homage and protection....
+
+He heard her indolent voice behind him in the room, and turned
+expectantly for their meeting.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+It was, however, during his first visit to the singer's flat that
+he felt himself again completely a citizen of Herakleion; that
+he felt himself, in fact, closer than ever before to the beating
+heart of intrigue and aspiration. Kato received him alone, and her
+immediate comradely grasp of his hand dispelled the shyness which had
+been induced in him by the concert; her vigorous simplicity caused
+him to forget the applause and enthusiasm he had that afternoon
+seen lavished on her as a public figure; he found in her an almost
+masculine friendliness and keenness of intellect, which loosened his
+tongue, sharpened his wits, set him on the path of discovery and
+self-expression. Kato watched him with her little bright eyes, nodding
+her approval with quick grunts; he paced her room, talking.
+
+'Does one come, ever, to a clear conception of one's ultimate
+ambitions? Not one's personal ambitions, of course; they don't count.'
+('How young he is,' she thought.) 'But to conceive clearly, I mean,
+exactly what one sets out to create, and what to destroy. If not,
+one must surely spend the whole of life working in the dark? Laying
+in little bits of mosaic, without once stepping back to examine the
+whole scheme of the picture.... One instinctively opposes authority.
+One struggles for freedom. Why? Why? What's at the bottom of that
+instinct? Why are we, men, born the instinctive enemies of order and
+civilisation, when order and civilisation are the weapons and the
+shields we, men, have ourselves instituted for our own protection? It's
+illogical.
+
+'Why do we, every one of us, refute the experience of others,
+preferring to gain our own? Why do we fight against government? why
+do I want to be independent of my father? or the Islands independent
+of Herakleion? or Herakleion independent of Greece? What's this
+instinct of wanting to stand alone, to be oneself, isolated, free,
+individual? Why does instinct push us towards individualism, when
+the great wellbeing of mankind probably lies in solidarity? when the
+social system in its most elementary form starts with men clubbing
+together for comfort and greater safety? No sooner have we achieved our
+solidarity, our hierarchy, our social system, our civilisation, than
+we want to get away from it. A vicious circle; the wheel revolves, and
+brings us back to the same point from which we started.'
+
+'Yes,' said Kato, 'there is certainly an obscure sympathy with
+the rebel, that lies somewhere dormant in the soul of the most
+platitudinous advocate of law and order.' She was amused by his
+generalisations, and was clever enough not to force him back too
+abruptly to the matter she had in mind. She thought him ludicrously,
+though rather touchingly, young, both in his ideas and his phraseology;
+but at the same time she shrewdly discerned the force which was in him
+and which she meant to use for her own ends. 'You,' she said to him,
+'will argue in favour of society, yet you will spend your life, or at
+any rate your youth, in revolt against it. Youth dies, you see, when
+one ceases to rebel. Besides,' she added, scrutinising him, 'the time
+will very soon come when you cease to argue and begin to act. Believe
+me, one soon discards one's wider examinations, and learns to content
+oneself with the practical business of the moment. One's own bit of the
+mosaic, as you said.'
+
+He felt wholesomely sobered, but not reproved; he liked Kato's
+penetration, her vivid, intelligent sympathy, and her point of view
+which was practical without being cynical.
+
+'I have come to one real conclusion,' he said, 'which is, that pain
+alone is intrinsically evil, and that in the lightening or abolition
+of pain one is safe in going straight ahead; it is a bit of the mosaic
+worth doing. So in the Islands....' he paused.
+
+Kato repressed a smile; she was more and more touched and entertained
+by his youthful, dogmatic statements, which were delivered with a
+concentration and an ardour that utterly disarmed derision. She was
+flattered, too, by his unthinking confidence in her; for she knew him
+by report as morose and uncommunicative, with relapses into rough
+high spirits and a schoolboy sense of farce. Eve had described him as
+inaccessible....
+
+'When you go, as you say, straight ahead,' he resumed, frowning, his
+eyes absent.
+
+Kato began to dwell, very skilfully, upon the topic of the Islands....
+
+
+Certain events which Madame Kato had then predicted to Julian followed
+with a suddenness, an unexpectedness, that perplexed the mind of the
+inquirer seeking, not only their origin, but their chronological
+sequence. They came like a summer storm sweeping briefly, boisterously
+across the land after the inadequate warning of distant rumbles and the
+flash of innocuous summer lightning. The thunder had rumbled so often,
+it might be said that it had rumbled daily, and the lightning had
+twitched so often in the sky, that men remained surprised and resentful
+long after the rough little tornado had passed away. They remained
+staring at one another, scratching their heads under their straw hats,
+or leaning against the parapet on the quays, exploring the recesses
+of their teeth with the omnipresent toothpick, and staring across the
+sea to those Islands whence the storm had surely come, as though
+by this intense, frowning contemplation they would finally provide
+themselves with enlightenment. Groups of men sat outside the cafés,
+their elbows on the tables, advancing in tones of whispered vehemence
+their individual positive theories and opinions, beating time to their
+own rhetoric and driving home each cherished point with the emphatic
+stab of a long cigar. In the casino itself, with the broken windows
+gaping jaggedly on to the forecourt, and the red curtains of the atrium
+hanging in rags from those same windows, men stood pointing in little
+knots. 'Here they stood still,' and 'From here he threw the bomb,' and
+those who had been present on the day were listened to with a respect
+they never in their lives had commanded before and never would command
+again.
+
+There was no sector of society in Herakleion that did not discuss the
+matter with avidity; more, with gratitude. Brigandage was brigandage,
+a picturesque but rather _opéra bouffe_ form of crime, but at the same
+time an excitement was, indubitably, an excitement. The Ministers,
+in their despatches to their home governments, affected to treat the
+incident as the work of a fortuitous band rather than as an organised
+expedition with an underlying political significance, nevertheless they
+fastened upon it as a pretext for their wit in Herakleion, where no
+sardonic and departmental eye would regard them with superior tolerance
+much as a grown-up person regards the facile amusement of a child.
+At the diplomatic dinner parties very little else was talked of. At
+tea parties, women, drifting from house to house, passed on as their
+own the witticisms they had most recently heard, which became common
+property until reclaimed from general circulation by the indignant
+perpetrators. From the drawing-rooms of the French Legation, down to
+village cafés where the gramophone grated unheard and the bowls lay
+neglected on the bowling alley, one topic reigned supreme. What nobody
+knew, and what everybody wondered about, was the attitude adopted by
+the Davenants in the privacy of their country house. What spoken or
+unspoken understanding existed between the inscrutable brothers? What
+veiled references, or candid judgments, escaped from William Davenant's
+lips as he lay back in his chair after dinner, a glass of wine--wine of
+his own growing--between his fingers? What indiscretions, that would
+have fallen so delectably upon the inquisitive ears of Herakleion,
+did he utter, secure in the confederacy of his efficient and vigorous
+sister-in-law, of the more negligible Robert, the untidy and taciturn
+Julian, the indifferent Eve?
+
+It was as universally taken for granted that the outrage proceeded
+from the islanders as it was ferociously regretted that the offenders
+could not, from lack of evidence, be brought to justice. They had, at
+the moment, no special grievance; only their perennial grievances, of
+which everybody was tired of hearing. The brother of Vassili, a quite
+unimportant labourer, had been released; M. Lafarge had interested
+himself in his servant's brother, and had made representations to the
+Premier, which Malteios had met with his usual urbane courtesy. An hour
+later the fellow had been seen setting out in a rowing boat for Aphros.
+All, therefore, was for the best. Yet within twenty-four hours of this
+proof of leniency....
+
+The élite were dining on the evening of these unexpected occurrences at
+the French Legation to meet two guests of honour, one a distinguished
+Albanian statesman who could speak no language but his own, and the
+other an Englishman of irregular appearances and disappearances,
+an enthusiast on all matters connected with the Near East. In the
+countries he visited he was considered an expert who had the ear of
+the English Cabinet and House of Commons, but by these institutions
+he was considered merely a crank and a nuisance. His conversation was
+after the style of the more economical type of telegram, with all
+prepositions, most pronouns, and a good many verbs left out; it gained
+thereby in mystery what it lost in intelligibility, and added greatly
+to his reputation. He and the Albanian had stood apart in confabulation
+before dinner, the Englishman arguing, expounding, striking his open
+palm with the fingers of the other hand, shooting out his limbs in
+spasmodic and ungraceful gestures, the Albanian unable to put in a
+word, but appreciatively nodding his head and red fez.
+
+Madame Lafarge sat between them both at dinner, listening to the
+Englishman as though she understood what he was saying to her, which
+she did not, and occasionally turning to the Albanian to whom she
+smiled and nodded in a friendly and regretful way. Whenever she did
+this he made her a profound bow and drank her health in the sweet
+champagne. Here their intercourse perforce ended.
+
+Half-way through dinner a note was handed to M. Lafarge. He gave
+an exclamation which silenced all his end of the table, and the
+Englishman's voice was alone left talking in the sudden hush.
+
+'Turkey!' he was saying. 'Another matter! Ah, ghost of
+Abdul Hamid!' and then, shaking his head mournfully,
+'world-treachery--world-conspiracy....'
+
+'Ah, yes,' said Madame Lafarge, rapt, 'how true that is, how right you
+are.'
+
+She realised that no one else was speaking, and raised her head
+interrogatively.
+
+Lafarge said,--
+
+'Something has occurred at the casino, but there is no cause for
+alarm; nobody has been hurt. I am sending a messenger for further
+details. This note explicitly says'--he consulted it again--'that
+no one is injured. A mere question of robbery; an impudent and
+successful attempt. A bomb has been thrown,'--('_Mais ils sont donc
+tous apaches?_' cried Condesa Valdez. Lafarge went on)--'but they say
+the damage is all in the atrium, and is confined to broken windows,
+torn hangings, and mirrors cracked from top to bottom. Glass lies
+plentifully scattered about the floor. But I hope that before very long
+we may be in possession of a little more news.' He sent the smile of a
+host round the table, reassuring in the face of anxiety.
+
+A little pause, punctuated by a few broken ejaculations, followed upon
+his announcement.
+
+'How characteristic of Herakleion,' cried Alexander Christopoulos, who
+had been anxiously searching for something noteworthy and contemptuous
+to say, 'that even with the help of a bomb we can achieve only a
+disaster that tinkles.'
+
+The Danish Excellency was heard to say tearfully,--
+
+'A robbery! a bomb! and practically in broad daylight! What a place,
+what a place!'
+
+'Those Islands again, for certain!' Madame Delahaye exclaimed, with
+entire absence of tact; her husband, the French Military Attaché,
+frowned at her across the table; and the diplomatists all looked down
+their noses.
+
+Then the Englishman, seeing his opportunity, broke out,--
+
+'Very significant! all of a piece--anarchy--intrigue--no strong
+hand--free peoples. Too many, too many. Small nationalities. Chips!
+Cut-throats, all. So!'--he drew his fingers with an expressive sibilant
+sound across his own throat. 'Asking for trouble. Yugo-Slavs--bah!
+Poles--pfui! Eastern empire, that's the thing. Turks the only
+people'--the Albanian, fortunately innocent of English, was smiling
+amiably as he stirred his champagne--'great people. Armenians,
+wash-out. Quite right too. Herakleion, worst of all. Not even a chip.
+Only the chip of a chip.'
+
+'And the Islands,' said the Danish Excellency brightly, 'want to be the
+chip of a chip of a chip.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Madame Lafarge, who had been getting a little anxious,
+trying to provoke a laugh, 'Fru Thyregod has hit it as usual--_elle
+a trouvé le mot juste_,' she added, thinking that if she turned the
+conversation back into French it might check the Englishman's truncated
+eloquence.
+
+Out in the town, the quay was the centre of interest. A large crowd had
+collected there, noisy in the immense peace of the evening. Far, far
+out, a speck on the opal sea, could still be distinguished the little
+boat in which the three men, perpetrators of the outrage, had made good
+their escape. Beyond the little boat, even less distinct, the sea was
+dotted with tiny craft, the fleet of fishing-boats from the Islands.
+The green light gleamed at the end of the pier. On the quay, the crowd
+gesticulated, shouted, and pointed, as the water splashed under the
+ineffectual bullets from the carbines of the police. The Chief of
+Police was there, giving orders. The police motor-launch was to be
+got out immediately. The crowd set up a cheer; they did not know who
+the offenders were, but they would presently have the satisfaction of
+seeing them brought back in handcuffs.
+
+It was at this point that the entire Lafarge dinner-party debouched
+upon the quay, the women wrapped in their light cloaks, tremulous and
+excited, the men affecting an amused superiority. They were joined by
+the Chief of Police, and by the Christopoulos, father and son. It was
+generally known, though never openly referred to, that the principal
+interest in the casino was held by them, a fact which explained the
+saffron-faced little banker's present agitation.
+
+'The authorities must make better dispositions,' he kept saying to
+Madame Lafarge. 'With this example before them, half the blackguards of
+the country-side will be making similar attempts. It is too absurdly
+easy.'
+
+He glared at the Chief of Police.
+
+'Better dispositions,' he muttered, 'better dispositions.'
+
+'This shooting is ridiculous,' Alexander said impatiently, 'the boat is
+at least three miles away. What do they hope to kill? a fish? Confound
+the dusk. How soon will the launch be ready?'
+
+'It will be round to the steps at any moment now,' said the Chief of
+Police, and he gave an order in an irritable voice to his men, who had
+continued to let off their carbines aimlessly and spasmodically.
+
+In spite of his assurance, the launch did not appear. The Englishman
+was heard discoursing at length to Madame Lafarge, who, at regular
+intervals, fervently agreed with what he had been saying, and the
+Danish Excellency whispered and tittered with young Christopoulos.
+Social distinctions were sharply marked: the diplomatic party stood
+away from the casual crowd, and the casual crowd stood away from the
+rabble. Over all the dusk deepened, one or two stars came out, and the
+little boat was no longer distinguishable from the fishing fleet with
+its triangular sails.
+
+Finally, throbbing, fussing, important, the motor-launch came churning
+to a standstill at the foot of the steps. The Chief of Police jumped
+in, Alexander followed him, promising that he would come straight
+to the French Legation on his return and tell them exactly what had
+happened.
+
+In the mirrored drawing-rooms, three hours later, he made his recital.
+The gilt chairs were drawn round in a circle, in the middle of which
+he stood, aware that the Danish Excellency was looking at him,
+enraptured, with her prominent blue eyes.
+
+'Of course, in spite of the start they had had, we knew that they stood
+no chance against a motor-boat, no chance whatsoever. They could not
+hope to reach Aphros before we overtook them. We felt quite confident
+that it was only a question of minutes. We agreed that the men must
+have been mad to imagine that they could make good their escape in
+that way. Sterghiou and I sat in the stern, smoking and talking. What
+distressed us a little was that we could no longer see the boat we were
+after, but you know how quickly the darkness comes, so we paid very
+little attention to that.
+
+'Presently we came up with the fishing smacks from Aphros, and they
+shouted to us to keep clear of their tackle--impudence. We shut off
+our engines while we made inquiries from them as to the rowing-boat.
+Rowing-boat? they looked blank. They had seen no rowing-boat--no boat
+of any sort, other than their own. The word was passed, shouting, from
+boat to boat of the fleet; no one had seen a rowing-boat. Of course
+they were lying; how could they not be lying? but the extraordinary
+fact remained'--he made an effective pause--'there was no sign of a
+rowing-boat anywhere on the sea.'
+
+A movement of appreciative incredulity produced itself among his
+audience.
+
+'Not a sign!' Alexander repeated luxuriously. 'The sea lay all round us
+without a ripple, and the fishing smacks, although they were under full
+sail, barely moved. It was so still that we could see their reflection
+unbroken in the water. There might have been twenty of them, dotted
+about--twenty crews of bland liars. We were, I may as well admit it,
+nonplussed. What can you do when you are surrounded by smiling and
+petticoated liars, leaning against their masts, and persisting in
+idiotic blankness to all your questions? Denial, denial, was all their
+stronghold. They had seen nothing. But they must be blind to have seen
+nothing? They were very sorry, they had seen nothing at all. Would the
+gentlemen look round for themselves, they would soon be satisfied that
+nothing was in sight.
+
+'As for the idea that the boat had reached Aphros in the time at their
+disposal, it was absolutely out of the question.
+
+'I could see that Sterghiou was getting very angry; I said nothing, but
+I think he was uncomfortable beneath my silent criticism. He and his
+police could regulate the traffic in the rue Royale, but they could
+not cope with an emergency of this sort. From the very first moment
+they had been at fault. And they had taken at least twenty minutes to
+get out the motor-launch. Sterghiou hated me, I feel sure, for having
+accompanied him and seen his discomfiture.
+
+'Anyway, he felt he must take some sort of action, so he ordered his
+men to search all the fishing smacks in turn. We went the round, a
+short throbbing of the motors, and then silence as we drew alongside
+and the men went on board. Of course, they found nothing. I watched the
+faces of the islanders during this inspection; they sat on the sides
+of their boats, busy with their nets, and pretending not to notice the
+police that moved about, turning everything over in their inefficient
+way, but I guessed their covert grins, and I swear I caught two of them
+winking at one another. If I had told this to Sterghiou, I believe he
+would have arrested them on the spot, he was by then in such a state of
+exasperation, but you can't arrest a man on a wink, especially a wink
+when darkness has very nearly come.
+
+'And there the matter remains. We had found nothing, and we were
+obliged to turn round and come back again, leaving that infernally
+impudent fleet of smacks in possession of the battle-ground. Oh, yes,
+there is no doubt that they got the best of it. Because, naturally, we
+have them to thank.'
+
+'Have you a theory, Alexander?' some one asked, as they were intended
+to ask.
+
+Alexander shrugged.
+
+'It is so obvious. A knife through the bottom of the boat would very
+quickly send her to the bottom, and a shirt and a fustanelle will very
+quickly transform a respectable bank-thief into an ordinary islander.
+Who knows that the two ruffians I saw winking were not the very men we
+were after? A sufficiently ingenious scheme altogether--too ingenious
+for poor Sterghiou.'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+These things came, made their stir, passed, and were forgotten, leaving
+only a quickened ripple upon the waters of Herakleion, of which Julian
+Davenant, undergraduate, aged nineteen, bordering upon twenty, was
+shortly made aware. He had arrived from England with no other thought
+in his mind than of his riding, hawking, and sailing, but found himself
+almost immediately netted in a tangle of affairs of which, hitherto, he
+had known only by the dim though persistent echoes which reached him
+through the veils of his deliberate indifference. He found now that his
+indifference was to be disregarded. Men clustered round him, shouting,
+and tearing with irascible hands at his unsubstantial covering. He was
+no longer permitted to remain a boy. The half-light of adolescence was
+peopled for him by a procession of figures, fortunately distinct by
+virtue of their life-long familiarity, figures that urged and upbraided
+him, some indignant, some plaintive, some reproachful, some vehement,
+some dissimulating and sly; many vociferous, all insistent; a crowd of
+human beings each playing his separate hand, each the expounder of his
+own theory, rooted in his own conviction; a succession of intrigues,
+men who took him by the arm, and, leading him aside, discoursed to him,
+a strange medley of names interlarding their discourse with concomitant
+abuse or praise; men who flattered him; men who sought merely his
+neutrality, speaking of his years in tones of gentle disparagement. Men
+who, above all, would not leave him alone. Who, by their persecution,
+even those who urged his youth as an argument in favour of his
+neutrality, demonstrated to him that he had, as a man, entered the
+arena.
+
+For his part, badgered and astonished, he took refuge in a taciturnity
+which only tantalised his pursuers into a more zealous aggression. His
+opinions were unknown in the club where the men set upon him from the
+first moment of his appearance. He would sit with his legs thrown over
+the arm of a leather arm-chair, loose-limbed and gray-flannelled, his
+mournful eyes staring out of the nearest window, while Greek, diplomat,
+or foreigner argued at him with gesture and emphasis. They seemed to
+him, had they but known, surprisingly unreal for all their clamour,
+pompous and yet insignificant.
+
+His father was aware of the attacks delivered on his son, but, saying
+nothing, allowed the natural and varied system of education to take
+its course. He saw him standing, grave and immovable, in the surging
+crowd of philosophies and nationalities, discarding the charlatan
+by some premature wisdom, and assimilating the rare crumbs of true
+worldly experience. He himself was ignorant of the thoughts passing
+in the boy's head. He had forgotten the visionary tumult of nineteen,
+when the storm of life flows first over the pleasant, easy meadows of
+youth. Himself now a sober man, he had forgotten, so completely that
+he had ceased to believe in, the facile succession of convictions,
+the uprooting of beliefs, the fanatical acceptance of newly proffered
+creeds. He scarcely considered, or he might perhaps not so readily have
+risked, the possible effect of the queer systems of diverse ideals
+picked up, unconsciously, and put together from the conversation of
+the mountebank administrators of that tiny state, the melodramatic
+champions of the oppressed poor, and the professional cynicism of
+dago adventurers. If, sometimes, he wondered what Julian made of the
+talk that had become a jargon, he dismissed his uneasiness with a
+re-affirmation of confidence in his impenetrability.
+
+'Broaden his mind,' he would say. 'It won't hurt him. It doesn't go
+deep. Foam breaking upon a rock.'
+
+So might Sir Henry have spoken, to whom the swags of fruit were but the
+vintage of a particular year, put into a labelled bottle.
+
+Julian had gone more than once out of a boyish curiosity to hear the
+wrangle of the parties in the Chamber. Sitting up in the gallery, and
+leaning his arms horizontally on the top of the brass railing, he had
+looked down on the long tables covered with red baize, whereon reposed,
+startlingly white, a square sheet of paper before the seat of each
+deputy, and a pencil, carefully sharpened, alongside. He had seen the
+deputies assemble, correctly frock-coated, punctiliously shaking hands
+with one another, although they had probably spent the morning in one
+another's company at the club--the club was the natural meeting-place
+of the Greeks and the diplomats, while the foreigners, a doubtful lot,
+congregated either in the gambling-rooms or in the _jardin anglais_ of
+the casino. He had watched them taking their places with a good deal of
+coughing, throat-clearing, and a certain amount of expectoration. He
+had seen the Premier come in amid a general hushing of voices, and take
+his seat in the magisterial arm-chair in the centre of the room, behind
+an enormous ink-pot, pulling up the knees of his trousers and smoothing
+his beard away from his rosy lips with the tips of his fingers as he
+did so. Julian's attention had strayed from the formalities attendant
+upon the opening of the session, and his eyes had wandered to the
+pictures hanging on the walls: Aristidi Patros, the first Premier,
+after the secession from Greece, b. 1760, d. 1831, Premier of the
+Republic of Herakleion from 1826 to 1830; Pericli Anghelis, general,
+1774-1847; Constantine Stavridis, Premier from 1830 to 1835, and
+again from 1841 to 1846, when he died assassinated. The portraits of
+the other Premiers hung immediately below the gallery where Julian
+could not see them. At the end of the room, above the doors, hung a
+long and ambitious painting executed in 1840 and impregnated with the
+romanticism of that age, representing the Declaration of Independence
+in the _platia_ of Herakleion on the 16th September--kept as an ever
+memorable and turbulent anniversary--1826. The Premier, Patros,
+occupied the foreground, declaiming from a scroll of parchment, and
+portrayed as a frock-coated young man of godlike beauty; behind him
+stood serried ranks of deputies, and in the left-hand corner a group of
+peasants, like an operatic chorus, tossed flowers from baskets on to
+the ground at his feet. The heads of women clustered at the windows of
+the familiar houses of the _platia_, beneath the fluttering flags with
+the colours of the new Republic, orange and green.
+
+Julian always thought that a portrait of his grandfather, for twelve
+months President of the collective archipelago of Hagios Zacharie,
+should have been included among the notables.
+
+He had tried to listen to the debates which followed upon the formal
+preliminaries; to the wrangle of opponents; to the clap-trap patriotism
+which so thinly veiled the desire of personal advancement; to the
+rodomontade of Panaïoannou, Commander-in-Chief of the army of four
+hundred men, whose sky-blue uniform and white breeches shone among
+all the black coats with a resplendency that gratified his histrionic
+vanity; to the bombastic eloquence which rolled out from the luxuriance
+of the Premier's beard, with a startling and deceptive dignity in
+the trappings of the ancient and classic tongue. Malteios used such
+long, such high-sounding words, and struck his fist upon the red baize
+table with such emphatic energy, that it was hard not to believe
+in the authenticity of his persuasion. Julian welcomed most the
+moments when, after a debate of an hour or more, tempers grew heated,
+and dignity--that is to say, the pretence of the sobriety of the
+gathering--was cast aside in childish petulance.
+
+'The fur flew,' said Julian, who had enjoyed himself. 'Christopoulos
+called Panaïoannou a fire-eater, and Panaïoannou called Christopoulos a
+money-grubber. "Where would you be without my money?" "Where would you
+be without my army?" "Army! can the valiant general inform the Chamber
+how many of his troops collapsed from exhaustion on the _platia_ last
+Independence Day, and had to be removed to the hospital?" And so on
+and so forth. They became so personal that I expected the general at
+any moment to ask Christopoulos how many unmarried daughters he had at
+home.'
+
+Malteios himself, president of the little republic, most plausible
+and empiric of politicians, was not above the discussion of current
+affairs with the heir of the Davenants towards whom, it was suspected,
+the thoughts of the islanders were already turning. The President was
+among those who adopted the attitude of total discouragement. The
+interference of a headstrong and no doubt Quixotic schoolboy would be
+troublesome; might become disastrous. Having dined informally with the
+Davenant brothers at their country house, he crossed the drawing-room
+after dinner, genial, a long cigar protruding from his mouth, to the
+piano in the corner where Eve and Julian were turning over some sheets
+of music.
+
+'May an old man,' he said with his deliberate but nevertheless charming
+suavity, 'intrude for a moment upon the young?'
+
+He sat down, removing his cigar, and discoursed for a little upon the
+advantages of youth. He led the talk to Julian's Oxford career, and
+from there to his future in Herakleion.
+
+'A knotty little problem, as you will some day find--not, I hope, for
+your own sake, until a very remote some day. Perhaps not until I and
+my friend and opponent Gregori Stavridis are figures of the past,'
+he said, puffing smoke and smiling at Julian; 'then perhaps you will
+take your place in Herakleion and bring your influence to bear upon
+your very difficult and contrary Islands. Oh, very difficult, I assure
+you,' he continued, shaking his head. 'I am a conciliatory man myself,
+and not unkindly, I think I may say; they would find Gregori Stavridis
+a harder taskmaster than I. They are the oldest cause of dispute,
+your Islands, between Gregori Stavridis and myself. Now see,' he
+went on, expanding, 'they lie like a belt of neutral territory, your
+discontented, your so terribly and unreasonably discontented Islands,
+between me and Stavridis. We may agree upon other points; upon that
+point we continually differ. He urges upon the Senate a policy of
+severity with which I cannot concur. I wish to compromise, to keep the
+peace, but he is, alas! perpetually aggressive. He invades the neutral
+zone, as it were, from the west--periodical forays--and I am obliged to
+invade it from the east; up till now we have avoided clashing in the
+centre.' Malteios, still smiling, sketched the imaginary lines of his
+illustration on his knee with the unlighted tip of his cigar. 'I would
+coax, and he would force, the islanders to content and friendliness.'
+
+Julian listened, knowing well that Malteios and Stavridis, opponents
+from an incorrigible love of opposition for opposition's sake, rather
+than from any genuine diversity of conviction, had long since seized
+upon the Islands as a convenient pretext. Neither leader had any very
+definite conception of policy beyond the desire, respectively, to
+remain in, or to get himself into, power. Between them the unfortunate
+Islands, pulled like a rat between two terriers, were given ample cause
+for the discontent of which Malteios complained. Malteios, it was
+true, adopted the more clement attitude, but for this clemency, it was
+commonly said, the influence of Anastasia Kato was alone responsible.
+
+Through the loud insistent voices of the men, Julian was to remember
+in after years the low music of that woman's voice, and to see, as in
+a vignette, the picture of himself in Kato's flat among the cushions
+of her divan, looking again in memory at the photographs and ornaments
+on the shelf that ran all round the four walls of the room, at the
+height of the top of a dado. These ornaments appeared to him the
+apotheosis of cosmopolitanism. There were small, square wooden figures
+from Russia, a few inches high, and brightly coloured; white and gray
+Danish china; little silver images from Spain; miniature plants of
+quartz and jade; Battersea snuff-boxes; photographs of an Austrian
+archduke in a white uniform and a leopard-skin, of a Mexican in a wide
+sombrero, mounted on a horse and holding a lasso, of Mounet-Sully as
+the blinded OEdipus. Every available inch of space in the singer's
+room was crowded with these and similar trophies, and the shelf had
+been added to take the overflow. Oriental embroideries, heavily
+silvered, were tacked up on the walls, and on them again were plates
+and brackets, the latter carrying more ornaments; high up in one corner
+was an ikon, and over the doors hung open-work linen curtains from
+the bazaars of Constantinople. Among the many ornaments the massive
+singer moved freely and spaciously, creating havoc as she moved, so
+that Julian's dominating impression remained one of setting erect
+again the diminutive objects she had knocked over. She would laugh
+good-humouredly at herself, and would give him unequalled Turkish
+coffee in little handleless cups, like egg-cups, off a tray of beaten
+brass set on a small octagonal table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and
+all the while she would talk to him musically, earnestly, bending
+forward, and her restless fingers would turn the bangles round and
+round upon her arms.
+
+He could not think Kato unreal, though many of the phrases upon her
+lips were the same as he heard from the men in the club; he could not
+think her unreal, when her voice broke over the words 'misery' and
+'oppression,' and when her eyes burned their conviction into his. He
+began to believe in the call of the Islands, as he listened to the
+soft, slurring speech of their people in her voice, and discovered,
+listening to her words with only half his mind, the richness of the
+grapes in the loose coils of her dark hair, and the fulvous colouring
+of the Islands in the copper draperies she always affected. It seemed
+to Julian that, at whatever time of day he saw her, whether morning,
+afternoon, or evening, she was always wearing the same dress, but he
+supposed vaguely that this could not actually be so. Like his father,
+he maintained her as a woman of genuine patriotic ardour, dissociating
+her from Herakleion and its club and casino, and associating her with
+the Islands where injustice and suffering, at least, were true things.
+He lavished his enthusiasm upon her, and his relations learned to
+refrain, in his presence, from making the usual obvious comments on her
+appearance. He looked upon her flat as a sanctuary and a shrine. He
+fled one day in disgust and disillusionment when the Premier appeared
+with his ingratiating smile in the doorway. Julian had known, of
+course, of the liaison, but was none the less distressed and nauseated
+when it materialised beneath his eyes.
+
+He fled to nurse his soul-sickness in the country, lying on his back at
+full length under the olive-trees on the lower slopes of Mount Mylassa,
+his hands beneath his head, his horse moving near by and snuffing
+for pasture on the bare terraces. The sea, to-day of the profoundest
+indigo, sparkled in the sun below, and between the sea and the foot of
+the mountain, plainly, as in an embossed map, stretched the strip of
+flat cultivated land where he could distinguish first the dark ilex
+avenue, then the ribbon of road, then the village, finally the walled
+plantation which was his uncle's garden, and the roofs of the low house
+in the centre. The bougainvillea climbing over the walls and roof of
+his uncle's house made a warm stain of magenta.
+
+Herakleion was hidden from sight, on the other hand, by the curve of
+the hill, but the Islands were visible opposite, and, caring only for
+them, he gazed as he had done many times, but now their meaning and
+purport crystallised in his mind as never before. There was something
+symbolical in their detachment from the mainland--in their clean
+remoteness, their isolation; all the difference between the unfettered
+ideal and the tethered reality. An island land that had slipped the
+leash of continents, forsworn solidarity, cut adrift from security and
+prudence! One could readily believe that they made part of the divine,
+the universal discontent, that rare element, dynamic, life-giving, that
+here and there was to be met about the world, always fragmentary, yet
+always full and illuminating, even as the fragments of beauty.
+
+This was a day which Julian remembered, marked, as it were, with an
+asterisk in the calendar of his mind, by two notes which he found
+awaiting him on his return to the house in the _platia_. Aristotle
+handed them to him as he dismounted at the door.
+
+The first he opened was from Eve.
+
+
+    'I am so angry with you, Julian. What have you done to my Kato? I
+    found her in tears. She says you were with her when the Premier
+    came, and that you vanished without a word.
+
+    'I know your _sauts de gazelle_; you are suddenly bored or annoyed,
+    and you run away. Very naïf, very charming, very candid, very
+    fawn-like--or is it, hideous suspicion, a pose?'
+
+
+He was surprised and hurt by her taunt. One did not wish to remain, so
+one went away; it seemed to him very simple.
+
+The second note was from Kato.
+
+
+    'Julian, forgive me,' it ran; 'I did not know he was coming.
+    Forgive me. Send me a message to say when I shall see you. I did
+    not know he was coming. Forgive me.'
+
+
+He read these notes standing in the drawing-room with the
+palely-frescoed walls. He looked up from reading them, and encountered
+the grinning faces of the painted monkeys and the perspective of the
+romantic landscape. The colours were faint, and the rough grain of the
+plaster showed through in tiny lumps. Why should Kato apologise to
+him for the unexpected arrival of her lover? It was not his business.
+He sat down and wrote her a perfectly polite reply to say that he had
+nothing to forgive and had no intention of criticising her actions. The
+sense of unreality was strong within him.
+
+
+It seemed that he could not escape the general determination to
+involve him, on one side or the other, in the local affairs. Besides
+the men at the club, Sharp, the head clerk at the office, spoke to
+him--'The people look to you, Mr Julian; better keep clear of the
+Islands if you don't want a crowd of women hanging round kissing your
+hands--, murmured to him in the hall when he
+went to dine at the French Legation; Walters, the _Times_ correspondent
+in Herakleion, winked to him with a man to man expression that
+flattered the boy.
+
+'I know the Balkans inside out, mind you; nearly lost my head to the
+Bulgars and my property to the Serbs; I've been held to ransom by
+Albanian brigands, and shot at in the streets of Athens on December
+the second; I've had my rooms ransacked by the police, and I could
+have been a rich man now if I'd accepted half the bribes that I've had
+offered me. So you can have my advice, if you care to hear it, and that
+is, hold your tongue till you're sure you know your own mind.'
+
+The women, following the lead, chattered to him. He had never known
+such popularity. It was hard, at times, to preserve his non-committal
+silence, yet he knew, ignorant and irresolute, that therein lay his
+only hope of safety. They must not perceive that they had taken
+him unawares, that he was hopelessly at sea in the mass of names,
+reminiscences, and prophecies that they showered upon him. They must
+not suspect that he really knew next to nothing about the situation....
+
+He felt his way cautiously and learnt, and felt his strength growing.
+
+In despite of Sharp's warning, he went across to the Islands, taking
+with him Father Paul. Eve exclaimed that he took the priest solely from
+a sense of the suitability of a retinue, and Julian, though he denied
+the charge, did not do so very convincingly. He had certainly never
+before felt the need of a retinue. He had always spent at least a week
+of his holidays on Aphros, taking his favourite hawk with him, and
+living either in his father's house in the village, or staying with the
+peasants. When he returned, he was always uncommunicative as to how he
+had passed his time.
+
+Because he felt the stirring of events in the air, and because he
+knew from signs and hints dropped to him that his coming was awaited
+with an excited expectancy, he chose to provide himself with the
+dignity of an attendant. He had, characteristically, breathed no word
+of his suspicions, but moved coldly self-reliant in the midst of his
+uncertainties. Father Paul only thought him more than usually silent
+as he busied himself with the sail of his little boat and put out to
+sea from the pier of Herakleion. Aphros lay ahead, some seven or eight
+miles--a couple of hours' sailing in a good breeze.
+
+His white sails were observed some way off by the villagers, who by
+chance were already assembled at the weekly market in the village
+square. They deserted the pens and stalls to cluster round the top
+of the steps that descended, steep as an upright ladder, and cut in
+the face of the rock, from the market place straight down to the sea,
+where the white foam broke round the foot of the cliff. Julian saw
+the coloured crowd from his boat; he distinguished faces as he drew
+nearer, and made out the flutter of handkerchiefs from the hands of
+the women. The village hung sheerly over the sea, the face of the
+white houses flat with the face of the brown rocks, the difference of
+colour alone betraying where the one began and the other ended, as
+though some giant carpenter had planed away all inequalities of surface
+from the eaves down to the washing water. The fleet of fishing-boats,
+their bare, graceful masts swaying a little from the perpendicular as
+the boats ranged gently at their moorings with the sigh of the almost
+imperceptible waves, lay like resting seagulls in the harbour.
+
+'They are waiting to welcome you--feudal, too feudal,' growled Father
+Paul, who, though himself the creature and dependent of the Davenants,
+loudly upheld his democratic views for the rest of mankind.
+
+'And why?' muttered Julian. 'This has never happened before. I have
+been away only four months.'
+
+Three fishermen wearing the white kilted fustanelle and tasselled
+shoes were already on the jetty with hands outstretched to take his
+mooring-rope. Eager faces looked down from above, and a hum went
+through the little crowd as Julian sprang on to the jetty, the boat
+rocking as his weight released it--a hum that died slowly, like the
+note of an organ, fading harmoniously into a complete silence. Paul
+knew suddenly that the moment was significant. He saw Julian hesitate,
+faltering as it were between sea and land, his dark head and broad
+shoulders framed in an immensity of blue, the cynosure of the crowd
+above, still silent and intent upon his actions. He hesitated until his
+hesitation became apparent to all. Paul saw that his hands were shut
+and his face stern. The silence of the crowd was becoming oppressive,
+when a woman's voice rang out like a bell in the pellucid air,--
+
+'Liberator!'
+
+Clear, sudden, and resonant, the cry vibrated and hung upon echo, so
+that the mind followed it, when it was no more heard, round the island
+coast, where it ran up into the rocky creeks, and entered upon the
+breeze into the huts of goat-herds on the hill. Julian slowly raised
+his head as at a challenge. He looked up into the furnace of eyes
+bent upon him, lustrous eyes in the glow of faces tanned to a golden
+brown, finding in all the same query, the same expectancy, the same
+breathless and suspended confidence. For a long moment he gazed up, and
+they gazed down, challenge, acceptance, homage, loyalty, devotion, and
+covenant passing unspoken between them; then, his hesitation a dead
+and discarded thing, he moved forward and set his foot firmly upon the
+lowest step. The silence of the crowd was broken by a single collective
+murmur.
+
+The crowd--which consisted of perhaps not more than fifty souls, men
+and women--parted at the top as his head and shoulders appeared on the
+level of the market-place. Paul followed, tripping over his soutane on
+the ladder-like stairs. He saw Julian's white shoes climbing, climbing
+the flight, until the boy stood deliberately upon the market-place. A
+few goats were penned up for sale between wattled hurdles, bleating
+for lost dams or kids; a clothes-stall displayed highly-coloured
+handkerchiefs, boleros for the men, silk sashes, puttees, tasselled
+caps, and kilted fustanelles; a fruit-stall, lined with bright blue
+paper, was stacked from floor to ceiling with oranges, figs, bunches
+of grapes, and scarlet tomatoes. An old woman, under an enormous green
+umbrella, sat hunched on the back of a tiny gray donkey.
+
+Julian stood, grave and moody, surveying the people from under
+lowered brows. They were waiting for him to speak to them, but, as
+a contrast to the stifled volubility seething in their own breasts,
+his stillness, unexpected and surprising, impressed them more than
+any flow of eloquence. He seemed to have forgotten about them,
+though his eyes dwelt meditatively on their ranks; he seemed remote,
+preoccupied; faintly disdainful, though tolerant, of the allegiance
+they had already, mutely, laid at his feet, and were prepared to offer
+him in terms of emotional expression. He seemed content to take this
+for granted. He regarded them for a space, then turned to move in the
+direction of his father's house.
+
+The people pressed forward after him, a whispering and rustling
+bodyguard, disconcerted but conquered and adoring. Their numbers had
+been increased since the news of his landing had run through the town.
+Fishermen, and labourers from olive-grove and vineyard, men whose lives
+were lived in the sun, their magnificent bare throats and arms glowed
+like nectarines in the white of the loose shirts they wore. Knotted
+handkerchiefs were about their heads, and many of them wore broad
+hats of rough straw over the handkerchief. Ancestrally more Italian
+than Greek, for the original population of the archipelago of Hagios
+Zacharie had, centuries before, been swamped by the settlements of
+colonising Genoese, they resembled the peasants of southern Italy.
+
+The headman of the village walked with them, Tsantilas Tsigaridis,
+sailor and fisherman since he could remember, whose skin was drawn
+tightly over the fine bony structure of his face, and whose crisp
+white hair escaped in two bunches over his temples from under the red
+handkerchief he wore; he was dressed, incongruously enough, in a blue
+English jersey which Mrs Davenant had given him, and a coffee-coloured
+fustanelle. Behind the crowd, as though he were shepherding them,
+Nico Zapantiotis, overseer of the Davenant vineyards, walked with a
+long pole in his hand, a white sheepdog at his heels, and a striped
+blue and white shirt fluttering round his body, open at the throat,
+and revealing the swelling depth of his hairy chest. Between these
+two notables pressed the crowd, bronzed and coloured, eyes eager and
+attentive and full of fire, a gleam of silver ear-rings among the shiny
+black ringlets. Bare feet and heelless shoes shuffled alike over the
+cobbles.
+
+At the end of the narrow street, where the children ran out as in the
+story of the Pied Piper to join in the progress, the doorway of the
+Davenant house faced them.
+
+It was raised on three steps between two columns. The monastery had
+been a Genoese building, but the Greek influence was unmistakable in
+the columns and the architrave over the portico. Julian strode forward
+as though unconscious of his following. Paul became anxious. He hurried
+alongside.
+
+'You must speak to these people,' he whispered.
+
+Julian mounted the steps and turned in the dark frame of the doorway.
+The people had come to a standstill, filling the narrow street. It was
+now they who looked up to Julian, and he who looked down upon them,
+considering them, still remote and preoccupied, conscious that here and
+now the seed sown in the club-rooms must bear its fruit, that life,
+grown impatient of waiting for a summons he did not give, had come to
+him of its own accord and ordered him to take the choice of peace or
+war within its folded cloak. If he had hoped to escape again to England
+with a decision still untaken, that hope was to be deluded. He was
+being forced and hustled out of his childhood into the responsibilities
+of a man. He could not plead the nebulousness of his mind; action
+called to him, loud and insistent. In vain he told himself, with the
+frown deepening between his brows, and the people who watched him
+torn with anxiety before that frown--in vain he told himself that the
+situation was fictitious, theatrical. He could not convince himself of
+this truth with the fire of the people's gaze directed upon him. He
+must speak to them; they were silent, expectant, waiting. The words
+broke from him impelled, as he thought, by his terror of his own
+helplessness and lack of control, but to his audience they came as a
+command, a threat, and an invitation.
+
+'What is it you want of me?'
+
+He stood on the highest of the three steps, alone, the back of his head
+pressed against the door, and a hand on each of the flanking columns.
+The black-robed priest had taken his place below him, to one side,
+on the ground level. Julian felt a sudden resentment against these
+waiting people, that had driven him to bay, the resentment of panic and
+isolation, but to them, his attitude betraying nothing, he appeared
+infallible, dominating, and inaccessible.
+
+Tsantilas Tsigaridis came forward as spokesman, a gold ring hanging
+in the lobe of one ear, and a heavy silver ring shining dully on the
+little finger of his brown, knotted hand.
+
+'Kyrie,' he said, 'Angheliki Zapantiotis has hailed you. We are your
+own people. By the authorities we are persecuted as though we were
+Bulgars, we, their brothers in blood. Last week a score of police came
+in boats from Herakleion and raided our houses in search of weapons.
+Our women ran screaming to the vineyards. Such weapons as the police
+could find were but the pistols we carry for ornament on the feast-days
+of church, and these they removed, for the sake, as we know, not being
+blind, of the silver on the locks which they will use to their own
+advantage. By such persecutions we are harried. We may never know when
+a hand will not descend on one of our number, on a charge of sedition
+or conspiracy, and he be seen no more. We are not organised for
+resistance. We are blind beasts, leaderless.'
+
+A woman in the crowd began to sob, burying her face in her scarlet
+apron. A man snarled his approval of the spokesman's words, and spat
+violently into the gutter.
+
+'And you demand of me?' said Julian, again breaking his silence.
+'Championship? leadership? You cannot say you are unjustly accused of
+sedition! What report of Aphros could I carry to Herakleion?'
+
+He saw the people meek, submissive, beneath his young censure, and the
+knowledge of his power surged through him like a current through water.
+
+'Kyrie,' said the old sailor, reproved, but with the same inflexible
+dignity, 'we know that we are at your mercy. But we are your own
+people. We have been the people of your people for four generations.
+The authorities have torn even the painting of your grandfather from
+the walls of our assembly room....'
+
+'Small blame to them,' thought Julian; 'that shows their good sense.'
+
+Tsantilas pursued,--
+
+' ... we are left neither public nor private liberty. We are already
+half-ruined by the port-dues which are directed against us islanders
+and us alone.' A crafty look came into his eyes. 'Here, Kyrie, you
+should be in sympathy.'
+
+Julian's moment of panic had passed; he was now conscious only of his
+complete control. He gave way to the anger prompted by the mercenary
+trait of the Levantine that marred the man's natural and splendid
+dignity.
+
+'What sympathy I may have,' he said loudly, 'is born of compassion, and
+not of avaricious interest.'
+
+He could not have told what instinct urged him to rebuke these people
+to whose petition he was decided to yield. He observed that with each
+fresh reproof they cringed the more.
+
+'Compassion, Kyrie, and proprietary benevolence,' Tsantilas rejoined,
+recognising his mistake. 'We know that in you we find a disinterested
+mediator. We pray to God that we may be allowed to live at peace with
+Herakleion. We pray that we may be allowed to place our difficulties
+and our sorrows in your hands for a peaceful settlement.'
+
+Julian looked at him, majestic as an Arab and more cunning than a Jew,
+and a slightly ironical smile wavered on his lips.
+
+'Old brigand,' he thought, 'the last thing he wants is to live at peace
+with Herakleion; he's spoiling for a stand-up fight. Men on horses,
+himself at their head, charging the police down this street, and
+defending our house like a beleaguered fort; rifles cracking from every
+window, and the more police corpses the better. May I be there to see
+it!'
+
+His mind flew to Eve, whom he had last seen lying in a hammock, drowsy,
+dressed in white, and breathing the scent of the gardenia she held
+between her fingers. What part would she, the spoilt, the exquisite,
+play if there were to be bloodshed on Aphros?
+
+All this while he was silent, scowling at the multitude, who waited
+breathless for his next words.
+
+'Father will half kill me,' he thought.
+
+At that moment Tsigaridis, overcome by his anxiety, stretched out his
+hands towards him, surrendering his dignity in a supreme appeal,--
+
+'Kyrie? I have spoken.'
+
+He dropped his hands to his sides, bowed his head, and fell back a pace.
+
+Julian pressed his shoulders strongly against the door; it was solid
+enough. The sun, striking on his bare hand, was hot. The faces and
+necks and arms of the people below him were made of real flesh and
+blood. The tension, the anxiety in their eyes was genuine. He chased
+away the unreality.
+
+'You have spoken,' he said, 'and I have accepted.'
+
+The woman named Angheliki Zapantiotis, who had hailed him as liberator,
+cast herself forward on to the step at his feet, as a stir and a
+movement, that audibly expressed itself in the shifting of feet and the
+releasing of contained breaths, ruffled through the crowd. He lifted
+his hand to enjoin silence, and spoke with his hand raised high above
+the figure of the woman crouching on the step.
+
+He told them that there could now be no going back, that, although
+the time of waiting might seem to them long and weary, they must
+have hopeful trust in him. He exacted from them trust, fidelity, and
+obedience. His voice rang sharply on the word, and his glance circled
+imperiously, challenging defiance. It encountered none. He told them
+that he would never give his sanction to violence save as a last
+resort. He became intoxicated with the unaccustomed wine of oratory.
+
+'An island is our refuge; we are the garrison of a natural fortress,
+that we can hold against the assault of our enemies from the sea. We
+will never seek them out, we will be content to wait, restrained and
+patient, until they move with weapons in their hands against us. Let us
+swear that our only guilt of aggression shall be to preserve our coasts
+inviolate.'
+
+A deep and savage growl answered him as he paused. He was flushed
+with the spirit of adventure, the prerogative of youth. The force
+of youth moved so strongly within him that every man present felt
+himself strangely ready and equipped for the calls of the enterprise.
+A mysterious alchemy had taken place. They, untutored, unorganised,
+scarcely knowing what they wanted, much less how to obtain it,
+had offered him the formless material of their blind and chaotic
+rebellion, and he, having blown upon it with the fire of his breath,
+was welding it now to an obedient, tempered weapon in his hands. He had
+taken control. He might disappear and the curtains of silence close
+together behind his exit; Paul, watching, knew that these people would
+henceforward wait patiently, and with confidence, for his return.
+
+He dropped suddenly from his rhetoric into a lower key.
+
+'In the meantime I lay upon you a charge of discretion. No one in
+Herakleion must get wind of this meeting; Father Paul and I will be
+silent, the rest lies with you. Until you hear of me again, I desire
+you to go peaceably about your ordinary occupations.'
+
+'Better put that in,' he thought to himself.
+
+'I know nothing, nor do I wish to know,' he continued, shrewdly
+examining their faces, 'of the part you played in the robbery at the
+casino. I only know that I will never countenance the repetition
+of any such attempt; you will have to choose between me and your
+brigandage.' He suddenly stamped his foot. 'Choose now! which is it to
+be?'
+
+'Kyrie, Kyrie,' said Tsigaridis, 'you are our only hope.'
+
+'Lift up your hands,' Julian said intolerantly.
+
+His eyes searched among the bronzed arms that rose at his command like
+a forest of lances; he enjoyed forcing obedience upon the crowd and
+seeing their humiliation.
+
+'Very well,' he said then, and the hands sank, 'see to it that you
+remember your promise. I have no more to say. Wait, trust, and hope.'
+
+He carried his hand to his forehead and threw it out before him in a
+gesture of farewell and dismissal.
+
+He suspected himself of having acted and spoken in a theatrical manner,
+but he knew also that through the chaos of his mind an unextinguishable
+light was dawning.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Julian in the candour of his inexperience unquestioningly believed that
+the story would not reach Herakleion. Before the week was out, however,
+he found himself curiously eyed in the streets, and by the end of the
+week, going to dinner at the French Legation, he was struck by the hush
+that fell as his name was announced in the mirrored drawing-rooms.
+Madame Lafarge said to him severely,--
+
+'Jeune homme, vous avez été très indiscret,' but a smile lurked in her
+eyes beneath her severity.
+
+An immense Serbian, almost a giant, named Grbits, with a flat,
+Mongolian face, loomed ominously over him.
+
+'Young man, you have my sympathy. You have disquieted the Greeks. You
+may count at any time upon my friendship.'
+
+His fingers were enveloped and crushed in Grbits' formidable handshake.
+
+The older diplomatists greeted him with an assumption of censure that
+was not seriously intended to veil their tolerant amusement.
+
+'Do you imagine that we have nothing to do,' Don Rodrigo Valdez said to
+him, 'that you set out to enliven the affairs of Herakleion?'
+
+Fru Thyregod, the Danish Excellency, took him into a corner and tapped
+him on the arm with her fan with that half flirtatious, half friendly
+familiarity she adopted towards all men.
+
+'You are a dark horse, my dark boy,' she said meaningly, and, as he
+pretended ignorance, raising his brows and shaking his head, added,
+'I'm much indebted to you as a living proof of my perception. I always
+told them; I always said, "Carl, that boy is an adventurer," and Carl
+said, "Nonsense, Mabel, your head is full of romance," but I said,
+"Mark my words, Carl, that boy will flare up; he's quiet now, but
+you'll have to reckon with him."'
+
+He realised the extent of the gratitude of social Herakleion. He
+had provided a flavour which was emphatically absent from the usual
+atmosphere of these gatherings. Every Legation in turn, during both
+the summer and the winter season, extended its hospitality to its
+colleagues with complete resignation as to the lack of all possibility
+of the unforeseen. The rules of diplomatic precedence rigorously
+demanding a certain grouping, the Danish Excellency, for example, might
+sit before her mirror fluffing out her already fluffy fair hair with
+the complacent if not particularly pleasurable certainty that this
+evening, at the French Legation, she would be escorted in to dinner
+by the Roumanian Minister, and that on her other hand would sit the
+Italian Counsellor, while to-morrow, at the Spanish Legation, she would
+be escorted to dinner by the Italian Counsellor and would have upon her
+other hand the Roumanian Minister--unless, indeed, no other Minister's
+wife but Madame Lafarge was present, in which case she would be placed
+on the left hand of Don Rodrigo Valdez. She would have preferred to
+sit beside Julian Davenant, but he, of course, would be placed amongst
+the young men--secretaries, young Greeks, and what not--at the end
+of the table. These young men--'les petits jeunes gens du bout de la
+table,' as Alexander Christopoulos, including himself in their number,
+contemptuously called them--always ate mournfully through their dinner
+without speaking to one another. They did not enjoy themselves, nor did
+their host or hostess enjoy having them there, but it was customary
+to invite them.... Fru Thyregod knew that she must not exhaust all
+her subjects of conversation with her two neighbours this evening, but
+must keep a provision against the morrow; therefore, true to her little
+science, she refrained from mentioning Julian's adventure on Aphros
+to the Roumanian, and discoursed on it behind her fan to the Italian
+only. Other people seemed to be doing the same. Julian heard whispers,
+and saw glances directed towards him. Distinctly, Herakleion and its
+hostesses would be grateful to him.
+
+He felt slightly exhilarated. He noticed that no Greeks were present,
+and thought that they had been omitted on his account. He reflected,
+not without a certain apprehensive pleasure, that if this roomful
+knew, as it evidently did, the story would not be long in reaching
+his father. Who had betrayed him? Not Paul, he was sure, nor Kato, to
+whom he had confided the story. (Tears had come into her eyes, she had
+clasped her hands, and she had kissed him, to his surprise, on his
+forehead.) He was glad on the whole that he had been betrayed. He had
+come home in a fever of exaltation and enthusiasm which had rendered
+concealment both damping and irksome. Little incidents, of significance
+to him alone, had punctuated his days by reminders of his incredible,
+preposterous, and penetrating secret; to-night, for instance, the
+chasseur in the hall, the big, scarlet-coated chasseur, an islander,
+had covertly kissed his hand....
+
+His father took an unexpected view. Julian had been prepared for anger,
+in fact he had the countering phrases already in his mind as he mounted
+the stairs of the house in the _platia_ on returning from the French
+Legation. His father was waiting, a candle in his hand, on the landing.
+
+'I heard you come in. I want to ask you, Julian,' he said at once,
+'whether the story I have heard in the club to-night is true? That you
+went to Aphros, and entered into heaven knows what absurd covenant
+with the people?'
+
+Julian flushed at the reprimanding tone.
+
+'I knew that you would not approve,' he said. 'But one must do
+something. Those miserable, bullied people, denied the right to
+live....'
+
+'Tut,' said his father impatiently. 'Have they really taken you in?
+I thought you had more sense. I have had a good deal of trouble in
+explaining to Malteios that you are only a hot-headed boy, carried away
+by the excitement of the moment. You see, I am trying to make excuses
+for you, but I am annoyed, Julian, I am annoyed. I thought I could
+trust you. Paul, too. However, you bring your own punishment on your
+head, for you will have to keep away from Herakleion in the immediate
+future.'
+
+'Keep away from Herakleion?' cried Julian.
+
+'Malteios' hints were unmistakable,' his father said dryly. 'I am glad
+to see you are dismayed. You had better go to bed now, and I will speak
+to you to-morrow.'
+
+Mr Davenant started to go upstairs, but turned again, and came down the
+two or three steps, still holding his candle in his hand.
+
+'Come,' he said in a tone of remonstrance, 'if you really take the
+thing seriously, look at it at least for a moment with practical sense.
+What is the grievance of the Islands? That they want to be independent
+from Herakleion. If they must belong to anybody, they say, let them
+belong to Italy rather than to Greece or to Herakleion. And why?
+Because they speak an Italian rather than a Greek patois! Because a lot
+of piratical Genoese settled in them five hundred years ago! Well, what
+do you propose to do, my dear Julian? Hand the Islands over to Italy?'
+
+'They want independence,' Julian muttered. 'They aren't even allowed
+to speak their own language,' he continued, raising his voice. 'You
+know it is forbidden in the schools. You know that the port-dues in
+Herakleion ruin them--and are intended to ruin them. You know they are
+oppressed in every petty as well as in every important way. You know
+that if they were independent they wouldn't trouble Herakleion.'
+
+'Independent! independent!' said Mr Davenant, irritable and uneasy.
+'Still, you haven't told me what you proposed to do. Did you mean to
+create a revolution?'
+
+Julian hesitated. He did not know. He said boldly,--
+
+'If need be.'
+
+Mr Davenant snorted.
+
+'Upon my word,' he cried sarcastically, 'you have caught the emotional
+tone of Aphros to perfection. I suppose you saw yourself holding
+Panaïoannou at bay? If these are your ideas, I shall certainly support
+Malteios in keeping you away. I am on the best of terms with Malteios,
+and I cannot afford to allow your Quixotism to upset the balance. I can
+obtain almost any concession from Malteios,' he added thoughtfully,
+narrowing his eyes and rubbing his hand across his chin.
+
+Julian watched his father with distaste and antagonism.
+
+'And that is all you consider?' he said then.
+
+'What else is there to consider?' Mr Davenant replied. 'I am a
+practical man, and practical men don't run after chimeras. I hope I'm
+not more cynical than most. You know very well that at the bottom of
+my heart I sympathise with the Islands. Come,' he said, with a sudden
+assumption of frankness, seeing that he was creating an undesirable
+rift between himself and his son, 'I will even admit to you, in
+confidence, that the republic doesn't treat its Islands as well as it
+might. You know, too, that I respect and admire Madame Kato; she comes
+from the Islands, and has every right to hold the views of an islander.
+But there's no reason why you should espouse those views, Julian. We
+are foreigners here, representatives of a great family business, and
+that business, when all's said and done, must always remain our first
+consideration.'
+
+'Yet people here say,' Julian argued, still hoping for the best against
+the cold disillusionment creeping over him, 'that no political move can
+be made without allowing for your influence and Uncle Robert's. And my
+grandfather, after all....'
+
+'Ah, your grandfather!' said Mr Davenant, 'your grandfather was an
+extremely sagacious man, the real founder of the family tradition,
+though I wouldn't like Malteios to hear me say so. He knew well enough
+that in the Islands he held a lever which gave him, if he chose to use
+it, absolute control over Herakleion. He only used it once, when he
+wanted something they refused to give him; they held out against him
+for a year, but ultimately they came to heel. A very sagacious man....
+Don't run away with the idea that he was inspired by anything other
+than a most practical grasp--though I don't say it wasn't a bold one--a
+most practical grasp of the situation. He gave the politicians of
+Herakleion a lesson they haven't yet forgotten.
+
+He paused, and, as Julian said nothing, added--
+
+'We keep very quiet, your uncle Robert and I, but Malteios, and
+Stavridis himself, know that in reality we hold them on a rope. We
+give them a lot of play, but at any moment we choose, we can haul them
+in. A very satisfactory arrangement. Tacit agreements, to my mind, are
+always the most satisfactory. And so you see that I can't tolerate your
+absurd, uneducated interference. Why, there's no end to the harm you
+might do! Some day you will thank me.'
+
+As Julian still said nothing, he looked at his son, who was standing,
+staring at the floor, a deep frown on his forehead, thunderous,
+unconvinced. Mr Davenant, being habitually uncommunicative, felt
+aggrieved that his explanatory condescension had not been received with
+a more attentive deference. He also felt uneasy. Julian's silences were
+always disquieting.
+
+'You are very young still,' he said, in a more conciliatory tone, 'and
+I ought perhaps to blame myself for allowing you to go about so freely
+in this very unreal and bewildering place. Perhaps I ought not to have
+expected you to keep your head. Malteios is quite right: Herakleion is
+no place for a young man. Don't think me hard in sending you away. Some
+day you will come back with, I hope, a better understanding.'
+
+He rested his hand kindly for a moment on Julian's shoulder, then
+turned away, and the light of his candle died as he passed the bend of
+the stairs.
+
+
+On the following evening Julian, returning from the country-house where
+he had spent the day, was told that the Premier was with Mr Davenant
+and would be glad to see him.
+
+He had ridden out to the country, regardless of the heat, turning
+instinctively to Eve in his strange and rebellious frame of mind.
+For some reason which he did not analyse, he identified her with
+Aphros--the Aphros of romance and glamour to which he so obstinately
+clung. To his surprise she listened unresponsive and sulky.
+
+'You are not interested, Eve?'
+
+Then the reason of her unreasonableness broke out.
+
+'You have kept this from me for a whole week, and you confide in me
+now because you know the story is public property. You expect me to be
+interested. Grand merci!'
+
+'But, Eve, I had pledged myself not to tell a soul.'
+
+'Did you tell Kato?'
+
+'Damn your intuition!' he said angrily.
+
+She lashed at him then, making him feel guilty, miserable, ridiculous,
+though as he sat scowling over the sea--they were in their favourite
+place at the bottom of the garden, where under the pergola of gourds
+it was cool even at that time of the day--he appeared to her more than
+usually unmoved and forbidding.
+
+After a long pause,--
+
+'Julian, I am sorry.--I don't often apologise.--I said I was sorry.'
+
+He looked coldly at her with his mournful eyes, that, green in repose,
+turned black in anger.
+
+'Your vanity makes me ill.'
+
+'You told Kato.'
+
+'Jealousy!'
+
+She began to protest; then, with a sudden change of front,--
+
+'You know I am jealous. When I am jealous, I lie awake all night. I
+lose all sense of proportion. It's no joke, my jealousy; it's like an
+open wound. I put up a stockade round it to protect it. You are not
+considerate.'
+
+'Can you never forget yourself? Do you care nothing for the Islands?
+Are you so self-centred, so empty-headed? Are all women, I wonder, as
+vain as you?'
+
+They sat on the parapet, angry, inimical, with the coloured gourds
+hanging heavily over their heads.
+
+Far out to sea the Islands lay, so pure and fair and delicate that
+Julian, beholding them, violently rejected the idea that in this
+possession of such disarming loveliness his grandfather had seen merely
+a lever for the coercion of recalcitrant politicians. They lay there
+as innocent and fragile as a lovely woman asleep, veiled by the haze
+of sunshine as the sleeper's limbs by a garment of lawn. Julian gazed
+till his eyes and his heart swam in the tenderness of passionate
+and protective ownership. He warmed towards his grandfather, the man
+whose generous ideals had been so cynically libelled by the succeeding
+generation. No man deserving the name could be guilty of so repulsive
+an act of prostitution....
+
+'They will see me here again,' he exclaimed, striking his fist on the
+parapet.
+
+To the startled question in Eve's eyes he vouchsafed an explanation.
+
+'Malteios is sending me away. But when his term of office is over, I
+shall come back. It will be a good opportunity. We will break with
+Herakleion over the change of government. Kato will restrain Malteios
+so long as he is in power, I can trust her; but I shall make my break
+with Stavridis.'
+
+In his plans for the future he had again forgotten Eve.
+
+'You are going away?'
+
+'For a year or perhaps longer,' he said gloomily.
+
+Her natural instinct of defiant secrecy kept the flood of protest back
+from her lips. Already in her surprisingly definite philosophy of life,
+self-concealment held a sacred and imperious position. Secrecy--and her
+secrecy, because disguised under a superficial show of expansiveness,
+was the more fundamental, the more dangerous--secrecy she recognised as
+being both a shield and a weapon. Therefore, already apprehending that
+existence in a world of men was a fight, a struggle, and a pursuit,
+she took refuge in her citadel. And, being possessed of a picturesque
+imagination, she had upon a certain solemn occasion carried a symbolic
+key to the steps which led down to the sea from the end of the pergola
+of gourds, and had flung it out as far as she was able into the
+guardianship of the waters.
+
+She remembered this now as she sat on the parapet with Julian, and
+smiled to herself ironically. She looked at him with the eye of an
+artist, and thought how his limbs, fallen into their natural grace
+of relaxed muscularity, suggested the sculptural ease of stone far
+more than the flat surfaces of canvas. Sculptural, she thought, was
+undoubtedly the adjective which thrust itself upon one. In one of her
+spasmodic outbursts of activity she had modelled him, but, disdainful
+of her own talents, had left the clay to perish. Then she remembered
+acutely that she would not see him again.
+
+'My mythological Julian....' she murmured, smiling.
+
+A world of flattery lay in her tone.
+
+'You odd little thing,' he said, 'why the adjective?'
+
+She made an expressive gesture with her hands.
+
+'Your indifference, your determination--you're so intractable, so
+contemptuous, so hard--and sometimes so inspired. You're so fatally
+well suited to the Islands. Prince of Aphros?' she launched at him
+insinuatingly.
+
+She was skilful; he flushed. She was giving him what he had, half
+unconsciously, sought.
+
+'Siren!' he said.
+
+'Am I? Perhaps, after all, we are both equally well suited to the
+Islands,' she said lightly.
+
+And for some reason their conversation dropped. Yet it sufficed to
+send him, stimulated, from her side, full of self-confidence; he had
+forgotten that she was barely seventeen, a child! and for him the smile
+of pride in her eyes had been the smile of Aphros.
+
+In the house, on his way through, he met Father Paul.
+
+'Everything is known,' said the priest, wringing his hand with his
+usual energy.
+
+'What am I to do? Malteios wants me to leave Herakleion. Shall I
+refuse? I am glad to have met you,' said Julian, 'I was on my way to
+find you.'
+
+'Go, if Malteios wants you to go,' the priest replied, 'the time is not
+ripe yet; but are you determined, in your own mind, to throw in your
+lot with Hagios Zacharie? Remember, I cautioned you when we were still
+on Aphros: you must be prepared for a complete estrangement from your
+family. You will be running with the hare, no longer hunting with the
+hounds. Have you considered?'
+
+'I am with the Islands.'
+
+'Good,' said the priest, making a sign over him. 'Go, all the same,
+if Malteios exacts it; you will be the more of a man when you return.
+Malteios' party will surely fall at the next elections. By then we
+shall be ready, and I will see that you are summoned. God bless you.'
+
+'Will you go out to Eve in the garden, father? She is under the
+pergola. Go and talk to her.'
+
+'She is unhappy?' asked the priest, with a sharp look.
+
+'A little, I think,' said Julian, 'will you go?'
+
+'At once, at once,' said Paul, and he went quickly, through the grove
+of lemon-trees, stumbling over his soutane....
+
+Julian returned to Herakleion, where he found his father and Malteios
+in the big frescoed drawing-room, standing in an embrasure of the
+windows. The Premier's face as he turned was full of tolerant benignity.
+
+'Ah, here is our young friend,' he began paternally. 'What are these
+stories I hear of you, young man? I have been telling your father
+that when I was a schoolboy, a _lycéen_--I, too, tried to meddle in
+politics. Take my advice, and keep clear of these things till you
+are older. There are many things for the young: dancing, poetry, and
+love. Politics to the old and the middle-aged. Of course, I know your
+little escapade was nothing but a joke ... high spirits ... natural
+mischief....'
+
+The interview was galling and humiliating to Julian; he disliked the
+Premier's bantering friendliness, through which he was not sufficiently
+experienced to discern the hidden mistrust, apprehension, and
+hostility. His father, compelled to a secret and resentful pride in
+his son, was conscious of these things. But Julian, his eyes fixed on
+the middle button of the Premier's frock-coat, sullen and rebellious,
+tried to shut his ears to the prolonged murmur of urbane derision. He
+wished to look down upon, to ignore Malteios, the unreal man, and this
+he could not do while he allowed those smooth and skilful words to flow
+unresisted in their suave cruelty over his soul. He shut his ears, and
+felt only the hardening of his determination. He would go; he would
+leave Herakleion, only to return with increase of strength in the hour
+of fulfilment.
+
+Dismissed, he set out for Kato's flat, hatless, in a mood of thunder.
+His violence was not entirely genuine, but he persuaded himself, for
+he had lately been with Eve, and the plausible influence of Herakleion
+was upon him. He strode down the street, aware that people turned to
+gaze at him as he went. On the quay, the immense Grbits rose suddenly
+up from the little green table where he sat drinking vermouth outside a
+café.
+
+'My young friend,' he said, 'they tell me you are leaving Herakleion?
+
+'They are wise,' he boomed. 'You would break their toys if you
+remained. But _I_ remain; shall I watch for you? You will come back? I
+have hated the Greeks well. Shall we play a game with them? ha! ha!'
+
+His huge laugh reverberated down the quay as Julian passed on, looking
+at the visiting card which the giant had just handed to him:--
+
+
+                   SRGJÁN GRBITS.
+
+    _Attaché à la Légation de S.M. le Roi des Serbes,
+                Croates, et Slovènes._
+
+
+'Grbits my spy!' he was thinking. 'Fantastic, fantastic.'
+
+Kato's flat was at the top of a four-storied house on the quay. On the
+ground floor of the house was a cake-shop, and, like every other house
+along the sea-front, over every window hung a gay, striped sunblind
+that billowed slightly like a flag in the breeze from the sea. Inside
+the cake-shop a number of Levantines, dressed in their hot black, were
+eating sweet things off the marble counter. Julian could never get Eve
+past the cake-shop when they went to Kato's together; she would always
+wander in to eat _choux à la crème_, licking the whipped cream off her
+fingers with a guilty air until he lent her his handkerchief, her own
+being invariably lost.
+
+Julian went into the house by a side-door, up the steep narrow
+stairs, the walls painted in Pompeian red with a slate-coloured
+dado; past the first floor, where on two frosted glass doors ran the
+inscription: KONINKLIJKE NEDERLANDSCHE STOOMBOOT-MAATSCHAPPIJ; past
+the second floor, where a brass plate said: Th. Mavrudis et fils,
+Cie. d'assurance; past the third floor, where old Grigoriu, the
+money-lender, was letting himself in by a latchkey; to the fourth
+floor, where a woman in the native dress of the Islands admitted him to
+Kato's flat.
+
+The singer was seated on one of her low, carpet-covered divans, her
+throat and arms, as usual, bare, the latter covered with innumerable
+bangles; her knees wide apart and a hand placed resolutely upon each
+knee; before her stood Tsigaridis, the headman of Aphros, his powerful
+body encased in the blue English jersey Mrs Davenant had given him,
+and from the compression of which his pleated skirt sprang out so
+ridiculously. Beside Kato on the divan lay a basket of ripe figs which
+he had brought her. Their two massive figures disproportionately filled
+the already overcrowded little room.
+
+They regarded Julian gravely.
+
+'I am going away,' he said, standing still before their scrutiny, as a
+pupil before his preceptors.
+
+Kato bowed her head. They knew. They had discussed whether they should
+let him go, and had decided that he might be absent from Herakleion
+until the next elections.
+
+'But you will return, Kyrie?'
+
+Tsigaridis spoke respectfully, but with urgent authority, much in the
+tone a regent might adopt towards a youthful king.
+
+'Of course I shall return,' Julian answered, and smiled and added, 'You
+mustn't lose faith, Tsantilas.'
+
+The fisherman bowed with that dignity he inherited from unnamed but
+remotely ascending generations; he took his leave of Kato and the boy,
+shutting the door quietly behind him. Kato came up to Julian, who had
+turned away and was staring out of the window. From the height of this
+fourth story one looked down upon the peopled quay below, and saw
+distinctly the houses upon the distant Islands.
+
+'You are sad,' she said.
+
+She moved to the piano, which, like herself, was a great deal too big
+for the room, and which alone of all the pieces of furniture was not
+loaded with ornaments. Julian had often wondered, looking at the large
+expanse of lid, how Kato had so consistently resisted the temptation to
+put things upon it. The most he had ever seen there was a gilt basket
+of hydrangeas, tied with a blue ribbon, from which hung the card of the
+Premier.
+
+He knew that within twenty-four hours he would be at sea, and that
+Herakleion as he would last have seen it--from the deck of the
+steamer, white, with many coloured sunblinds, and, behind it, Mount
+Mylassa, rising so suddenly, so threateningly, seemingly determined
+to crowd the man-built town off its narrow strip of coast into the
+water--Herakleion, so pictured, would be but a memory; within a
+week, he knew, he would be in England. He did not know when he would
+see Herakleion again. Therefore he abandoned himself, on this last
+evening, to Aphros, to the memory of Eve, and to romance, not naming,
+not linking the three that took possession of and coloured all the
+daylight of his youth, but quiescent, sitting on the floor, his knees
+clasped, and approaching again, this time in spirit, the island where
+the foam broke round the foot of the rocks and the fleet of little
+fishing-boats swayed like resting seagulls in the harbour. He scarcely
+noticed that, all this while, Kato was singing. She sang in a very low
+voice, as though she were singing a lullaby, and, though the words did
+not reach his consciousness, he knew that the walls of the room had
+melted into the warm and scented freedom of the terraces on Aphros when
+the vintage was at its height, and when the air, in the evening, was
+heavy with the smell of the grape. He felt Eve's fingers lightly upon
+his brows. He saw again her shadowy gray eyes, red mouth, and waving
+hair. He visualised the sparkle that crept into her eyes--strange eyes
+they were! deep-set, slanting slightly upwards, so ironical sometimes,
+and sometimes so inexplicably sad--when she was about to launch one of
+her more caustic and just remarks. How illuminating her remarks could
+be! they always threw a new light; but she never insisted on their
+value; on the contrary, she passed carelessly on to something else. But
+whatever she touched, she lit.... One came to her with the expectation
+of being stimulated, perhaps a little bewildered, and one was not
+disappointed. He recalled her so vividly--yet recollection of her could
+never be really vivid; the construction of her personality was too
+subtle, too varied; as soon as one had left her one wanted to go back
+to her, thinking that this time, perhaps, one would succeed better in
+seizing and imprisoning the secret of her elusiveness. Julian caught
+himself smiling dreamily as he conjured her up. He heard the murmur of
+her seductive voice,--
+
+'I love you, Julian.'
+
+He accepted the words, which he had heard often from her lips, dreamily
+as part of his last, deliberate evening, so losing himself in his
+dreams that he almost failed to notice when the music died and the
+notes of Kato's voice slid from the recitative of her peasant songs
+into conversation with himself. She left the music-stool and came
+towards him where he sat on the floor.
+
+'Julian,' she said, looking down at him, 'your cousin Eve, who is full
+of perception, says you are so primitive that the very furniture is
+irksome to you and that you dispense with it as far as you can. I know
+you prefer the ground to a sofa.'
+
+He became shy, as he instantly did when the topic of his own
+personality was introduced. He felt dimly that Eve, who remorselessly
+dragged him from the woods into the glare of sunlight, alone had the
+privilege. At the same time he recognised her methods of appropriating
+a characteristic, insignificant in itself, and of building it up,
+touching it with her own peculiar grace and humour until it became
+a true and delicate attribute, growing into life thanks to her
+christening of it; a method truly feminine, exquisitely complimentary,
+carrying with it an insinuation faintly exciting, and creating a link
+quite separately personal, an understanding, almost an obligation to
+prove oneself true to her conception....
+
+'So you are leaving us?' said Kato, 'you are going to live among other
+standards, other influences, "_dont je ne connais point la puissance
+sur votre coeur_." How soon will it be before you forget? And how soon
+before you return? We want you here, Julian.'
+
+'For the Islands?' he asked.
+
+'For the Islands, and may I not say,' said Kato, spreading her hands
+with a musical clinking of all her bangles, 'for ourselves also? How
+soon will it be before you forget the Islands?' she forced herself to
+ask, and then, relapsing, 'Which will fade first in your memory, I
+wonder--the Islands? or Kato?'
+
+'I can't separate you in my mind,' he said, faintly ill at ease.
+
+'It is true that we have talked of them by the hour,' she answered,
+'have we talked of them so much that they and I are entirely
+identified? Do you pay me the compliment of denying me the mean
+existence of an ordinary woman?'
+
+He thought that by answering in the affirmative he would indeed be
+paying her the greatest compliment that lay within his power, for he
+would be raising her to the status of a man and a comrade. He said,--
+
+'I never believed, before I met you, that a woman could devote herself
+so whole-heartedly to her patriotism. We have the Islands in common
+between us; and, as you know, the Islands mean more than mere Islands
+to me: a great many things to which I could never give a name. And
+I am glad, yes, so glad, that our friendship has been, in a way, so
+impersonal--as though I were your disciple, and this flat my secret
+school, from which you should one day discharge me, saying "Go!"'
+
+Never had he appeared to her so hopelessly inaccessible as now when he
+laid his admiration, his almost religious idealisation of her at her
+feet.
+
+He went on,--
+
+'You have been so infinitely good to me; I have come here so often, I
+have talked so much; I have often felt, when I went away, that you, who
+were accustomed to clever men, must naturally....'
+
+'Why not say,' she interrupted, 'instead of "clever men," "men of my
+own age? my own generation"?'
+
+He looked at her doubtfully, checked. She was standing over him, her
+hands on her hips, and he noticed the tight circles of fat round her
+bent wrists, and the dimples in every joint of her stumpy hands.
+
+'But why apologise?' she added, taking pity on his embarrassment, with
+a smile both forgiving and rueful for the ill she had brought upon
+herself. 'If you have enjoyed our talks, be assured I have enjoyed
+them too. For conversations to be as successful as ours have been, the
+enjoyment cannot possibly be one-sided. I shall miss them when you are
+gone. You go to England?'
+
+After a moment she said,--
+
+'Isn't it strange, when those we know so intimately in one place
+travel away to another place in which we have never seen them? What do
+I, Kato, know of the houses you will live in in England, or of your
+English friends? as some poet speaks, in a line I quoted to you just
+now, of all the influences _dont je ne connais pas la puissance sur
+votre coeur_! Perhaps you will even fall in love. Perhaps you will
+tell this imaginary woman with whom you are to fall in love, about our
+Islands?'
+
+'No woman but you would understand,' he said.
+
+'She would listen for your sake, and for your sake she would pretend
+interest. Does Eve listen when you talk about the Islands?'
+
+'Eve doesn't care about such things. I sometimes think she cares only
+about herself,' he replied with some impatience.
+
+'You ...' she began again, but, checking herself, she said instead,
+with a grave irony that was lost upon him, 'You have flattered me
+greatly to-day, Julian. I hope you may always find in me a wise
+preceptor. But I can only point the way. The accomplishment lies with
+you. We will work together?' She added, smiling, 'In the realms of the
+impersonal? A philosophic friendship? A Platonic alliance?'
+
+When he left her, she was still, gallantly, smiling.
+
+
+
+
+PART II--EVE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+After spending nearly two years in exile, Julian was once more upon his
+way to Herakleion.
+
+On deck, brooding upon a great coil of rope, his head bare to the
+winds, absorbed and concentrated, he disregarded all his surroundings
+in favour of the ever equi-distant horizon. He seemed to be entranced
+by its promise. He seemed, moreover, to form part of the ship on which
+he travelled; part of it, crouching as he did always at the prow, as
+a figurehead forms part; part of the adventure, the winged gallantry,
+the eager onward spirit indissoluble from the voyage of a ship in the
+midst of waters from which no land is visible. The loneliness--for
+there is no loneliness to equal the loneliness of the sea--the strife
+of the wind, the generosity of the expanse, the pure cleanliness of
+the nights and days, met and matched his mood. At moments, feeling
+himself unconquerable, he tasted the full, rare, glory of youth and
+anticipation. He did not know which he preferred: the days full of
+sunlight on the wide blue sea, or the nights when the breeze was
+fresher against his face, and the road more mysterious, under a young
+moon that lit the ridges of the waves and travelled slowly past,
+overhead, across the long black lines of cordage and rigging. He knew
+only that he was happy as he had never been happy in his life.
+
+His fellow-passengers had watched him when he joined the ship at
+Brindisi, and a murmur had run amongst them, 'Julian Davenant--son of
+those rich Davenants of Herakleion, you know--great wine-growers--they
+own a whole archipelago'; some one had disseminated the information
+even as Julian came up the gangway, in faded old gray flannels,
+hatless, in a rage with his porter, who appeared to be terrified out
+of all proportion. Then, suddenly, he had lost all interest in his
+luggage, tossed some money to the porter, and, walking for'ard, had
+thrown himself down on the heap of ropes and stared straight in front
+of him to sea, straining his eyes forward to where Greece might lie.
+
+From here he had scarcely stirred. The people who watched him,
+benevolent and amused, thought him very young. They saw that he
+relieved the intensity of his vigil with absurd and childlike games
+that he played by himself, hiding and springing out at the sailors,
+and laughing immoderately when he had succeeded in startling them--he
+fraternised with the sailors, though with no one else--or when he saw
+somebody trip over a ring in the deck. His humour, like his body,
+seemed to be built on large and simple lines.... In the mornings he ran
+round and round the decks in rubber-soled shoes. Then again he flung
+himself down and continued with unseeing eyes to stare at the curve of
+the horizon.
+
+Not wholly by design, he had remained absent from Herakleion for
+nearly two years. The standards and systems of life on that remote
+and beautiful seaboard had not faded for him, this time, with their
+usual astonishing rapidity; he had rather laid them aside carefully
+and deliberately, classified against the hour when he should take them
+from their wrappings; he postponed the consideration of the mission
+which had presented itself to him, and crushed down the recollection
+of what had been, perhaps, the most intoxicating of all moments--more
+intoxicating even, because more unexpected, than the insidious flattery
+of Eve--the moment when Paul had said to him beneath the fragmentary
+frescoes of the life of Saint Benedict, in a surprised voice, forced
+into admission,--
+
+'You have the quality of leadership. You have it. You have the secret.
+The people will fawn to the hand that chastens.'
+
+Paul, his tutor and preceptor, from whom he had first learnt, so
+imperceptibly that he scarcely recognised the teaching as a lesson,
+of the Islands and their problems both human and political, Paul had
+spoken these words to him, renouncing the authority of the master,
+stepping aside to admit the accession of the pupil. From the position
+of a regent, he had abased himself to that of a Prime Minister.
+Julian had accepted the acknowledgement with a momentary dizziness.
+In later moments of doubt, the words had flamed for him, bright with
+reassurance. And then he had banished them with the rest. That world of
+romance had been replaced by the world of healthy and prosaic things.
+The letters he periodically received from Eve irritated him because of
+their reminder of an existence he preferred to regard, for the moment,
+as in abeyance.
+
+
+    'And so you are gone: _veni, vidi, vici_. You were well started
+    on your career of devastation! You hadn't done badly, all things
+    considered. Herakleion has heaved an "Ouf!" of relief. You,
+    unimpressionable? _Allons donc!_ You, apathetic? You, placid,
+    unemotional, unawakened? _Tu te payes ma tête!_
+
+    'Ah, the limitless ambition I have for you!
+
+    'I want you to rule, conquer, shatter, demolish.
+
+    'Haul down the simpering gods, the pampered gods, and put yourself
+    in their place. It is in your power.
+
+    'Why not? You have _le feu sacré_. Stagnation is death, death. Burn
+    their temples with fire, and trample their altars to dust.'
+
+
+This letter, scrawled in pencil on a sheet of torn foolscap, followed
+him to England immediately after his departure. Then a silence of six
+months. Then he read, written on spacious yellow writing-paper, with
+the monogram E.D. embossed in a triangle of mother-of-pearl, vivid and
+extravagant as Eve herself--
+
+
+    They are trying to catch me, Julian! I come quite near, quite near,
+    and they hold very quiet their hand with the crumbs in it. I see
+    the other hand stealing round to close upon me--then there's a
+    flutter--_un battement d'ailes--l'oiseau s'est de nouveau dérobé!_
+    They remain gazing after me, with their mouths wide open. They look
+    so silly. And they haven't robbed me of one plume--not a single
+    plume.
+
+    'Julian! Why this mania for capture? this wanting to take from
+    me my most treasured possession--liberty? When I want to give,
+    I'll give freely--largesse with both hands, showers of gold and
+    flowers and precious stones--(don't say I'm not conceited!) but
+    I'll never give my liberty, and I'll never allow it to be forced
+    away from me. I should feel a traitor. I couldn't walk through a
+    forest and hear the wind in the trees. I couldn't listen to music.
+    (Ah, Julian! This afternoon I steeped myself in music; Grieg,
+    elf-like, mischievous, imaginative, romantic, so Latin sometimes
+    in spite of his Northern blood. You would love Grieg, Julian. In
+    the fairyland of music, Grieg plays gnome to Debussy's magician....
+    Then "Khovantchina," of all music the most sublime, the most
+    perverse, the most _bariolé_, the most abandoned, and the most
+    desolate.) I could have no comradeship with a free and inspired
+    company. I should have betrayed their secrets, bartered away their
+    mysteries....'
+
+
+He had wondered then whether she were happy. He had visualised her,
+turbulent, defiant; courting danger and then childishly frightened when
+danger overtook her; deliciously forthcoming, inventive, enthusiastic,
+but always at heart withdrawn; she expressed herself truly when she
+said that the bird fluttered away from the hand that would have closed
+over it. He knew that she lived constantly, from choice, in a storm of
+trouble and excitement. Yet he read between the lines of her letters a
+certain dissatisfaction, a straining after something as yet unattained.
+He knew that her heart was not in what she described as 'my little
+round of complacent amourettes.'
+
+The phrase had awoken him with a smile of amusement to the fact that
+she was no longer a child. He felt some curiosity to see her again
+under the altered and advanced conditions of her life, yet, lazy and
+diffident, he shrank from the storm of adventure and responsibility
+which he knew would at once assail him. The indolence he felt sprang
+largely from the certainty that he could, at any moment of his choice,
+stretch out his hand to gather up again the threads that he had
+relinquished. He had surveyed Herakleion, that other world, from the
+distance and security of England. He had the conviction that it awaited
+him, and this conviction bore with it a strangely proprietary sense in
+which Eve was included. He had listened with amusement and tolerance to
+the accounts of her exploits, his sleepy eyes bent upon his informant
+with a quiet patience, as a man who listens to a familiar recital. He
+had dwelt very often upon the possibility of his return to Herakleion,
+but, without a full or even a partial knowledge of his motives,
+postponed it. Yet all the while his life was a service, a dedication.
+
+Then the letters which he received began to mention the forthcoming
+elections; a faint stir of excitement pervaded his correspondence; Eve,
+detesting politics, made no reference, but his father's rare notes
+betrayed an impatient and irritable anxiety; the indications grew,
+culminating in a darkly allusive letter which, although anonymous, he
+took to be from Grbits, and finally in a document which was a triumph
+of illiterate dignity, signed by Kato, Tsigaridis, Zapantiotis, and a
+double column of names that broke like a flight of exotic birds into
+the mellow enclosure of the Cathedral garden where it found him.
+
+Conscious of his ripened and protracted strength, he took ship for
+Greece.
+
+He had sent no word to announce his coming. A sardonic smile lifted
+one corner of his mouth as he foresaw the satisfaction of taking Eve
+by surprise. A standing joke between them (discovered and created,
+of course, by her, the inventive) was the invariable unexpectedness
+of his arrivals. He would find her altered, grown. An unreasoning
+fury possessed him, a jealous rage, not directed against any human
+being, but against Time itself, that it should lay hands upon Eve,
+his Eve, during his absence; taking, as it were, advantage while his
+back was turned. And though he had often professed to himself a lazy
+indifference to her devotion to him, Julian, he found intolerable the
+thought that that devotion might have been transferred elsewhere.
+He rose and strode thunderously down the deck, and one of his
+fellow-travellers, watching, whistled to himself and thought,--
+
+'That boy has an ugly temper.'
+
+
+Then the voyage became a dream to Julian; tiny islands, quite rosy in
+the sunlight, stained the sea here and there only a few miles distant,
+and along the green sea the ship drew a white, lacy wake, broad and
+straight, that ever closed behind her like an obliterated path, leaving
+the way of retreat trackless and unavailable. One day he realised that
+the long, mountainous line which he had taken for a cloud-bank, was in
+point of fact the coast. That evening, a sailor told him, they were
+due to make Herakleion. He grew resentful of the apathy of passengers
+and crew. The coast-line became more and more distinct. Presently they
+were passing Aphros, and only eight miles lay between the ship and the
+shore. The foam that gave it its name was breaking upon the rocks of
+the island....
+
+After that a gap occurred in his memory, and the scene slipped suddenly
+to the big frescoed drawing-room of his father's house in the _platia_,
+where the peace and anticipation of his voyage were replaced by the
+gaiety of voices, the blatancy of lights, and the strident energy of
+three violins and a piano. He had walked up from the pier after the
+innumerable delays of landing; it was then eleven o'clock at night, and
+as he crossed the _platia_ and heard the music coming from the lighted
+and open windows of his father's house, he paused in the shadows, aware
+of the life that had gone on for over a year without him.
+
+'And why is that surprising? I'm an astounding egotist,' he muttered.
+
+He was still in his habitual gray flannels, but he would not go to his
+room to change. He was standing in the doorway of the drawing-room on
+the first floor, smiling gently at finding himself still unnoticed, and
+looking for Eve. She was sitting at the far end of the room between two
+men, and behind her the painted monkeys grimaced on the wall, swinging
+by hands and tails from the branches of the unconvincing trees. He saw
+her as seated in the midst of that ethereal and romantic landscape.
+
+Skirting the walls, he made his way round to her, and in the angle he
+paused, and observed her. She was unconscious of his presence. Young
+Christopoulos bent towards her, and she was smiling into his eyes....
+In eighteen months she had perfected her art.
+
+Julian drew nearer, critically, possessively, and sarcastically
+observing her still, swift to grasp the essential difference. She, who
+had been a child when he had left her, was now a woman. The strangeness
+of her face had come to its own in the fullness of years, and the
+provocative mystery of her person, that withheld even more than it
+betrayed, now justified itself likewise. There seemed to be a reason
+for the red lips and ironical eyes that had been so incongruous, so
+almost offensive, in the face of the child. An immense fan of orange
+feathers drooped from her hand. Her hair waved turbulently round her
+brows, and seemed to cast a shadow over her eyes.
+
+He stood suddenly before her.
+
+For an instant she gazed up at him, her lips parted, her breath
+arrested. He laughed easily, pleased to have bettered her at her own
+game of melodrama. He saw that she was really at a loss, clutching
+at her wits, at her recollection of him, trying desperately to fling
+a bridge across the gulf of those momentous months. She floundered
+helplessly in the abrupt renewal of their relations. Seeing this,
+he felt an arrogant exhilaration at the discomfiture which he had
+produced. She had awoken in him, without a word spoken, the tyrannical
+spirit of conquest which she induced in all men.
+
+Then she was saved by the intervention of the room; first by
+Christopoulos shaking Julian's hand, then by dancers crowding round
+with exclamations of welcome and surprise. Mr Davenant himself was
+brought, and Julian stood confused and smiling, but almost silent,
+among the volubility of the guests. He was providing a sensation
+for lives greedy of sensation. He heard Madame Lafarge, smiling
+benevolently at him behind her lorgnon, say to Don Rodrigo Valdez,--
+
+'_C'est un original que ce garçon._'
+
+They were all there, futile and vociferous. The few new-comers
+were left painfully out in the cold. They were all there: the fat
+Danish Excellency, her yellow hair fuzzing round her pink face;
+Condesa Valdez, painted like a courtesan; Armand, languid, with his
+magnolia-like complexion; Madame Delahaye, enterprising and equivocal;
+Julie Lafarge, thin and brown, timidly smiling; Panaïoannou in his
+sky-blue uniform; the four sisters Christopoulos, well to the front.
+These, and all the others. He felt that, at whatever moment during
+the last eighteen months he had timed his return, he would have
+found them just the same, complete, none missing, the same words
+upon their lips. He accepted them now, since he had surrendered to
+Herakleion, but as for their reality as human beings, with the possible
+exceptions of Grbits the giant, crashing his way to Julian through
+people like an elephant pushing through a forest, and of the Persian
+Minister, hovering on the outskirts of the group with the gentle
+smile still playing round his mouth, they might as well have been cut
+out of cardboard. Eve had gone; he could see her nowhere. Alexander,
+presumably, had gone with her.
+
+Captured at last by the Danish Excellency, Julian had a stream of
+gossip poured into his ears. He had been in exile for so long, he
+must be thirsty for news. A new English Minister had arrived, but
+he was said to be unsociable. He had been expected at the races on
+the previous Sunday, but had failed to put in an appearance. Armand
+had had an affair with Madame Delahaye. At a dinner-party last week,
+Rafaele, the Councillor of the Italian Legation, had not been given his
+proper place. The Russian Minister, who was the doyen of the _corps
+diplomatique_, had promised to look into the matter with the Chef du
+Protocole. Once etiquette was allowed to become lax.... The season
+had been very gay. Comparatively few political troubles. She disliked
+political troubles. She--confidentially--preferred personalities. But
+then she was only a woman, and foolish. She knew that she was foolish.
+But she had a good heart. She was not clever, like his cousin Eve.
+
+Eve? A note of hostility and reserve crept into her expansiveness. Eve
+was, of course, very charming, though not beautiful. She could not be
+called beautiful; her mouth was too large and too red. It was almost
+improper to have so red a mouth; not quite _comme il faut_ in so young
+a girl. Still, she was undeniably successful. Men liked to be amused,
+and Eve, when she was not sulky, could be very amusing. Her imitations
+were proverbial in Herakleion. Imitation was, however, an unkindly form
+of entertainment. It was perhaps a pity that Eve was so _moqueuse_.
+Nothing was sacred to her, not even things which were really beautiful
+and touching--patriotism, or moonlight, or art--even Greek art. It was
+not that she, Mabel Thyregod, disapproved of wit; she had even some
+small reputation for wit herself; no; but she held that there were
+certain subjects to which the application of wit was unsuitable. Love,
+for instance. Love was the most beautiful, the most sacred thing upon
+earth, yet Eve--a child, a chit--had no veneration either for love in
+the abstract or for its devotees in the flesh. She wasted the love
+that was offered her. She could have no heart, no temperament. She was
+perhaps fortunate. She, Mabel Thyregod, had always suffered from having
+too warm a temperament.
+
+A struggle ensued between them, Fru Thyregod trying to force the
+personal note, and Julian opposing himself to its intrusion. He liked
+her too much to respond to her blatant advances. He wondered, with a
+brotherly interest, whether Eve were less crude in her methods.
+
+The thought of Eve sent him instantly in her pursuit, leaving Fru
+Thyregod very much astonished and annoyed in the ball-room. He found
+Eve with a man he did not know sitting in her father's business-room.
+She was lying back in a chair, listless and absent-minded, while her
+companion argued with vehemence and exasperation. She exclaimed,--
+
+'Julian again! another surprise appearance! Have you been wearing a cap
+of invisibility?'
+
+Seeing that her companion remained silent in uncertainty, she murmured
+an introduction,--
+
+'Do you know my cousin Julian? Prince Ardalion Miloradovitch.'
+
+The Russian bowed with a bad grace, seeing that he must yield his
+place to Julian. When he had gone, unwillingly tactful and full of
+resentment, she twitted her cousin,--
+
+'Implacable as always, when you want your own way! I notice you have
+neither outgrown your tyrannical selfishness nor left it behind in
+England.'
+
+'I have never seen that man before; who is he?'
+
+'A Russian. Not unattractive. I am engaged to him,' she replied
+negligently.
+
+'You are going to marry him?'
+
+She shrugged.
+
+'Perhaps, ultimately. More probably not.'
+
+'And what will he do if you throw him over?' Julian asked with a
+certain curiosity.
+
+'Oh, he has a fine _je-m'en-fichisme_; he'll shrug his shoulders, kiss
+the tips of my fingers, and die gambling,' she answered.
+
+When Eve said that, Julian thought that he saw the whole of
+Miloradovitch, whom he did not know, quite clearly; she had lit him up.
+
+They talked then of a great many things, extraneous to themselves, but
+all the while they observed one another narrowly. She found nothing
+actually new in him, only an immense development along the old,
+careless, impersonal lines. In appearance he was as untidy as ever;
+large, slack-limbed, rough-headed. He, however, found much that was new
+in her; new, that is, to his more experienced observation, but which,
+hitherto, in its latent form had slept undiscovered by his boyish
+eyes. His roaming glance took in the deliberate poise and provocative
+aloofness of her self-possession, the warm roundness of her throat
+and arms, the little _mouche_ at the corner of her mouth, her little
+graceful hands, and white skin that here and there, in the shadows,
+gleamed faintly gold, as though a veneer of amber had been brushed
+over the white; the pervading sensuousness that glowed from her like
+the actual warmth of a slumbering fire. He found himself banishing the
+thought of Miloradovitch....
+
+'Have you changed?' he said abruptly. 'Look at me.'
+
+She raised her eyes, with the assurance of one well-accustomed to
+personal remarks; a slow smile crept over her lips.
+
+'Well, your verdict?'
+
+'You are older, and your hair is brushed back.'
+
+'Is that all?'
+
+'Do you expect me to say that you are pretty?'
+
+'Oh, no,' she said, snapping her fingers, 'I never expect compliments
+from you, Julian. On the other hand, let me pay you one. Your arrival,
+this evening, has been a triumph. Most artistic. Let me congratulate
+you. You know of old that I dislike being taken by surprise.'
+
+'That's why I do it.'
+
+'I know,' she said, with sudden humility, the marvellous organ of her
+voice sinking surprisingly into the rich luxuriance of its most sombre
+contralto.
+
+He noted with a fresh enjoyment the deep tones that broke like a
+honeyed caress upon his unaccustomed ear. His imagination bore him
+away upon a flight of images that left him startled by their emphasis
+no less than by their fantasy. A cloak of black velvet, he thought to
+himself, as he continued to gaze unseeingly at her; a dusky voice,
+a gipsy among voices! the purple ripeness of a plum; the curve of
+a Southern cheek; the heart of red wine. All things seductive and
+insinuating. It matched her soft indolence, her exquisite subtlety, her
+slow, ironical smile.
+
+'Your delicious vanity,' he said unexpectedly, and, putting out his
+hand he touched the hanging fold of silver net which was bound by a
+silver ribbon round one of her slender wrists.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Herakleion. The white town. The sun. The precipitate coast, and
+Mount Mylassa soaring into the sky. The distant slope of Greece. The
+low islands lying out in the jewelled sea. The diplomatic round,
+the calculations of gain, the continuous and plaintive music of the
+Islands, the dream of rescue, the ardent championship of the feebler
+cause, the strife against wealth and authority. The whole fabric of
+youth.... These were the things abruptly rediscovered and renewed.
+
+The elections were to take place within four days of Julian's arrival.
+Father Paul, no doubt, could add to the store of information Kato
+had already given him. But Father Paul was not to be found in the
+little tavern he kept in the untidy village close to the gates of the
+Davenants' country house. Julian reined up before it, reading the
+familiar name, Xenodochion Olympos, above the door, and calling out
+to the men who were playing bowls along the little gravelled bowling
+alley to know where he might find the priest. They could not tell him,
+nor could the old islander Tsigaridis, who sat near the door, smoking
+a cigar, and dribbling between his fingers the beads of a bright green
+rosary.
+
+'The _papá_ is often absent from us,' added Tsigaridis, and Julian
+caught the grave inflection of criticism in his tone.
+
+The somnolent heat of the September afternoon lay over the squalid
+dusty village; in the whole length of its street no life stirred; the
+dogs slept; the pale pink and blue houses were closely shuttered,
+with an effect of flatness and desertion. Against the pink front of
+the tavern splashed the shadows of a great fig-tree, and upon its
+threshold, but on one side the tree had been cut back to prevent
+any shadows from falling across the bowling-alley. Julian rode on,
+enervated by the too intense heat and the glare, and, giving up his
+horse at his uncle's stables, wandered in the shade under the pergola
+of gourds at the bottom of the garden.
+
+He saw Father Paul coming towards him across the grass between the
+lemon-trees; the priest walked slowly, his head bent, his hands clasped
+behind his back, a spare black figure among the golden fruit. So lean,
+so lank he appeared, his natural height accentuated by his square black
+cap; so sallow his bony face in contrast to his stringy red hair.
+Julian likened him to a long note of exclamation. He advanced unaware
+of Julian's presence, walking as though every shuffling step of his
+flat, broad-toed shoes were an accompaniment to some laborious and
+completed thought.
+
+'Perhaps,' Julian reflected, watching him, 'by the time he reaches me
+he'll have arrived at his decision.'
+
+He speculated amusedly as to the priest's difficulties: an insurgent
+member of the flock? a necessary repair to the church? Nothing, nothing
+outside Herakleion. A tiny life! A priest, a man who had forsworn
+man's birthright. The visible in exchange for the invisible world. A
+life concentrated and intense; tight-handed, a round little ball of a
+life. No range, no freedom. Village life under a microscope; familiar
+faces and familiar souls. Julian seemed to focus suddenly the rays of
+the whole world into a spot of light which was the village, and over
+which the priest's thin face was bent poring with a close, a strained
+expression of absorption, so that his benevolent purpose became almost
+a force of evil, prying and inquisitive, and from which the souls under
+his charge strove to writhe away in vain. To break the image, he called
+out aloud,--
+
+'You were very deeply immersed in your thoughts, father?'
+
+'Yes, yes,' Paul muttered. He took out his handkerchief to pass it over
+his face, which Julian now saw with surprise was touched into high
+lights by a thin perspiration.
+
+'Is anything wrong?' he asked.
+
+'Nothing wrong. Your father is very generous,' the priest added
+irrelevantly.
+
+Julian, still under the spell, inquired as to his father's generosity.
+
+'He has promised me a new iconostase,' said Paul, but he spoke from an
+immense distance, vagueness in his eyes, and with a trained, obedient
+tongue. 'The old iconostase is in a disgraceful state of dilapidation,'
+he continued, with a new, uncanny energy; 'when we cleaned out the
+panels we found them hung with bats at the back, and not only bats,
+but, do you know, Julian, the mice had nested there; the mice are a
+terrible plague in the church. I am obliged to keep the consecrated
+bread in a biscuit tin, and I do not like doing that; I like to keep it
+covered over with a linen cloth; but no, I cannot, all on account of
+the mice. I have set traps, and I had got a cat, but since she caught
+her foot in one of the traps she has gone away. I am having great
+trouble, great trouble with the mice.'
+
+'I know,' said Julian, 'I used to have mice in my rooms at Oxford.'
+
+'A plague!' cried Paul, still fiercely energetic, but utterly remote.
+'One would wonder, if one were permitted to wonder, why He saw fit
+to create mice. I never caught any in my traps; only the cat's foot.
+And the boy who cleans the church ate the cheese. I have been very
+unfortunate--very unfortunate with the mice,' he added.
+
+Would they never succeed in getting away from the topic? The garden
+was populated with mice, quick little gray objects darting across the
+path. And Paul, who continued to talk vehemently, with strange, abrupt
+gestures, was not really there at all.
+
+'Nearly two years since you have been away,' he was saying. 'I expect
+you have seen a great deal; forgotten all about Paul? How do you find
+your father? Many people have died in the village; that was to be
+expected. I have been kept busy, funerals and christenings. I like a
+full life. And then I have the constant preoccupation of the church;
+the church, yes. I have been terribly concerned about the iconostase.
+I have blamed myself bitterly for my negligence. That, of course, was
+all due to the mice. A man was drowned off these rocks last week; a
+stranger. They say he had been losing in the casino. I have been into
+Herakleion once or twice, since you have been away. But it is too
+noisy. The trams, and the glare.... It would not seem noisy to you.
+You no doubt welcome the music of the world. You are young, and life
+for you contains no problems. But I am very happy; I should not like
+you to think I was not perfectly happy. Your father and your uncle are
+peculiarly considerate and generous men. Your uncle has promised to
+pay for the installation of the new iconostase and the removal of the
+old one. I forgot to tell you that. Completely perished, some of the
+panels.... And your aunt, a wonderful woman.'
+
+Julian listened in amazement. The priest talked like a wound-up and
+crazy machine, and all the while Julian was convinced that he did not
+know a word he was saying. He had once been grave, earnest, scholarly,
+even wise.... He kept taking off and putting on his cap, to the wild
+disordering of his long hair.
+
+'He's gone mad,' Julian thought in dismay.
+
+Julian despaired of struggling out of the quicksands that sucked at
+their feet. He thought desperately that if the priest would come back,
+would recall his spirit to take control of his wits, all might be well.
+The tongue was babbling in an empty body while the spirit journeyed
+in unknown fields, finding there what excruciating torment? Who could
+tell! For the man was suffering, that was clear; he had been suffering
+as he walked across the grass, but he had suffered then in controlled
+silence, spirit and mind close-locked and allied in the taut effort
+of endurance; now, their alliance shattered by the sound of a human
+voice, the spirit had fled, sweeping with it the furies of agony, and
+leaving the mind bereaved, chattering emptily, noisily, in the attempt
+at concealment. He, Julian, was responsible for this revelation of the
+existence of an unguessed secret. He must repair the damage he had done.
+
+'Father!' he said, interrupting, and he took the priest strongly by the
+wrist.
+
+Their eyes met.
+
+'Father!' Julian said again. He held the wrist with the tensest effort
+of his fingers, and the eyes with the tensest effort of his will. He
+saw the accentuated cavities of the priest's thin face, and the pinched
+lines of suffering at the corners of the mouth. Paul had been strong,
+energetic, masculine. Now his speech was random, and he quavered as
+a palsied old man. Even his personal cleanliness had, in a measure,
+deserted him; his soutane was stained, his hair lank and greasy. He
+confronted Julian with a scared and piteous cowardice, compelled, yet
+seeking escape, then as he slowly steadied himself under Julian's grip
+the succeeding emotions were reflected in his eyes: first shame; then
+a horrified grasping after his self-respect; finally, most touching of
+all, confidence and gratitude; and Julian, seeing the cycle completed
+and knowing that Paul was again master of himself, released the wrist
+and asked, in the most casual voice at his command, 'All right?' He
+had the sensation of having saved some one from falling.
+
+Paul nodded without speaking. Then he began to ask Julian as to how
+he had employed the last eighteen months, and they talked for some
+time without reference to the unaccountable scene that had passed
+between them. Paul talked with his wonted gentleness and interest, the
+strangeness of his manner entirely vanished; Julian could have believed
+it a hallucination, but for the single trace left in the priest's
+disordered hair. Red strands hung abjectly down his back. Julian found
+his eyes drawn towards them in a horrible fascination, but, because he
+knew the scene must be buried unless Paul himself chose to revive it,
+he kept his glance turned away with conscious deliberation.
+
+He was relieved when the priest left him.
+
+'Gone to do his hair'--the phrase came to his mind as he saw the priest
+walk briskly away, tripping with the old familiar stumble over his
+soutane, and saw the long wisps faintly red on the black garment. 'Like
+a woman--exactly!' he uttered in revolt, clenching his hand at man's
+degradation. 'Like a woman, long hair, long skirt; ready to listen to
+other people's troubles. Unnatural existence; unnatural? it's unnatural
+to the point of viciousness. No wonder the man's mind is unhinged.'
+
+He was really troubled about his friend, the more so that loyalty would
+keep him silent and allow him to ask no questions. He thought, however,
+that if Eve volunteered any remarks about Paul it would not be disloyal
+to listen. The afternoon was hot and still; Eve would be indoors. The
+traditions of his English life still clung to him sufficiently to make
+him chafe vaguely against the idleness of the days; he resented the
+concession to the climate. A demoralising place. A place where priests
+let their hair grow long, and went temporarily mad....
+
+He walked in the patchy shade of the lemon-trees towards the house in a
+distressed and irascible frame of mind. He longed for action; his mind
+was never content to dwell long unoccupied. He longed for the strife
+the elections would bring. The house glared very white, and all the
+green shutters were closed; behind them, he knew, the windows would be
+closed too. Another contradiction. In England, when one wanted to keep
+a house cool, one opened the windows wide.
+
+He crossed the veranda; the drawing-room was dim and empty. How absurd
+to paint sham flames on the ceiling in a climate where the last thing
+one wanted to remember was fire. He called,--
+
+'Eve!'
+
+Silence answered him. A book lying on the floor by the writing-table
+showed him that she had been in the room; no one else in that house
+would read Albert Samain. He picked it up and read disgustedly,--
+
+
+    '... Des roses! des roses encore!
+    Je les adore à la souffrance.
+    Elles ont la sombre attirance
+    Des choses qui donnent la mort.'
+
+
+'Nauseating!' he cried, flinging the book from him.
+
+Certainly the book was Eve's. Certainly she had been in the room,
+for no one else would or could have drawn that mask of a faun on the
+blotting paper. He looked at it carelessly, then with admiration; what
+malicious humour she had put into those squinting eyes, that slanting
+mouth! He turned the blotting paper idly--how like Eve to draw on the
+blotting paper!--and came on other drawings: a demon, a fantastic
+castle, a half-obliterated sketch of himself. Once he found his name,
+in elaborate architectural lettering, repeated all over the page.
+Then he found a letter of which the three first words: 'Eternal,
+exasperating Eve!' and the last sentence, ' ... votre réveil qui doit
+être charmant dans le désordre fantaisiste de votre chambre,' made him
+shut the blotter in a scurry of discretion.
+
+Here were all the vivid traces of her passage, but where was she?
+Loneliness and the lack of occupation oppressed him. He lounged away
+from the writing-table, out into the wide passage which ran all round
+the central court. He paused there, his hands in his pockets, and
+called again,--
+
+'Eve!'
+
+'Eve!' the echoing passage answered startlingly.
+
+Presently another more tangible voice came to him as he stood staring
+disconsolately through the windows into the court.
+
+'Were you calling Mith Eve, Mathter Julian? The'th rethting. Thall I
+tell her?'
+
+He was pleased to see Nana, fat, stayless, slipshod, slovenly,
+benevolent. He kissed her, and told her she was fatter than ever.
+
+'Glad I've come back, Nannie?'
+
+'Why, yeth, thurely, Mathter Julian.'
+
+Nana's demonstrations were always restrained, respectful. She
+habitually boasted that although life in the easy South might have
+induced her to relax her severity towards her figure, she had never
+allowed it to impair her manners.
+
+'Can I go up to Eve's room, Nannie?'
+
+'I thuppoth tho, my dear.'
+
+'Nannie, you know, you ought to be an old negress.'
+
+'Why, dear Lord! me black?'
+
+'Yes; you'd be ever so much more suitable.'
+
+He ran off to Eve's room upstairs, laughing, boyish again after his
+boredom and irritability. He had been in Eve's room many times before,
+but with his fingers on the door handle he paused. Again that strange
+vexation at her years had seized him.
+
+He knocked.
+
+Inside, the room was very dim; the furniture bulked large in the
+shadows. Scent, dusk, luxury lapped round him like warm water. He had
+an impression of soft, scattered garments, deep mirrors, chosen books,
+and many little bottles. Suddenly he was appalled by the insolence
+of his own intrusion--an unbeliever bursting into a shrine. He stood
+silent by the door. He heard a drowsy voice singing in a murmur an
+absurd childish rhyme,--
+
+
+    'Il était noir comme un corbeau,
+        Ali, Ali, Ali, Alo,
+          Macachebono,
+            La Roustah, la Mougah, la Roustah, la Mougah,
+             Allah!
+
+    'Il était de bonne famille,
+    Sa mère élevait des chameaux,
+        Macachebono....'
+
+
+He discerned the bed, the filmy veils of the muslin mosquito curtains,
+falling apart from a baldaquin. The lazy voice, after a moment of
+silence, queried,--
+
+'Nana?'
+
+It was with an effort that he brought himself to utter,--
+
+'No; Julian.'
+
+With an upheaval of sheets he heard her sit upright in bed, and her
+exclamation,--
+
+'Who said you might come in here?'
+
+At that he laughed, quite naturally.
+
+'Why not? I was bored. May I come and talk to you?'
+
+He came round the corner of the screen and saw her sitting up, her hair
+tumbled and dark, her face indistinct, her shoulders emerging white
+from a foam of lace.
+
+He sat down on the edge of her bed, the details of the room emerging
+slowly from the darkness; and she herself becoming more distinct as she
+watched him, her shadowy eyes half sarcastic, half resentful.
+
+'Sybarite!' he said.
+
+She only smiled in answer, and put out one hand towards him. It fell
+listlessly on to the sheets as though she had no energy to hold it up.
+
+'You child,' he said, 'you make me feel coarse and vulgar beside you.
+Here am I, burning for battle, and there you lie, wasting time, wasting
+youth, half-asleep, luxurious, and quite unrepentant.'
+
+'Surely even you must find it too hot for battle?'
+
+'I don't find it too hot to wish that it weren't too hot. You, on the
+other hand, abandon yourself contentedly; you are pleased that it is
+too hot for you to do anything but glide voluptuously into a siesta in
+the middle of the day.'
+
+'You haven't been here long, remember, Julian; you're still brisk from
+England. Only wait; Herakleion will overcome you.'
+
+'Don't!' he cried out startlingly. 'Don't say it! It's prophetic. I
+shall struggle against it; I shall be the stronger.'
+
+She only laughed murmurously into her pillows, but he was really
+stirred; he stood up and walked about the room, launching spasmodic
+phrases.
+
+'You and Herakleion, you are all of a piece.--You shan't drag me
+down.--Not if I am to live here.--I know one loses one's sense of
+values here. I learnt that when I last went away to England. I've come
+back on my guard.--I'm determined to remain level-headed.--I refuse to
+be impressed by fantastic happenings....
+
+'Why do you stop so abruptly?' Did her voice mock him?
+
+He had stopped, remembering Paul. Already he had blundered against
+something he did not understand. An impulse came to him to confide in
+Eve; Eve lying there, quietly smiling with unexpressed but unmistakable
+irony; Eve so certain that, sooner or later, Herakleion would conquer
+him. He would confide in her. And then, as he hesitated, he knew
+suddenly that Eve was not trustworthy.
+
+He began again walking about the room, betraying by no word that a
+moment of revelation, important and dramatic, had come and passed on
+the tick of a clock. Yet he knew he had crossed a line over which he
+could now never retrace his steps. He would never again regard Eve
+in quite the same light. He absorbed the alteration with remarkable
+rapidity into his conception of her. He supposed that the knowledge of
+her untrustworthiness had always lain dormant in him waiting for the
+test which should some day call it out; that was why he was so little
+impressed by what he had mistaken for new knowledge.
+
+'Julian, sit down; how restless you are. And you look so enormous in
+this room, you frighten me.'
+
+He sat down, closer to her than he had sat before, and began playing
+with her fingers.
+
+'How soft your hand is. It is quite boneless,' he said, crushing it
+together; 'it's like a little pigeon. So you think Herakleion will beat
+me? I dare say you are right. Shall I tell you something? When I was on
+my way here, from England, I determined that I would allow myself to be
+beaten. I don't know why I had that moment of revolt just now. Because
+I am quite determined to let myself drift with the current, whether it
+carry me towards adventures or towards lotus-land.'
+
+'Perhaps towards both.'
+
+'Isn't that too much to hope?'
+
+'Why? They are compatible. C'est le sort de la jeunesse.'
+
+'Prophesy adventures for me!'
+
+'My dear Julian! I'm far too lazy.'
+
+'Lotus-land, then?'
+
+'This room isn't a bad substitute,' she proffered.
+
+He wondered then at the exact extent of her meaning. He was accustomed
+to the amazing emotional scenes she had periodically created between
+them in childhood--scenes which he never afterwards could rehearse to
+himself; scenes whose fabric he never could dissect, because it was
+more fantastic, more unreal, than gossamer; scenes in which storm,
+anger, and heroics had figured; scenes from which he had emerged
+worried, shattered, usually with the ardent impress of her lips on his,
+and brimming with self-reproach. A calm existence was not for her; she
+would neither understand nor tolerate it.
+
+The door opened, and old Nana came shuffling in.
+
+'Mith Eve, pleath, there'th a gentleman downstairth to thee you.
+Here'th hith card.'
+
+Julian took it.
+
+'Eve, it's Malteios.'
+
+That drowsy voice, indifferent and melodious,--
+
+'Tell him to go away, Nana; tell him I am resting.'
+
+'But, dearie, what'll your mother thay?'
+
+'Tell him to go away, Nana.'
+
+'He'th the Prime Minithter,' Nana began doubtfully.
+
+'Eve!' Julian said in indignation.
+
+'But, Mith Eve, you know he came latht week and you forgot he wath
+coming and you wath out.'
+
+'Is that so, Eve? Is he here by appointment with you to-day?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'I shall go down to him and find out whether you are speaking the
+truth.'
+
+He went downstairs, ignoring Eve's voice that called him back. The
+Premier was in the drawing-room, examining the insignificant ornaments
+on the table. Their last meeting had been a memorable one, in the
+painted room overlooking the _platia_.
+
+When their greetings were over, Julian said,--
+
+'I believe you were asking for my cousin, sir?'
+
+'That is so. She promised me,' said the Premier, a sly look coming over
+his face, 'that she would give me tea to-day. Shall I have the pleasure
+of seeing her?'
+
+'What,' thought Julian, 'does this old scapegrace politician, who must
+have his mind and his days full of the coming elections, want with Eve?
+and want so badly that he can perform the feat of coming out here from
+Herakleion in the heat of the afternoon?'
+
+Aloud he said, grimly because of the lie she had told him,--
+
+'She will be with you in a few moments, sir.'
+
+In Eve's dark room, where Nana still stood fatly and hopelessly
+expostulating, and Eve pretended to sleep, he spoke roughly,--
+
+'You lied to me as usual. He is here by appointment. He is waiting. I
+told him you would not keep him waiting long. You must get up.'
+
+'I shall do nothing of the sort. What right have you to dictate to me?'
+
+'You're making Mathter Julian croth--and he tho thweet-tempered
+alwayth,' said Nana's warning voice.
+
+'Does she usually behave like this, Nana?'
+
+'Oh, Mathter Julian, it'th dreadful--and me alwayth thaving her from
+her mother, too. And loothing all her thingth, too, all the time. I
+can't keep anything in it'th plathe. Only three dayth ago the lotht a
+diamond ring, but the never cared. The Thpanith gentleman thent it to
+her, and the never thanked him, and then lotht the ring. And the never
+notithed or cared. And the getth dretheth and dretheth, and won't put
+them on twith. And flowerth and chocolathes thent her--they all thpoil
+her tho--and the biteth all the chocolathes in two to thee what'th
+inthide, and throwth them away and thayth the dothn't like them. That
+exathperating, the ith.'
+
+'Leave her to me, Nannie.'
+
+'Mith Naughtineth,' said Nana, as she left the room.
+
+They were alone.
+
+'Eve, I am really angry. That old man!'
+
+She turned luxuriously on to her back, her arms flung wide, and lay
+looking at him.
+
+'You are very anxious that I should go to him. You are not very jealous
+of me, are you, Julian?'
+
+'Why does he come?' he asked curiously. 'You never told me....'
+
+'There are a great many things I never tell you, my dear.'
+
+'It is not my business and I am not interested,' he answered, 'but
+he has come a long way in the heat to see you, and I dislike your
+callousness. I insist upon your getting up.'
+
+She smiled provokingly. He dropped on his knees near her.
+
+'Darling, to please me?'
+
+She gave a laugh of sudden disdain.
+
+'Fool! I might have obeyed you; now you have thrown away your
+advantage.'
+
+'Have I?' he said, and, slipping his arm beneath her, he lifted her up
+bodily. 'Where shall I put you down?' he asked, standing in the middle
+of the room and holding her. 'At your dressing-table?'
+
+'Why don't you steal me, Julian?' she murmured, settling herself more
+comfortably in his grasp.
+
+'Steal you? what on earth do you mean? explain!' he said.
+
+'Oh, I don't know; if you don't understand, it doesn't matter,' she
+replied with some impatience, but beneath her impatience he saw that
+she was shaken, and, flinging one arm round his neck, she pulled
+herself up and kissed him on the mouth. He struggled away, displeased,
+brotherly, and feeling the indecency of that kiss in that darkened
+room, given by one whose thinly-clad, supple body he had been holding
+as he might hold a child's.
+
+'You have a genius for making me angry, Eve.'
+
+He stopped: she had relaxed suddenly, limp and white in his arms; with
+a long sigh she let her head fall back, her eyes closed. The warmth
+of her limbs reached him through the diaphanous garment she wore. He
+thought he had never before seen such abandonment of expression and
+attitude; his displeasure deepened, and an uncomplimentary word rose to
+his lips.
+
+'I don't wonder....' flashed through his mind.
+
+He was shocked, as a brother might be at the betrayal of his sister's
+sexuality.
+
+'Eve!' he said sharply.
+
+She opened her eyes, met his, and came to herself.
+
+'Put me down!' she cried, and as he set her on her feet, she snatched
+at her Spanish shawl and wrapped it round her. 'Oh!' she said, an
+altered being, shamed and outraged, burying her face, 'go now,
+Julian--go, go, go.'
+
+He went, shaking his head in perplexity: there were too many things
+in Herakleion he failed to understand. Paul, Eve, Malteios. This
+afternoon with Eve, which should have been natural, had been difficult.
+Moments of illumination were also moments of a profounder obscurity.
+And why should Malteios return to-day, when in the preceding week,
+according to Nana, he had been so casually forgotten? Why so patient,
+so long-suffering, with Eve? Was it possible that he should be
+attracted by Eve? It seemed to Julian, accustomed still to regard her
+as a child, very improbable. Malteios! The Premier! And the elections
+beginning within four days--that he should spare the time! Rumour said
+that the elections would go badly for him; that the Stavridists would
+be returned. A bad look-out for the Islands if they were. Rumour said
+that Stavridis was neglecting no means, no means whatsoever, by which
+he might strengthen his cause. He was more unscrupulous, younger,
+more vigorous, than Malteios. The years of dispossession had added
+to his determination and energy. Malteios had seriously prejudiced
+his popularity by his liaison with Kato, a woman, as the people of
+Herakleion never forgot, of the Islands, and an avowed champion of
+their cause. Was it possible that Eve was mixed up in Malteios'
+political schemes? Julian laughed aloud at the idea of Eve interesting
+herself in politics. But perhaps Kato herself, for whom Eve entertained
+one of her strongest and most enduring enthusiasms, had taken advantage
+of their friendship to interest Eve in Malteios' affairs? Anything was
+possible in that preposterous state. Eve, he knew, would mischievously
+and ignorantly espouse any form of intrigue. If Malteios came with any
+other motive he was an old satyr--nothing more.
+
+Julian's mind strayed again to the elections. The return of the
+Stavridis party would mean certain disturbances in the Islands.
+Disturbances would mean an instant appeal for leadership. He would be
+reminded of the day he had spent, the only day of his life, he thought,
+on which he had truly lived, on Aphros. Tsigaridis would come, grave,
+insistent, to hold him to his undertakings, a figure of comedy in his
+absurdly picturesque clothes, but also a figure full of dignity with
+his unanswerable claim. He would bring forward a species of moral
+blackmail, to which Julian, ripe for adventure and sensitive to his
+obligations, would surely surrender. After that there would be no
+drawing back....
+
+'I have little hope of victory,' said Malteios, to whom Julian, in
+search of information, had recourse; and hinted with infinite suavity
+and euphemism, that the question of election in Herakleion depended
+largely, if not entirely, on the condition and judicious distribution
+of the party funds. Stavridis, it appeared, had controlled larger
+subscriptions, more trustworthy guarantees. The Christopoulos, the
+largest bankers, were unreliable. Alexander had political ambitions.
+An under-secretaryship.... Christopoulos _père_ had subscribed, it
+was true, to the Malteios party, but while his right hand produced
+the miserable sum from his right pocket, who could tell with what
+generosity his left hand ladled out the drachmæ into the gaping
+Stavridis coffers? Safe in either eventuality. Malteios knew his game.
+
+The Premier enlarged blandly upon the situation, regretful, but without
+indignation. As a man of the world, he accepted its ways as Herakleion
+knew them. Julian noted his gentle shrugs, his unfinished sentences
+and innuendoes. It occurred to him that the Premier's frankness and
+readiness to enlarge upon political technique were not without motive.
+Buttoned into his high frock-coat, which the climate of Herakleion
+was unable to abolish, he walked softly up and down the parquet floor
+between the lapis columns, his fingers loosely interlaced behind his
+back, talking to Julian. In another four days he might no longer be
+Premier, might be merely a private individual, unostentatiously working
+a dozen strands of intrigue. The boy was not to be neglected as a tool.
+He tried him on what he conceived to be his tenderest point.
+
+'I have not been unfavourable to your islanders during my
+administration,'--then, thinking the method perhaps a trifle crude,
+he added, 'I have even exposed myself to the attack of my opponents on
+that score; they have made capital out of my clemency. Had I been a
+less disinterested man, I should have had greater foresight. I should
+have sacrificed my sense of justice to the demands of my future.'
+
+He gave a deprecatory and melancholy smile.
+
+'Do I regret the course I chose? Not for an instant. The responsibility
+of a statesman is not solely towards himself or his adherents. He
+must set it sternly aside in favour of the poor, ignorant destinies
+committed to his care. I lay down my office with an unburdened
+conscience.'
+
+He stopped in his walk and stood before Julian, who, with his hands
+thrust in his pockets, had listened to the discourse from the depths of
+his habitual arm-chair.
+
+'But you, young man, are not in my position. The door I seek is marked
+Exit; the door you seek, Entrance. I think I may, without presumption,
+as an old and finished man, offer you a word of prophecy.' He unlaced
+his fingers and pointed one of them at Julian. 'You may live to be the
+saviour of an oppressed people, a not unworthy mission. Remember that
+my present opponents, should they come to power, will not sympathise
+with your efforts, as I myself--who knows?--might have sympathised.'
+
+Julian, acknowledging the warning, thought he recognised the style of
+the Senate Chamber, but failed to recognise the sentiments he had heard
+expressed by the Premier on a former occasion, on this same subject of
+his interference in the affairs of the Islands. He ventured to suggest
+as much. The Premier's smile broadened, his deprecatory manner deepened.
+
+'Ah, you were younger then; hot-headed; I did not know how far I could
+trust you. Your intentions, excellent; but your judgment perhaps a
+little precipitate? Since then, you have seen the world; you are a
+man. You have returned, no doubt, ready to pick up the weapon you
+tentatively fingered as a boy. You will no longer be blinded by
+sentiment, you will weigh your actions nicely in the balance. And you
+will remember the goodwill of Platon Malteios?'
+
+He resumed his soft walk up and down the room.
+
+'Within a few weeks you may find yourself in the heart of strife. I see
+you as a young athlete on the threshold, doubtless as generous as most
+young men, as ambitious, as eager. Discard the divine foolishness of
+allowing ideas, not facts, to govern your heart. We live in Herakleion,
+not in Utopia. We have all shed, little by little, our illusions....'
+
+After a sigh, the depth of whose genuineness neither he nor Julian
+could accurately diagnose, he continued, brightening as he returned to
+the practical,--
+
+'Stavridis--a harsher man than I. He and your islanders would come to
+grips within a month. I should scarcely deplore it. A question based
+on the struggle of nationality--for, it cannot be denied, the Italian
+blood of your islanders severs them irremediably from the true Greek of
+Herakleion--such questions cry for decisive settlement even at the cost
+of a little bloodletting. Submission or liberty, once and for all. That
+is preferable to the present irritable shilly-shally.'
+
+'I know the alternative I should choose,' said Julian.
+
+'Liberty?--the lure of the young,' said Malteios, not unkindly. 'I
+said that I should scarcely deplore such an attempt, for it would
+fail; Herakleion could never tolerate for long the independence of the
+Islands. Yes, it would surely fail. But from it good might emerge.
+A friendlier settlement, a better understanding, a more cheerful
+submission. Believe me,' he added, seeing the cloud of obstinate
+disagreement upon Julian's face, 'never break your heart over the
+failure. Your Islands would have learnt the lesson of the inevitable;
+and the great inevitable is perhaps the least intolerable of all human
+sorrows. There is, after all, a certain kindliness in the fate which
+lays the obligation of sheer necessity upon our courage.'
+
+For a moment his usual manner had left him; he recalled it with a short
+laugh.
+
+'Perhaps the thought that my long years of office may be nearly at an
+end betrays me into this undue melancholy,' he said flippantly; 'pay no
+attention, young man. Indeed, whatever I may say, I know that you will
+cling to your idea of revolt. Am I not right?'
+
+Once more the keen, sly look was in his eyes, and Julian knew that
+only the Malteios who desired the rupture of the Islands with his own
+political adversary, remained. He felt, in a way, comforted to be
+again upon the familiar ground; his conception of the man had been
+momentarily disarranged.
+
+'Your Excellency is very shrewd,' he replied, politely and evasively.
+
+Malteios shrugged and smiled the smile that had such real charm; and
+as he shrugged and smiled the discussion away into the region of such
+things dismissed, his glance travelled beyond Julian to the door, his
+mouth curved into a more goatish smile amidst his beard, and his eyes
+narrowed into two slits till his whole face resembled the mask of the
+old faun that Eve had drawn on the blotting paper.
+
+'Mademoiselle!' he murmured, advancing towards Eve, who, dressed in
+white, appeared between the lapis-lazuli columns.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Madame Lafarge gave a picnic which preceded the day of the elections,
+and to Julian Davenant it seemed that he was entering a cool, dark
+cavern roofed over with mysterious greenery after riding in the heat
+across a glaring plain. The transition from the white Herakleion to
+the deep valley, shut in by steep, terraced hills covered with olives,
+ilexes, and myrtles--a valley profound, haunted, silent, hallowed by
+pools of black-green shadow--consciousness of the transition stole over
+him soothingly, as his pony picked its way down the stony path of the
+hill-side. He had refused to accompany the others. Early in the morning
+he had ridden over the hills, so early that he had watched the sunrise,
+and had counted, from a summit, the houses on Aphros in the glassy
+limpidity of the Grecian dawn. The morning had been pure as the treble
+notes of a violin, the sea below bright as a pavement of diamonds. The
+Islands lay, clear and low, delicately yellow, rose, and lilac, in the
+serene immensity of the dazzling waters. They seemed to him to contain
+every element of enchantment; cleanly of line as cameos, yet intangible
+as a mirage, rising lovely and gracious as Aphrodite from the white
+flashes of their foam, fairy islands of beauty and illusion in a sea of
+radiant and eternal youth.
+
+A stream ran through the valley, and near the banks of the stream, in
+front of a clump of ilexes, gleamed the marble columns of a tiny ruined
+temple. Julian turned his pony loose to graze, throwing himself down
+at full length beside the stream and idly pulling at the orchids and
+magenta cyclamen which grew in profusion. Towards midday his solitude
+was interrupted. A procession of victorias accompanied by men on
+horseback began to wind down the steep road into the valley; from
+afar he watched them coming, conscious of distaste and boredom, then
+remembering that Eve was of the party, and smiling to himself a little
+in relief. She would come, at first silent, unobtrusive, almost sulky;
+then little by little the spell of their intimacy would steal over him,
+and by a word or a glance they would be linked, the whole system of
+their relationship developing itself anew, a system elaborated by her,
+as he well knew; built up of personal, whimsical jokes; stimulating,
+inventive, she had to a supreme extent the gift of creating such a web,
+subtly, by meaning more than she said and saying less than she meant;
+giving infinite promise, but ever postponing fulfilment.
+
+'A flirt?' he wondered to himself, lazily watching the string of
+carriages in one of which she was.
+
+But she was more elemental, more dangerous, than a mere flirt. On that
+account, and because of her wide and penetrative intelligence, he could
+not relegate her to the common category. Yet he thought he might safely
+make the assertion that no man in Herakleion had altogether escaped
+her attraction. He thought he might apply this generalisation from
+M. Lafarge, or Malteios, or Don Rodrigo Valdez, down to the chasseur
+who picked up her handkerchief. (Her handkerchief! ah, yes! she could
+always be traced, as in a paper-chase, by her scattered possessions--a
+handkerchief, a glove, a cigarette-case, a gardenia, a purse full
+of money, a powder-puff--frivolities doubly delightful and doubly
+irritating in a being so terrifyingly elemental, so unassailably and
+sarcastically intelligent.) Eve, the child he had known unaccountable,
+passionate, embarrassing, who had written him the precocious letters on
+every topic in a variety of tongues, imaginative exceedingly, copiously
+illustrated, bursting occasionally into erratic and illegible
+verse; Eve, with her desperate and excessive passions; Eve, grown to
+womanhood, grown into a firebrand! He had been entertained, but at
+the same time slightly offended, to find her grown; his conception of
+her was disarranged; he had felt almost a sense of outrage in seeing
+her heavy hair piled upon her head; he had looked curiously at the
+uncovered nape of her neck, the hair brushed upwards and slightly
+curling, where once it had hung thick and plaited; he had noted with an
+irritable shame the softness of her throat in the evening dress she had
+worn when first he had seen her. He banished violently the recollection
+of her in that brief moment when in his anger he had lifted her out of
+her bed and had carried her across the room in his arms. He banished it
+with a shudder and a revulsion, as he might have banished a suggestion
+of incest.
+
+Springing to his feet, he went forward to meet the carriages; the
+shadowed valley was flicked by the bright uniforms of the chasseurs
+on the boxes and the summer dresses of the women in the victorias;
+the laughter of the Danish Excellency already reached his ears above
+the hum of talk and the sliding hoofs of the horses as they advanced
+cautiously down the hill, straining back against their harness, and
+bringing with them at every step a little shower of stones from the
+rough surface of the road. The younger men, Greeks, and secretaries of
+legations, rode by the side of the carriages. The Danish Excellency
+was the first to alight, fat and babbling in a pink muslin dress with
+innumerable flounces; Julian turned aside to hide his smile. Madame
+Lafarge descended with her customary weightiness, beaming without
+benevolence but with a tyrannical proprietorship over all her guests.
+She graciously accorded her hand to Julian. The chasseurs were already
+busy with wicker baskets.
+
+'The return to Nature,' Alexander Christopoulos whispered to Eve.
+
+Julian observed that Eve looked bored and sulky; she detested large
+assemblies, unless she could hold their entire attention, preferring
+the more intimate scope of the _tête-à-tête_. Amongst the largest
+gathering she usually contrived to isolate herself and one other, with
+whom she conversed in whispers. Presently, he knew, she would be made
+to recite, or to tell anecdotes, involving imitation, and this she
+would perform, at first languidly, but warming with applause, and would
+end by dancing--he knew her programme! He rarely spoke to her, or she
+to him, in public. She would appear to ignore him, devoting herself to
+Don Rodrigo, or to Alexander, or, most probably, to the avowed admirer
+of some other woman. He had frequently brought his direct and masculine
+arguments to bear against this practice. She listened without replying,
+as though she did not understand.
+
+Fru Thyregod was more than usually sprightly.
+
+'Now, Armand, you lazy fellow, bring me my camera; this day has to be
+immortalised; I must have pictures of all you beautiful young men for
+my friends in Denmark. Fauns in a Grecian grave! Let me peep whether
+any of you have cloven feet.'
+
+Madame Lafarge put up her lorgnon, and said to the Italian Minister in
+a not very low voice,--
+
+'I am so fond of dear Fru Thyregod, but she is terribly vulgar at
+times.'
+
+There was a great deal of laughter over Fru Thyregod's sally, and some
+of the young men pretended to hide their feet beneath napkins.
+
+'Eve and Julie, you must be the nymphs,' the Danish Excellency went on.
+
+Eve took no notice; Julie looked shy, and the sisters Christopoulos
+angry at not being included.
+
+'Now we must all help to unpack; that is half the fun of the picnic,'
+said Madame Lafarge, in a business-like tone.
+
+Under the glare of her lorgnon Armand and Madame Delahaye attacked
+one basket; they nudged and whispered to one another, and their
+fingers became entangled under the cover of the paper wrappings. Eve
+strolled away, Valdez followed her. The Persian Minister who had come
+unobtrusively, after the manner of a humble dog, stood gently smiling
+in the background. Julie Lafarge never took her adoring eyes off Eve.
+The immense Grbits had drawn Julian on one side, and was talking to
+him, shooting out his jaw and hitting Julian on the chest for emphasis.
+Fru Thyregod, with many whispers, collected a little group to whom she
+pointed them out, and photographed them.
+
+'Really,' said the Danish Minister peevishly, to Condesa Valdez, 'my
+wife is the most foolish woman I know.'
+
+During the picnic every one was very gay, with the exception of Julian,
+who regretted having come, and of Miloradovitch, of whom Eve was
+taking no notice at all. Madame Lafarge was especially pleased with
+the success of her expedition. She enjoyed the intimacy that existed
+amongst all her guests, and said as much in an aside to the Roumanian
+Minister.
+
+'You know, _chère Excellence_, I have known most of these dear friends
+so long; we have spent happy years together in different capitals; that
+is the best of diplomacy: _ce qu'il y a de beau dans la carrière c'est
+qu'on se retrouve toujours_.'
+
+'It is not unlike a large family, one may say,' replied the Roumanian.
+
+'How well you phrase it!' exclaimed Madame Lafarge. 'Listen, everybody:
+His Excellency has made a real _mot d'esprit_, he says diplomacy is
+like a large family.'
+
+Eve and Julian looked up, and their eyes met.
+
+'You are not eating anything, Ardalion Semeonovitch,' said Armand (he
+had once spent two months in Russia) to Miloradovitch, holding out a
+plate of sandwiches.
+
+'No, nor do I want anything,' said Miloradovitch rudely, and he got up,
+and walked away by himself.
+
+'Dear me! _ces Russes!_ what manners!' said Madame Lafarge, pretending
+to be amused; and everybody looked facetiously at Eve.
+
+'I remember once, when I was in Russia, at the time that Stolypin
+was Prime Minister,' Don Rodrigo began, 'there was a serious scandal
+about one of the Empress's ladies-in-waiting and a son of old Princess
+Golucheff--you remember old Princess Golucheff, Excellency? she was a
+Bariatinsky, a very handsome woman, and Serge Radziwill killed himself
+on her account--he was a Pole, one of the Kieff Radziwills, whose
+mother was commonly supposed to be _au mieux_ with Stolypin (though
+Stolypin was not at all that kind of man; he was _très province_),
+and most people thought that was the reason why Serge occupied such a
+series of the highest Court appointments, in spite of being a Pole--the
+Poles were particularly unpopular just then; I even remember that
+Stanislas Aveniev, in spite of having a Russian mother--she was an
+Orloff, and her jewels were proverbial even in Petersburg--they had
+all been given her by the Grand Duke Boris--Stanislas Aveniev was
+obliged to resign his commission in the Czar's guard. However, Casimir
+Golucheff....' but everybody had forgotten the beginning of his story
+and only Madame Lafarge was left politely listening.
+
+Julian overheard Eve reproducing, in an undertone to Armand, the style
+and manner of Don Rodrigo's conversation. He also became aware that,
+between her sallies, Fru Thyregod was bent upon retaining his attention
+for herself.
+
+He was disgusted with all this paraphernalia of social construction,
+and longed ardently for liberty on Aphros. He wondered whether Eve
+were truly satisfied, or whether she played the part merely with the
+humorous gusto of an artist, caught up in his own game; he wondered to
+what extent her mystery was due to her life's pretence?
+
+Later, he found himself drifting apart with the Danish Excellency;
+he drifted, that is, beside her, tall, slack of limb, absent of
+mind, while she tripped with apparent heedlessness, but with actual
+determination of purpose. As she tripped she chattered. Fair and silly,
+she demanded gallantry of men, and gallantry of a kind--perfunctory,
+faintly pitying, apologetic--she was accorded. She had enticed Julian
+away, with a certain degree of skill, and was glad. Eve had scowled
+blackly, in the one swift glance she had thrown them.
+
+'Your cousin enchants Don Rodrigo, it is clear,' Fru Thyregod said with
+malice as they strolled.
+
+Julian turned to look back. He saw Eve sitting with the Spanish
+Minister on the steps of the little temple. In front of the temple, the
+ruins of the picnic stained the valley with bright frivolity; bits of
+white paper fluttered, tablecloths remained spread on the ground, and
+laughter echoed from the groups that still lingered hilariously; the
+light dresses of the women were gay, and their parasols floated above
+them like coloured bubbles against the darkness of the ilexes.
+
+'What desecration of the Dryads' grove,' said Fru Thyregod, 'let us put
+it out of sight,' and she gave a little run forward, and then glanced
+over her shoulder to see if Julian were following her.
+
+He came, unsmiling and leisurely. As soon as they were hidden from
+sight among the olives, she began to talk to him about himself, walking
+slowly, looking up at him now and then, and prodding meditatively with
+the tip of her parasol at the stones upon the ground. He was, she said,
+so free. He had his life before him. And she talked about herself, of
+the shackles of her sex, the practical difficulties of her life, her
+poverty, her effort to hide beneath a gay exterior a heart that was not
+gay.
+
+'Carl,' she said, alluding to her husband, 'has indeed charge of the
+affairs of Norway and Sweden also in Herakleion, but Herakleion is so
+tiny, he is paid as though he were a Consul.'
+
+Julian listened, dissecting the true from the untrue; although he
+knew her gaiety was no effort, but merely the child of her innate
+foolishness, he also knew that her poverty was a source of real
+difficulties to her, and he felt towards her a warm, though a bored
+and slightly contemptuous, friendliness. He listened to her babble,
+thinking more of the stream by which they walked, and of the little
+magenta cyclamen that grew in the shady, marshy places on its banks.
+
+Fru Thyregod was speaking of Eve, a topic round which she perpetually
+hovered in an uncertainty of fascination and resentment.
+
+'Do you approve of her very intimate friendship with that singer,
+Madame Kato?'
+
+'I am very fond of Madame Kato myself, Fru Thyregod.'
+
+'Ah, you are a man. But for Eve ... a girl.... After all, what is
+Madame Kato but a common woman, a woman of the people, and the mistress
+of Malteios into the bargain?'
+
+Fru Thyregod was unwontedly serious. Julian had not yet realised to
+what extent Alexander Christopoulos had transferred his attentions to
+Eve.
+
+'You know I am an unconventional woman; every one who knows me even
+a little can see that I am unconventional. But when I see a child, a
+nice child, like your cousin Eve, associated with a person like Kato, I
+think to myself, "Mabel, that is unbecoming."'
+
+She repeated,--
+
+'And yet I have been told that I was too unconventional. Yes, Carl has
+often reproached me, and my friends too. They say, "Mabel, you are too
+soft-hearted, and you are too unconventional." What do you think?'
+
+Julian ignored the personal. He said,--
+
+'I should not describe Eve as a "nice child."'
+
+'No? Well, perhaps not. She is too ... too....' said Fru Thyregod, who,
+not having very many ideas of her own, liked to induce other people
+into supplying the missing adjective.
+
+'She is too important,' Julian said gravely.
+
+The adjective in this case was unexpected. The Danish Excellency could
+only say,--
+
+'I think I know what you mean.'
+
+Julian, perfectly well aware that she did not, and caring nothing
+whether she did or no, but carelessly willing to illuminate himself
+further on the subject, pursued,--
+
+'Her frivolity is a mask. Her instincts alone are deep; _how_ deep,
+it frightens me to think. She is an artist, although, she may never
+produce art. She lives in a world of her own, with its own code of
+morals and values. The Eve that we all know is a sham, the product of
+her own pride and humour. She is laughing at us all. The Eve we know is
+entertaining, cynical, selfish, unscrupulous. The real Eve is ...' he
+paused, and brought out his words with a satisfied finality, 'a rebel
+and an idealist.'
+
+Then, glancing at his bewildered companion, he laughed and said,--
+
+'Don't believe a word I say, Fru Thyregod: Eve is nineteen, bent only
+upon enjoying her life to the full.'
+
+He knew, nevertheless, that he had swept together the loose wash of
+his thought into a concrete channel; and rejoiced.
+
+Fru Thyregod passed to a safer topic. She liked Julian, and understood
+only one form of excitement.
+
+'You bring with you such a breath of freshness and originality,' she
+said, sighing, 'into our stale little world.'
+
+His newly-found good humour coaxed him into responsiveness.
+
+'No world can surely ever be stale to you, Fru Thyregod; I always think
+of you as endowed with perpetual youth and gaiety.'
+
+'Ah, Julian, you have perfect manners, to pay so charming a compliment
+to an old woman like me.'
+
+She neither thought her world stale or little, nor herself old, but
+pathos had often proved itself of value.
+
+'Everybody knows, Fru Thyregod, that you are the life and soul of
+Herakleion.'
+
+They had wandered into a little wood, and sat down on a fallen tree
+beside the stream. She began again prodding at the ground with her
+parasol, keeping her eyes cast down. She was glad to have captured
+Julian, partly for her own sake, and partly because she knew that Eve
+would be annoyed.
+
+'How delightful to escape from all our noisy friends,' she said; 'we
+shall create quite a scandal; but I am too unconventional to trouble
+about that. I cannot sympathise with those limited, conventional folk
+who always consider appearances. I have always said, "One should be
+natural. Life is too short for the conventions." Although, I think one
+should refrain from giving pain. When I was a girl, I was a terrible
+tomboy.'
+
+He listened to her babble of coy platitudes, contrasting her with Eve.
+
+'I never lost my spirits,' she went on, in the meditative tone she
+thought suitable to _tête-à-tête_ conversations--it provoked intimacy,
+and afforded agreeable relief to her more social manner; a woman, to
+be charming, must be several-sided; gay in public, but a little wistful
+philosophy was interesting in private; it indicated sympathy, and
+betrayed a thinking mind,--'I never lost my spirits, although life has
+not always been very easy for me; still, with good spirits and perhaps
+a little courage one can continue to laugh, isn't that the way to take
+life? and on the whole I have enjoyed mine, and my little adventures
+too, my little harmless adventures; Carl always laughs and says, "You
+will always have adventures, Mabel, so I must make the best of it,"--he
+says that, though he has been very jealous at times. Poor Carl,' she
+said reminiscently, 'perhaps I have made him suffer; who knows?'
+
+Julian looked at her; he supposed that her existence was made up of
+such experiments, and knew that the arrival of every new young man in
+Herakleion was to her a source of flurry and endless potentialities
+which, alas, never fulfilled their promise, but which left her
+undaunted and optimistic for the next affray.
+
+'Why do I always talk about myself to you?' she said, with her little
+laugh; 'you must blame yourself for being too sympathetic.'
+
+He scarcely knew how their conversation progressed; he wondered idly
+whether Eve conducted hers upon the same lines with Don Rodrigo Valdez,
+or whether she had been claimed by Miloradovitch, to whom she said she
+was engaged. Did she care for Miloradovitch? he was immensely rich,
+the owner of jewels and oil-mines, remarkably good-looking; dashing,
+and a gambler. At diplomatic gatherings he wore a beautiful uniform.
+Julian had seen Eve dancing with him; he had seen the Russian closely
+following her out of a room, bending forward to speak to her, and her
+ironical eyes raised for an instant over the slow movement of her fan.
+He had seen them disappear together, and the provocative poise of
+her white shoulders, and the richness of the beautiful uniform, had
+remained imprinted on his memory.
+
+He awoke with dismay to the fact that Fru Thyregod had taken off her
+hat.
+
+She had a great quantity of soft, yellow hair into which she ran her
+fingers, lifting its weight as though oppressed. He supposed that the
+gesture was not so irrelevant to their foregoing conversation, of which
+he had not noticed a word, as it appeared to be. He was startled to
+find himself saying in a tone of commiseration,--
+
+'Yes, it must be very heavy.'
+
+'I wish that I could cut it all off,' Fru Thyregod cried petulantly.
+'Why, to amuse you, only look....' and to his horror she withdrew a
+number of pins and allowed her hair to fall in a really beautiful
+cascade over her shoulders. She smiled at him, parting the strands
+before her eyes.
+
+At that moment Eve and Miloradovitch came into view, wandering side by
+side down the path.
+
+Of the four, Miloradovitch alone was amused. Julian was full of a
+shamefaced anger towards Fru Thyregod, and between the two women an
+instant enmity sprang into being like a living and visible thing. The
+Russian drew near to Fru Thyregod with some laughing compliment; she
+attached herself desperately to him as a refuge from Julian. Julian and
+Eve remained face to face with one another.
+
+'Walk with me a little,' she said, making no attempt to disguise her
+fury.
+
+'My dear Eve,' he said, when they were out of earshot, 'I should
+scarcely recognise you when you put on that expression.'
+
+He spoke frigidly. She was indeed transformed, her features coarsened
+and unpleasing, her soft delicacy vanished. He could not believe that
+he had ever thought her rare, exquisite, charming.
+
+'I don't blame you for preferring Fru Thyregod,' she returned.
+
+'I believe your vanity to be so great that you resent any man speaking
+to any other woman but yourself,' he said, half persuading himself that
+he was voicing a genuine conviction.
+
+'Very well, if you choose to believe that,' she replied.
+
+They walked a little way in angry silence.
+
+'I detest all women,' he added presently.
+
+'Including me?'
+
+'Beginning with you.'
+
+He was reminded of their childhood with its endless disputes, and made
+an attempt to restore their friendship.
+
+'Come, Eve, why are we quarrelling? I do not make you jealous scenes
+about Miloradovitch.'
+
+'Far from it,' she said harshly.
+
+'Why should he want to marry you?' he began, his anger rising again.
+'What qualities have you? Clever, seductive, and entertaining! But, on
+the other hand, selfish, jealous, unkind, pernicious, indolent, vain.
+A bad bargain. If he knew you as well as I.... Jealousy! It amounts to
+madness.'
+
+'I am perhaps not jealous where Miloradovitch is concerned,' she said.
+
+'Then spare me the compliment of being jealous of me. You wreck
+affection; you will wreck your life through your jealousy and
+exorbitance.'
+
+'No doubt,' she replied in a tone of so much sadness that he became
+remorseful. He contrasted, moreover, her violence, troublesome,
+inconvenient, as it often was, with the standardised and distasteful
+little inanities of Fru Thyregod and her like, and found Eve preferable.
+
+'Darling, you never defend yourself; it is very disarming.'
+
+But she would not accept the olive-branch he offered.
+
+'Sentimentality becomes you very badly, Julian; keep it for Fru
+Thyregod.'
+
+'We have had enough of Fru Thyregod,' he said, flushing.
+
+'It suits you to say so; I do not forget so easily. Really, Julian,
+sometimes I think you very commonplace. From the moment you arrived
+until to-day, you have never been out of Fru Thyregod's pocket. Like
+Alexander, once. Like any stray young man.'
+
+'Eve!' he said, in astonishment at the outrageous accusation.
+
+'My little Julian, have you washed the lap-dog to-day? Carl always
+says, "Mabel, you are fonder of your dogs than of your children--you
+are really dreadful," but I don't think that's quite fair,' said Eve,
+in so exact an imitation of Fru Thyregod's voice and manner that Julian
+was forced to smile.
+
+She went on,--
+
+'I expect too much of you. My imagination makes of you something
+which you are not. I so despise the common herd that I persuade
+myself that you are above it. I can persuade myself of anything,' she
+said scathingly, wounding him in the recesses of his most treasured
+vanity--her good opinion of him; 'I persuade myself that you are a
+Titan amongst men, almost a god, but in reality, if I could see you
+without prejudice, what are you fit for? to be Fru Thyregod's lover!'
+
+'You are mad,' he said, for there was no other reply.
+
+'When I am jealous, I am mad,' she flung at him.
+
+'But if you are jealous of me....' he said, appalled. 'Supposing you
+were ever in love, your jealousy would know no bounds. It is a disease.
+It is the ruin of our friendship.'
+
+'Entirely.'
+
+'You are inordinately perverse.'
+
+'Inordinately.'
+
+'Supposing I were to marry, I should not dare--what an absurd
+thought--to introduce you to my wife.'
+
+A truly terrible expression came into her eyes; they narrowed to little
+slits, and turned slightly inwards; as though herself aware of it, she
+bent to pick the little cyclamen.
+
+'Are you trying to tell me, Julian....'
+
+'You told me you were engaged to Miloradovitch.'
+
+She stood up, regardless, and he saw the tragic pallor of her face. She
+tore the cyclamen to pieces beneath her white fingers.
+
+'It is true, then?' she said, her voice dead.
+
+He began to laugh.
+
+'You do indeed persuade yourself very easily.'
+
+'Julian, you must tell me. You must. Is it true?'
+
+'If it were?'
+
+'I should have to kill you--or myself,' she replied with the utmost
+gravity.
+
+'You are mad,' he said again, in the resigned tone of one who states a
+perfectly established fact.
+
+'If I am mad, you are unutterably cruel,' she said, twisting her
+fingers together; 'will you answer me, yes or no? I believe it is
+true,' she rushed on, immolating herself, 'you have fallen in love with
+some woman in England, and she, naturally, with you. Who is she? You
+have promised to marry her. You, whom I thought so free and splendid,
+to load yourself with the inevitable fetters!'
+
+'I should lose caste in your eyes?' he asked, thinking to himself that
+Eve was, when roused, scarcely a civilised being. 'But if you marry
+Miloradovitch you will be submitting to the same fetters you think so
+degrading.'
+
+'Miloradovitch,' she said impatiently, 'Miloradovitch will no more
+ensnare me than have the score of people I have been engaged to since
+I last saw you. You are still evading your answer.'
+
+'You will never marry?' he dwelt on his discovery.
+
+'Nobody that I loved,' she replied without hesitation, 'but, Julian,
+Julian, you don't answer my question?'
+
+'Would you marry me if I wanted you to?' he asked carelessly.
+
+'Not for the world, but why keep me in suspense? only answer me, are
+you trying to tell me that you have fallen in love? if so, admit
+it, please, at once, and let me go; don't you see, I am leaving Fru
+Thyregod on one side, I ask you in all humility now, Julian.'
+
+'For perhaps the fiftieth time since you were thirteen,' he said,
+smiling.
+
+'Have you tormented me long enough?'
+
+'Very well: I am in love with the Islands, and with nothing and nobody
+else.'
+
+'Then why had Fru Thyregod her hair down her back? you're lying to me,
+and I despise you doubly for it,' she reverted, humble no longer, but
+aggressive.
+
+'Fru Thyregod again?' he said, bewildered.
+
+'How little I trust you,' she broke out; 'I believe that you deceive me
+at every turn. Kato, too; you spend hours in Kato's flat. What do you
+do there? You write letters to people of whom I have never heard. You
+dined with the Thyregods twice last week. Kato sends you notes by hand
+from Herakleion when you are in the country. You use the Islands as
+dust to throw in my eyes, but I am not blinded.'
+
+'I have had enough of this!' he cried.
+
+'You are like everybody else,' she insisted; 'you enjoy mean
+entanglements, and you cherish the idea of marriage. You want a home,
+like everybody else. A faithful wife. Children. I loathe children,' she
+said violently. 'You are very different from me. You are tame. I have
+deluded myself into thinking we were alike. You are tame, respectable.
+A good citizen. You have all the virtues. I will live to show you how
+different we are. Ten years hence, you will say to your wife, "No, my
+dear, I really cannot allow you to know that poor Eve." And your wife,
+well trained, submissive, will agree.'
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, accustomed to such storms, and knowing that
+she only sought to goad him into a rage.
+
+'In the meantime, go back to Fru Thyregod; why trouble to lie to me?
+And to Kato, go back to Kato. Write to the woman in England, too. I
+will go to Miloradovitch, or to any of the others.'
+
+He was betrayed into saying,--
+
+'The accusation of mean entanglements comes badly from your lips.'
+
+In her heart she guessed pretty shrewdly at his real relation towards
+women: a self-imposed austerity, with violent relapses that had no
+lasting significance, save to leave him with his contemptuous distaste
+augmented. His mind was too full of other matters. For Kato alone he
+had a profound esteem.
+
+Eve answered his last remark,--
+
+'I will prove to you the little weight of my entanglements, by
+dismissing Miloradovitch to-day; you have only to say the word.'
+
+'You would do that--without remorse?'
+
+'Miloradovitch is nothing to me.'
+
+'You are something to him--perhaps everything.'
+
+'Cela ne me regarde pas,' she replied. 'Would you do as much for me?
+Fru Thyregod, for instance? or Kato?'
+
+Interested and curious, he said,--
+
+'To please you, I should give up Kato?'
+
+'You would not?'
+
+'Most certainly I should not. Why suggest it? Kato is your friend as
+much as mine. Are all women's friendships so unstable?'
+
+'Be careful, Julian: you are on the quicksands.'
+
+'I have had enough of these topics,' he said, 'will you leave them?'
+
+'No; I choose my own topics; you shan't dictate to me.'
+
+'You would sacrifice Miloradovitch without a thought, to please me--why
+should it please me?--but you would not forgo the indulgence of your
+jealousy! I am not grateful. Our senseless quarrels,' he said, 'over
+which we squander so much anger and emotion.' But he did not stop to
+question what lay behind their important futility. He passed his hand
+wearily over his hair, 'I am deluded sometimes into believing in their
+reality and sanity. You are too difficult. You ... you distort and
+bewitch, until one expects to wake up from a dream. Sometimes I think
+of you as a woman quite apart from other women, but at other times I
+think you live merely by and upon fictitious emotion and excitement.
+Must your outlook be always so narrowly personal? Kato, thank Heaven,
+is very different. I shall take care to choose my friends amongst men,
+or amongst women like Kato,' he continued, his exasperation rising.
+
+'Julian, don't be so angry: it isn't my fault that I hate politics.'
+
+He grew still angrier at her illogical short-cut to the reproach which
+lay, indeed, unexpressed at the back of his mind.
+
+'I never mentioned politics. I know better. No man in his senses would
+expect politics from any woman so demoralisingly feminine as yourself.
+Besides, that isn't your rôle. Your rôle is to be soft, idle; a toy; a
+siren; the negation of enterprise. Work and woman--the terms contradict
+one another. The woman who works, or who tolerates work, is only
+half a woman. The most you can hope for,' he said with scorn, 'is to
+inspire--and even that you do unconsciously, and very often quite
+against your will. You sap our energy; you sap and you destroy.'
+
+She had not often heard him speak with so much bitterness, but she did
+not know that his opinions in this more crystallised form dated from
+that slight moment in which he had divined her own untrustworthiness.
+
+'You are very wise. I forget whether you are twenty-two or
+twenty-three?'
+
+'Oh, you may be sarcastic. I only know that I will never have my life
+wrecked by women. To-morrow the elections take place, and, after that,
+whatever their result, I belong to the Islands.'
+
+'I think I see you with a certain clearness,' she said more gently,
+'full of illusions, independence, and young generosities--_nous passons
+tous par là_.'
+
+'Talk English, Eve, and be less cynical; if I am twenty-two, as you
+reminded me, you are nineteen.'
+
+'If you could find a woman who was a help and not a hindrance?' she
+suggested.
+
+'Ah!' he said, 'the Blue Bird! I am not likely to be taken in; I
+am too well on my guard.--Look!' he added, 'Fru Thyregod and your
+Russian friend; I leave you to them,' and before Eve could voice her
+indignation he had disappeared into the surrounding woods.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+On the next day, the day of the elections, which was also the
+anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Herakleion blossomed
+suddenly, and from the earliest hour, into a striped and fluttering
+gaudiness. The sun shone down upon a white town beflagged into
+an astonishing gaiety. Everywhere was whiteness, whiteness, and
+brilliantly coloured flags. White, green, and orange, dazzling in the
+sun, vivid in the breeze. And, keyed up to match the intensity of the
+colour, the band blared brassily, unremittingly, throughout the day
+from the centre of the _platia_.
+
+A parrot-town, glaring and screeching; a monkey-town, gibbering,
+excited, inconsequent. All the shops, save the sweet-shops, were shut,
+and the inhabitants flooded into the streets. Not only had they decked
+their houses with flags, they had also decked themselves with ribbons,
+their women with white dresses, their children with bright bows, their
+carriages with paper streamers, their horses with sunbonnets. Bands of
+young men, straw-hatted, swept arm-in-arm down the pavements, adding
+to the din with mouth organs, mirlitons, and tin trumpets. The trams
+flaunted posters in the colours of the contending parties. Immense
+char-à-bancs, roofed over with brown holland and drawn by teams of
+mules, their harness hung with bells and red tassels, conveyed the
+voters to the polling-booths amid the cheers and imprecations of the
+crowd.
+
+Herakleion abandoned itself deliriously to political carnival.
+
+In the immense, darkened rooms of the houses on the _platia_, the
+richer Greeks idled, concealing their anxiety. It was tacitly
+considered beneath their dignity to show themselves in public during
+that day. They could but await the fruition or the failure of their
+activities during the preceding weeks. Heads of households were for
+the most part morose, absorbed in calculations and regrets. Old
+Christopoulos, looking more bleached than usual, wished he had been
+more generous. That secretaryship for Alexander.... In the great sala
+of his house he paced restlessly up and down, biting his finger nails,
+and playing on his fingers the tune of the many thousand drachmæ he
+might profitably have expended. The next election would not take place
+for five years. At the next election he would be a great deal more
+lavish.
+
+He had made the same resolution at every election during the past
+thirty years.
+
+In the background, respectful of his silence, themselves dwarfed and
+diminutive in the immense height of the room, little knots of his
+relatives and friends whispered together, stirring cups of tisane.
+Heads were very close together, glances at old Christopoulos very
+frequent. Visitors, isolated or in couples, strolled in unannounced
+and informally, stayed for a little, strolled away again. A perpetual
+movement of such circulation rippled through the houses in the _platia_
+throughout the day, rumour assiduous in its wake. Fru Thyregod alone,
+with her fat, silly laugh, did her best wherever she went to lighten
+the funereal oppression of the atmosphere. The Greeks she visited were
+not grateful. Unlike the populace in the streets, they preferred taking
+their elections mournfully.
+
+By midday the business of voting was over, and in the houses of the
+_platia_ the Greeks sat round their luncheon-tables with the knowledge
+that the vital question was now decided, though the answer remained
+as yet unknown, and that in the polling-booths an army of clerks sat
+feverishly counting, while the crowd outside, neglectful of its meal,
+swarmed noisily in the hope of news. In the houses of the _platia_,
+on this one day of the year, the Greeks kept open table. Each vast
+dining-room, carefully darkened and indistinguishable in its family
+likeness from its neighbour in the house on either side, offered its
+hospitality under the inevitable chandelier. In each, the host greeted
+the new-comer with the same perfunctory smile. In each, the busy
+servants came and went, carrying dishes and jugs of orangeade--for
+Levantine hospitality, already heavily strained, boggled at wine--among
+the bulky and old-fashioned sideboards. All joyousness was absent from
+these gatherings, and the closed shutters served to exclude, not only
+the heat, but also the strains of the indefatigable band playing on the
+_platia_.
+
+Out in the streets the popular excitement hourly increased, for if the
+morning had been devoted to politics, the afternoon and evening were
+to be devoted to the annual feast and holiday of the Declaration of
+Independence. The national colours, green and orange, seemed trebled in
+the town. They hung from every balcony and were reproduced in miniature
+in every buttonhole. Only here and there an islander in his fustanelle
+walked quickly with sulky and averted eyes, rebelliously innocent of
+the brilliant cocarde, and far out to sea the rainbow islands shimmered
+with never a flag to stain the distant whiteness of the houses upon
+Aphros.
+
+The houses of the _platia_ excelled all others in the lavishness of
+their patriotic decorations. The balconies of the club were draped in
+green and orange, with the arms of Herakleion arranged in the centre
+in electric lights for the evening illumination. The Italian Consulate
+drooped its complimentary flag. The house of Platon Malteios--Premier
+or ex-Premier? no one knew--was almost too ostentatiously patriotic.
+The cathedral, on the opposite side, had its steps carpeted with red
+and the spaciousness of its porch festooned with the colours. From
+the central window of the Davenant house, opposite the sea, a single
+listless banner hung in motionless folds.
+
+It had, earlier in the day, occasioned a controversy.
+
+Julian had stood in the centre of the frescoed drawing-room, flushed
+and constrained.
+
+'Father, that flag on our house insults the Islands. It can be seen
+even from Aphros!'
+
+'My dear boy, better that it should be seen from Aphros than that we
+should offend Herakleion.'
+
+'What will the islanders think?'
+
+'They are accustomed to seeing it there every year.'
+
+'If I had been at home....'
+
+'When this house is yours, Julian, you will no doubt do as you please;
+so long as it is mine, I beg you not to interfere.'
+
+Mr Davenant had spoken in his curtest tones. He had added,--
+
+'I shall go to the cathedral this afternoon.'
+
+The service in the cathedral annually celebrated the independence of
+Herakleion. Julian slipped out of the house, meaning to mix with the
+ill-regulated crowd that began to collect on the _platia_ to watch for
+the arrival of the notables, but outside the door of the club he was
+discovered by Alexander Christopoulos who obliged him to follow him
+upstairs to the Christopoulos drawing-room.
+
+'My father is really too gloomy for me to confront alone,' Alexander
+said, taking Julian's arm and urging him along; 'also I have spent the
+morning in the club, which exasperates him. He likes me to sit at home
+while he stands looking at me and mournfully shaking his head.'
+
+They came into the sala together, where old Christopoulos paced up and
+down in front of the shuttered windows, and a score of other people sat
+whispering over their cups of tisane. White dresses, dim mirrors, and
+the dull gilt of furniture gleamed here and there in the shadows of the
+vast room.
+
+'Any news? any news?' the banker asked of the two young men.
+
+'You know quite well, father, that no results are to be declared until
+seven o'clock this evening.'
+
+Alexander opened a section of a Venetian blind, and as a shaft of
+sunlight fell startlingly across the floor a blare of music burst
+equally startlingly upon the silence.
+
+'The _platia_ is crowded already,' said Alexander, looking out.
+
+The hum of the crowd became audible, mingled with the music; explosions
+of laughter, and some unexplained applause. The shrill cry of a seller
+of iced water rang immediately beneath the window. The band in the
+centre continued to shriek remorselessly an antiquated air of the Paris
+boulevards.
+
+'At what time is the procession due?' asked Fru Thyregod over Julian's
+shoulder.
+
+'At five o'clock; it should arrive at any moment,' Julian said, making
+room for the Danish Excellency.
+
+'I adore processions,' cried Fru Thyregod, clapping her hands, and
+looking brightly from Julian to Alexander.
+
+Alexander whispered to Julie Lafarge, who had come up,--
+
+'I am sure Fru Thyregod has gone from house to house and from Legation
+to Legation, and has had a meal at each to-day.'
+
+Somebody suggested,--
+
+'Let us open the shutters and watch the procession from the balconies.'
+
+'Oh, what a good idea!' cried Fru Thyregod, clapping her hands again
+and executing a pirouette.
+
+Down in the _platia_ an indefinite movement was taking place; the band
+stopped playing for the first time that day, and began shuffling with
+all its instruments to one side. Voices were then heard raised in tones
+of authority. A cleavage appeared in the crowd, which grew in length
+and width as though a wedge were being gradually driven into that
+reluctant confusion of humanity.
+
+'A path for the procession,' said old Christopoulos, who, although
+not pleased at that frivolous flux of his family and guests on to
+the balconies of his house, had joined them, overcome by his natural
+curiosity.
+
+The path cut in the crowd now ran obliquely across the _platia_ from
+the end of the rue Royale to the steps of the cathedral opposite,
+and upon it the confetti with which the whole _platia_ was no doubt
+strewn became visible. The police, with truncheons in their hands,
+were pressing the people back to widen the route still further. They
+wore their gala hats, three-cornered, with upright plumes of green and
+orange nodding as they walked.
+
+'Look at Sterghiou,' said Alexander.
+
+The Chief of Police rode vaingloriously down the route looking from
+left to right, and saluting with his free hand. The front of his
+uniform was crossed with broad gold hinges, and plaits of yellow braid
+disappeared mysteriously into various pockets. One deduced whistles;
+pencils; perhaps a knife. Although he did not wear feathers in his hat,
+one knew that only the utmost self-restraint had preserved him from
+them.
+
+Here the band started again with a march, and Sterghiou's horse shied
+violently and nearly unseated him.
+
+'The troops!' said old Christopoulos with emotion.
+
+Debouching from the rue Royale, the army came marching four abreast. As
+it was composed of only four hundred men, and as it never appeared on
+any other day of the year, its general Panaïoannou always mobilised it
+in its entirety on the national festival. This entailed the temporary
+closing of the casino in order to release the croupiers, who were
+nearly all in the ranks, and led to a yearly dispute between the
+General and the board of administration.
+
+'There was once a croupier,' said Alexander, 'who was admitted to the
+favour of a certain grand-duchess until the day when, indiscreetly
+coming into the dressing-room where the lady was arranging and
+improving her appearance, he said, through sheer force of habit,
+"Madame, les jeux sont faits?" and was dismissed for ever by her reply,
+"Rien ne va plus."'
+
+The general himself rode in the midst of his troops, in his sky-blue
+uniform, to which the fantasy of his Buda-Pesth costumier had added for
+the occasion a slung Hussar jacket of white cloth. His gray moustache
+was twisted fiercely upwards, and curved like a scimitar across his
+face. He rode with his hand on his hip, slowly scanning the windows
+and balconies of the _platia_, which by now were crowded with people,
+gravely saluting his friends as he passed. Around him marched his
+bodyguard of six, a captain and five men; the captain carried in one
+hand a sword, and in the other--nobody knew why--a long frond of palm.
+
+The entire army tramped by, hot, stout, beaming, and friendly. At
+one moment some one threw down a handful of coins from a window, and
+the ranks were broken in a scramble for the coppers. Julian, who was
+leaning apart in a corner of his balcony, heard a laugh like a growl
+behind him as the enormous hand of Grbits descended on his shoulder.
+
+'Remember the lesson, young man: if you are called upon to deal with
+the soldiers of Herakleion, a fistful of silver amongst them will
+scatter them.'
+
+Julian thought apprehensively that they must be overheard, but Grbits
+continued in supreme unconsciousness,--
+
+'Look at their army, composed of shop-assistants and croupiers. Look
+at their general--a general in his spare moments, but in the serious
+business of his life a banker and an intriguer like the rest of them.
+I doubt whether he has ever seen anything more dead in his life than a
+dead dog in a gutter. I could pick him up and squash in his head like
+an egg.'
+
+Grbits extended his arm and slowly unfolded the fingers of his enormous
+hand. At the same time he gave his great laugh that was like the laugh
+of a good-humoured ogre.
+
+'At your service, young man,' he said, displaying the full breadth of
+his palm to Julian, 'whenever you stand in need of it. The Stavridists
+will be returned to-day; lose no time; show them your intentions.'
+
+He impelled Julian forward to the edge of the balcony and pointed
+across to the Davenant house.
+
+'That flag, young man: see to it that it disappears within the hour
+after the results of the elections are announced.'
+
+The army was forming itself into two phalanxes on either side of
+the cathedral steps. Panaïoannou caracoled up and down shouting his
+orders, which were taken up and repeated by the busy officers on foot.
+Meanwhile the notables in black coats were arriving in a constant
+stream that flowed into the cathedral; old Christopoulos had already
+left the house to attend the religious ceremony; the foreign Ministers
+and Consuls attended out of compliment to Herakleion; Madame Lafarge
+had rolled down the route in her barouche with her bearded husband;
+Malteios had crossed the _platia_ from his own house, and Stavridis
+came, accompanied by his wife and daughters. Still the band played on,
+the crowd laughed, cheered, or murmured in derision, and the strident
+cries of the water-sellers rose from all parts of the _platia_.
+
+Suddenly the band ceased to play, and in the hush only the hum of the
+crowd continued audible.
+
+The religious procession came walking very slowly from the rue Royale,
+headed by a banner and by a file of young girls, walking two by two,
+in white dresses, with wreaths of roses on their heads. As they walked
+they scattered sham roses out of baskets, the gesture reminiscent of
+the big picture in the Senate-room. It was customary for the Premier
+of the Republic to walk alone, following these young girls, black
+and grave in his frock-coat after their virginal white, but on this
+occasion, as no one knew who the actual Premier was, a blank space was
+left to represent the problematical absentee. Following the space came
+the Premier's habitual escort, a posse of police; it should have been a
+platoon of soldiers, but Panaïoannou always refused to consent to such
+a diminution of his army.
+
+'They say,' Grbits remarked to Julian in this connection, 'that the
+general withdraws even the sentries from the frontier to swell his
+ranks.'
+
+'Herakleion is open to invasion,' said Julian, smiling.
+
+Grbits replied sententiously, with the air of one creating a new
+proverb,--
+
+'Herakleion is open to invasion, but who wants to invade Herakleion?'
+
+The crowd watched the passage of the procession with the utmost
+solemnity. Not a sound was now heard but the monotonous step of
+feet. Religious awe had hushed political hilarity. Archbishop and
+bishops; archmandrites and _papás_ of the country districts, passed in
+a mingling of scarlet, purple and black. All the pomp of Herakleion
+had been pressed into service--all the clamorous, pretentious pomp,
+shouting for recognition, beating on a hollow drum; designed to impress
+the crowd; and perhaps, also, to impress, beyond the crowd, the silent
+Islands that possessed no army, no clergy, no worldly trappings, but
+that suffered and struggled uselessly, pitiably, against the tinsel
+tyrant in vain but indestructible rebellion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As five o'clock drew near, the entire population seemed to be collected
+in the _platia_. The white streak that had marked the route of the
+procession had long ago disappeared, and the square was now, seen from
+above, only a dense and shifting mass of people. In the Christopoulos
+drawing-room, where Julian still lingered, talking to Grbits and
+listening to the alternate foolishness, fanaticism, and ferocious
+good-humour of the giant, the Greeks rallied in numbers with only one
+topic on their lips. Old Christopoulos was frankly biting his nails and
+glancing at the clock; Alexander but thinly concealed his anxiety under
+a dribble of his usual banter. The band had ceased playing, and the
+subtle ear could detect an inflection in the very murmur of the crowd.
+
+'Let us go on to the balcony again,' Grbits said to Julian; 'the
+results will be announced from the steps of Malteios' house.'
+
+They went out; some of the Greeks followed them, and all pressed
+behind, near the window openings.
+
+'It is a more than usually decisive day for Herakleion,' said old
+Christopoulos, and Julian knew that the words were spoken at, although
+not to, him.
+
+He felt that the Greeks looked upon him as an intruder, wishing him
+away so that they might express their opinions freely, but in a spirit
+of contrariness he remained obstinately.
+
+A shout went up suddenly from the crowd: a little man dressed in black,
+with a top-hat, and a great many white papers in his hand, had appeared
+in the frame of Malteios' front-door. He stood on the steps, coughed
+nervously, and dropped his papers.
+
+'Inefficient little rat of a secretary!' cried Alexander in a burst of
+fury.
+
+'Listen!' said Grbits.
+
+A long pause of silence from the whole _platia_, in which one thin
+voice quavered, reaching only the front row of the crowd.
+
+'Stavridis has it,' Grbits said quietly, who had been craning over the
+edge of the balcony. His eyes twinkled maliciously, delightedly, at
+Julian across the group of mortified Greeks. 'An immense majority,' he
+invented, enjoying himself.
+
+Julian was already gone. Slipping behind old Christopoulos, whose
+saffron face had turned a dirty plum colour, he made his way downstairs
+and out into the street. A species of riot, in which the police, having
+failed successfully to intervene, were enthusiastically joining, had
+broken out in the _platia_. Some shouted for Stavridis, some for
+Malteios; some railed derisively against the Islands. People threw
+their hats into the air, waved their arms, and kicked up their legs.
+Some of them were vague as to the trend of their own opinions, others
+extremely determined, but all were agreed about making as much noise as
+possible. Julian passed unchallenged to his father's house.
+
+Inside the door he found Aristotle talking with three islanders. They
+laid hold of him, urgent though respectful, searching his face with
+eager eyes.
+
+'It means revolt at last; you will not desert us, Kyrie?'
+
+He replied,--
+
+'Come with me, and you will see.'
+
+They followed him up the stairs, pressing closely after him. On the
+landing he met Eve and Kato, coming out of the drawing-room. The singer
+was flushed, two gold wheat-ears trembled in her hair, and she had
+thrown open the front of her dress. Eve hung on her arm.
+
+'Julian!' Kato exclaimed, 'you have heard, Platon has gone?'
+
+In her excitement she inadvertently used Malteios' Christian name.
+
+'It means,' he replied, 'that Stavridis, now in power, will lose no
+time in bringing against the Islands all the iniquitous reforms we know
+he contemplates. It means that the first step must be taken by us.'
+
+His use of the pronoun ranged himself, Kato, Aristotle, the three
+islanders, and the invisible Islands into an instant confederacy. Kato
+responded to it,--
+
+'Thank God for this.'
+
+They waited in complete confidence for his next words. He had shed his
+aloofness, and all his efficiency of active leadership was to the fore.
+
+'Where is my father?'
+
+'He went to the Cathedral; he has not come home yet, Kyrie.'
+
+Julian passed into the drawing-room, followed by Eve and Kato and the
+four men. Outside the open window, fastened to the balcony, flashed
+the green and orange flag of Herakleion. Julian took a knife from
+his pocket, and, cutting the cord that held it, withdrew flag and
+flag-staff into the room and flung it on to the ground.
+
+'Take it away,' he said to the islanders, 'or my father will order it
+to be replaced. And if he orders another to be hung out in its place,'
+he added, looking at them with severity, 'remember there is no other
+flag in the house, and none to be bought in Herakleion.'
+
+At that moment a servant from the country-house came hurriedly into the
+room, drew Julian unceremoniously aside, and broke into an agitated
+recital in a low voice. Eve heard Julian saying,--
+
+'Nicolas sends for me? But he should have given a reason. I cannot come
+now, I cannot leave Herakleion.'
+
+And the servant,--
+
+'Kyrie, the major-domo impressed upon me that I must on no account
+return without you. Something has occurred, something serious. What
+it is I do not know. The carriage is waiting at the back entrance; we
+could not drive across the _platia_ on account of the crowds.'
+
+'I shall have to go, I suppose,' Julian said to Eve and Kato. 'I will
+go at once, and will return, if possible, this evening. Nicolas would
+not send without an excellent reason, though he need not have made this
+mystery. Possibly a message from Aphros.... In any case, I must go.'
+
+'I will come with you,' Eve said unexpectedly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+In almost unbroken silence they drove out to the country-house, in a
+hired victoria, to the quick, soft trot of the two little lean horses,
+away from the heart of the noisy town; past the race-course with its
+empty stands; under the ilex-avenue in a tunnel of cool darkness; along
+the road, redolent with magnolias in the warmth of the evening; through
+the village, between the two white lodges; and round the bend of the
+drive between the bushes of eucalyptus. Eve had spoken, but he had said
+abruptly,--
+
+'Don't talk; I want to think,' and she, after a little gasp of
+astonished indignation, had relapsed languorous into her corner, her
+head propped on her hand, and her profile alone visible to her cousin.
+He saw, in the brief glance that he vouchsafed her, that her red mouth
+looked more than usually sulky, in fact not unlike the mouth of a
+child on the point of tears, a very invitation to inquiry, but, more
+from indifference than deliberate wisdom, he was not disposed to take
+up the challenge. He too sat silent, his thoughts flying over the
+day, weighing the consequences of his own action, trying to forecast
+the future. He was far away from Eve, and she knew it. At times he
+enraged and exasperated her almost beyond control. His indifference
+was an outrage on her femininity. She knew him to be utterly beyond
+her influence: taciturn when he chose, ill-tempered when he chose,
+exuberant when he chose, rampageous, wild; insulting to her at moments;
+domineering whatever his mood, and regardless of her wishes; yet at the
+same time unconscious of all these things. Alone with her now, he had
+completely forgotten her presence by his side.
+
+Her voice broke upon his reflections,--
+
+'Thinking of the Islands, Julian?' and her words joining like
+a cogwheel smoothly on to the current of his mind, he answered
+naturally,--
+
+'Yes,'
+
+'I thought as much. I have something to tell you. You may not be
+interested. I am no longer engaged to Miloradovitch.'
+
+'Since when?'
+
+'Since yesterday evening. Since you left me, and ran away into the
+woods. I was angry, and vented my anger on him.'
+
+'Was that fair?'
+
+'He has you to thank. It has happened before--with others.'
+
+Roused for a second from his absorption, he impatiently shrugged his
+shoulders, and turned his back, and looked out over the sea. Eve was
+again silent, brooding and resentful in her corner. Presently he turned
+towards her, and said angrily, reverting to the Islands,--
+
+'You are the vainest and most exorbitant woman I know. You resent one's
+interest in anything but yourself.'
+
+As she did not answer, he added,--
+
+'How sulky you look; it's very unbecoming.'
+
+Was no sense of proportion or of responsibility ever to weigh upon her
+beautiful shoulders? He was irritated, yet he knew that his irritation
+was half-assumed, and that in his heart he was no more annoyed by her
+fantasy than by the fantasy of Herakleion. They matched each other;
+their intangibility, their instability, were enough to make a man
+shake his fists to Heaven, yet he was beginning to believe that their
+colour and romance--for he never dissociated Eve and Herakleion in his
+mind--were the dearest treasures of his youth. He turned violently and
+amazingly upon her.
+
+'Eve, I sometimes hate you, damn you; but you are the rainbow of my
+days.'
+
+She smiled, and, enlightened, he perceived with interest, curiosity,
+and amused resignation, the clearer grouping of the affairs of his
+youthful years. Fantasy to youth! Sobriety to middle-age! Carried away,
+he said to her,--
+
+'Eve! I want adventure, Eve!'
+
+Her eyes lit up in instant response, but he could not read her inward
+thought, that the major part of his adventure should be, not Aphros,
+but herself. He noted, however, her lighted eyes, and leaned over to
+her.
+
+'You are a born adventurer, Eve, also.'
+
+She remained silent, but her eyes continued to dwell on him, and to
+herself she was thinking, always sardonic although the matter was of
+such perennial, such all-eclipsing importance to her,--
+
+'A la bonne heure, he realises my existence.'
+
+'What a pity you are not a boy; we could have seen the adventure of the
+Islands through together.'
+
+('The Islands always!' she thought ruefully.)
+
+'I should like to cross to Aphros to-night,' he murmured, with absent
+eyes....
+
+('Gone again,' she thought. 'I held him for a moment.')
+
+
+When they reached the house no servants were visible, but in reply to
+the bell a young servant appeared, scared, white-faced, and, as rapidly
+disappearing, was replaced by the old major-domo. He burst open the
+door into the passage, a crowd of words pressing on each other's heels
+in his mouth; he had expected Julian alone; when he saw Eve, who was
+idly turning over the letters that awaited her, he clapped his hand
+tightly over his lips, and stood, struggling with his speech, balancing
+himself in his arrested impetus on his toes.
+
+'Well, Nicolas?' said Julian.
+
+The major-domo exploded, removing his hand from his mouth,--
+
+'Kyrie! a word alone....' and as abruptly replaced the constraining
+fingers.
+
+Julian followed him through the swing door into the servants' quarters,
+where the torrent broke loose.
+
+'Kyrie, a disaster! I have sent men with a stretcher. I remained in
+the house myself looking for your return. Father Paul--yes, yes, it is
+he--drowned--yes, drowned--at the bottom of the garden. Come, Kyrie,
+for the love of God. Give directions. I am too old a man. God be
+praised, you have come. Only hasten. The men are there already with
+lanterns.'
+
+He was clinging helplessly to Julian's wrist, and kept moving his
+fingers up and down Julian's arm, twitching fingers that sought
+reassurance from firmer muscles, in a distracted way, while his eyes
+beseechingly explored Julian's face.
+
+Julian, shocked, jarred, incredulous, shook off the feeble fingers in
+irritation. The thing was an outrage on the excitement of the day. The
+transition to tragedy was so violent that he wished, in revolt, to
+disbelieve it.
+
+'You must be mistaken, Nicolas!'
+
+'Kyrie, I am not mistaken. The body is lying on the shore. You can see
+it there. I have sent lanterns and a stretcher. I beg of you to come.'
+
+He spoke, tugging at Julian's sleeve, and as Julian remained
+unaccountably immovable he sank to his knees, clasping his hands and
+raising imploring eyes. His fustanelle spread its pleats in a circle on
+the stone floor. His story had suddenly become vivid to Julian with the
+words, 'The body is lying on the shore'; 'drowned,' he had said before,
+but that had summoned no picture. The body was lying on the shore. The
+body! Paul, brisk, alive, familiar, now a body, merely. The body! had a
+wave, washing forward, deposited it gently, and retreated without its
+burden? or had it floated, pale-faced under the stars, till some man,
+looking by chance down at the sea from the terrace at the foot of the
+garden, caught that pale, almost phosphorescent gleam rocking on the
+swell of the water?
+
+The old major-domo followed Julian's stride between the lemon-trees,
+obsequious and conciliatory. The windows of the house shone behind
+them, the house of tragedy, where Eve remained as yet uninformed,
+uninvaded by the solemnity, the reality, of the present. Later, she
+would have to be told that a man's figure had been wrenched from their
+intimate and daily circle. The situation appeared grotesquely out of
+keeping with the foregoing day, and with the wide and gentle night.
+
+From the paved walk under the pergola of gourds rough steps led down
+to the sea. Julian, pausing, perceived around the yellow squares of
+the lanterns the indistinct figures of men, and heard their low,
+disconnected talk breaking intermittently on the continuous wash of
+the waves. The sea that he loved filled him with a sudden revulsion
+for the indifference of its unceasing movement after its murder of a
+man. It should, in decency, have remained quiet, silent; impenetrable,
+unrepentant, perhaps; inscrutable, but at least silent; its murmur
+echoed almost as the murmur of a triumph....
+
+He descended the steps. As he came into view, the men's fragmentary
+talk died away; their dim group fell apart; he passed between them, and
+stood beside the body of Paul.
+
+Death. He had never seen it. As he saw it now, he thought that he
+had never beheld anything so incontestably real as its irrevocable
+stillness. Here was finality; here was defeat beyond repair. In the
+face of this judgment no revolt was possible. Only acceptance was
+possible. The last word in life's argument had been spoken by an
+adversary for long remote, forgotten; an adversary who had remained
+ironically dumb before the babble, knowing that in his own time, with
+one word, he could produce the irrefutable answer. There was something
+positively satisfying in the faultlessness of the conclusion. He had
+not thought that death would be like this. Not cruel, not ugly, not
+beautiful, not terrifying--merely unanswerable. He wondered now at the
+multitude of sensations that had chased successively across his mind
+or across his vision: the elections, Fru Thyregod, the jealousy of
+Eve, his incredulity and resentment at the news, his disinclination
+for action, his indignation against the indifference of the sea; these
+things were vain when here, at his feet, lay the ultimate solution.
+
+Paul lay on his back, his arms straight down his sides, and his long,
+wiry body closely sheathed in the wet soutane. The square toes of his
+boots stuck up, close together, like the feet of a swathed mummy. His
+upturned face gleamed white with a tinge of green in the light of the
+lanterns, and appeared more luminous than they. So neat, so orderly he
+lay; but his hair, alone disordered, fell in wet red wisps across his
+neck and along the ground behind his head.
+
+At that moment from the direction of Herakleion there came a long hiss
+and a rush of bright gold up into the sky; there was a crackle of
+small explosions, and fountains of gold showered against the night as
+the first fireworks went up from the quays. Rockets soared, bursting
+into coloured stars among the real stars, and plumes of golden light
+spread themselves dazzlingly above the sea. Faint sounds of cheering
+were borne upon the breeze.
+
+The men around the body of the priest waited, ignorant and bewildered,
+relieved that some one had come to take command. Their eyes were bent
+upon Julian as he stood looking down; they thought he was praying
+for the dead. Presently he became aware of their expectation, and
+pronounced with a start,--
+
+'Bind up his hair!'
+
+Fingers hastened clumsily to deal with the stringy red locks; the limp
+head was supported, and the hair knotted somehow into a semblance of
+its accustomed roll. The old major-domo quavered in a guilty voice, as
+though taking the blame for carelessness,--
+
+'The hat is lost, Kyrie.'
+
+Julian let his eyes travel over the little group of men, islanders all,
+with an expression of searching inquiry.
+
+'Which of you made this discovery?'
+
+It appeared that one of them, going to the edge of the sea in
+expectation of the fireworks, had noticed, not the darkness of the
+body, but the pallor of the face, in the water not far out from the
+rocks. He had waded in and drawn the body ashore. Dead Paul lay there
+deaf and indifferent to this account of his own finding.
+
+'No one can explain....'
+
+Ah, no! and he, who could have explained, was beyond the reach of
+their curiosity. Julian looked at the useless lips, unruffled even by
+a smile of sarcasm. He had known Paul all his life, had learnt from
+him, travelled with him, eaten with him, chaffed him lightly, but
+never, save in that one moment when he had gripped the priest by the
+wrist and had looked with steadying intention into his eyes, had their
+intimate personalities brushed in passing. Julian had no genius for
+friendship.... He began to see that this death had ended an existence
+which had run parallel with, but utterly walled off from, his own.
+
+In shame the words tore themselves from him,--
+
+'Had he any trouble?'
+
+The men slowly, gravely, mournfully shook their heads. They could not
+tell. The priest had moved amongst them, charitable, even saintly; yes,
+saintly, and one did not expect confidences of a priest. A priest was
+a man who received the confidences of other men. Julian heard, and,
+possessed by a strong desire, a necessity, for self-accusation, he said
+to them in a tone of urgent and impersonal Justice, as one who makes a
+declaration, expecting neither protest nor acquiescence,--
+
+'I should have inquired into his loneliness.'
+
+They were slightly startled, but, in their ignorance, not
+over-surprised, only wondering why he delayed in giving the order
+to move the body on to the stretcher and carry it up to the church.
+Farther up the coast, the rockets continued to soar, throwing out
+bubbles of green and red and orange, fantastically tawdry. Julian
+remained staring at the unresponsive corpse, repeating sorrowfully,--
+
+'I should have inquired--yes, I should have inquired--into his
+loneliness.'
+
+He spoke with infinite regret, learning a lesson, shedding a particle
+of his youth. He had taken for granted that other men's lives were as
+promising, as full of dissimulated eagerness, as his own. He had walked
+for many hours up and down Paul's study, lost in an audible monologue,
+expounding his theories, tossing his rough head, emphasising,
+enlarging, making discoveries, intent on his egotism, hewing out his
+convictions, while the priest sat by the table, leaning his head on
+his hand, scarcely contributing a word, always listening. During those
+hours, surely, his private troubles had been forgotten? Or had they
+been present, gnawing, beneath the mask of sympathy? A priest was a man
+who received the confidences of other men!
+
+'Carry him up,' Julian said, 'carry him up to the church.'
+
+He walked away alone as the dark cortège set itself in movement,
+his mind strangely accustomed to the fact that Paul would no longer
+frequent their house and that the long black figure would no longer
+stroll, tall and lean, between the lemon-trees in the garden. The
+fact was more simple and more easily acceptable than he could have
+anticipated. It seemed already quite an old-established fact. He
+remembered with a shock of surprise, and a raising of his eyebrows,
+that he yet had to communicate it to Eve. He knew it so well himself
+that he thought every one else must know it too. He was immeasurably
+more distressed by the tardy realisation of his own egotism in regard
+to Paul, than by the fact of Paul's death.
+
+He walked very slowly, delaying the moment when he must speak to Eve.
+He sickened at the prospect of the numerous inevitable inquiries that
+would be made to him by both his father and his uncle. He would never
+hint to them that the priest had had a private trouble. He rejoiced to
+remember his former loyalty, and to know that Eve remained ignorant
+of that extraordinary, unexplained conversation when Paul had talked
+about the mice. Mice in the church! He, Julian, must see to the decent
+covering of the body. And of the face, especially of the face.
+
+An immense golden wheel flared out of the darkness; whirled, and died
+away above the sea.
+
+In the dim church the men had set down the stretcher before the
+iconostase. Julian felt his way cautiously amongst the rush-bottomed
+chairs. The men were standing about the stretcher, their fishing caps
+in their hands, awed into a whispering mysticism which Julian's voice
+harshly interrupted,--
+
+'Go for a cloth, one of you--the largest cloth you can find.'
+
+He had spoken loudly in defiance of the melancholy peace of the church,
+that received so complacently within its ready precincts the visible
+remains from which the spirit, troubled and uncompanioned in life,
+had fled. He had always thought the church complacent, irritatingly
+remote from pulsating human existence, but never more so than now when
+it accepted the dead body as by right, firstly within its walls, and
+lastly within its ground, to decompose and rot, the body of its priest,
+among the bodies of other once vital and much-enduring men.
+
+'Kyrie, we can find only two large cloths, one a dust-sheet, and one a
+linen cloth to spread over the altar. Which are we to use?'
+
+'Which is the larger?'
+
+'Kyrie, the dust-sheet, but the altar-cloth is of linen edged with
+lace.'
+
+'Use the dust-sheet; dust to dust,' said Julian bitterly.
+
+Shocked and uncomprehending, they obeyed. The black figure now became a
+white expanse, under which the limbs and features defined themselves as
+the folds sank into place.
+
+'He is completely covered over?'
+
+'Completely, Kyrie.'
+
+'The mice cannot run over his face?'
+
+'Kyrie, no!'
+
+'Then no more can be done until one of you ride into Herakleion for the
+doctor.'
+
+He left them, re-entering the garden by the side-gate which Paul had
+himself constructed with his capable, carpenter's hands. There was now
+no further excuse for delay; he must exchange the darkness for the
+unwelcome light, and must share out his private knowledge to Eve. Those
+men, fisher-folk, simple folk, had not counted as human spectators, but
+rather as part of the brotherhood of night, nature, and the stars.
+
+He waited for Eve in the drawing-room, having assured himself that she
+had been told nothing, and there, presently, he saw her come in, her
+heavy hair dressed high, a fan and a flower drooping from her hand,
+and a fringed Spanish shawl hanging its straight silk folds from her
+escaping shoulders. Before her indolence, and her slumbrous delicacy,
+he hesitated. He wildly thought that he would allow the news to wait.
+Tragedy, reality, were at that moment so far removed from her.... She
+said in delight, coming up to him, and forgetful that they were in the
+house in obedience to a mysterious and urgent message,--
+
+'Julian, have you seen the fireworks? Come out into the garden. We'll
+watch.'
+
+He put his arm through her bare arm,--
+
+'Eve, I must tell you something.'
+
+'Fru Thyregod?' she cried, and the difficulty of his task became all
+but insurmountable.
+
+'Something serious. Something about Father Paul.'
+
+Her strange eyes gave him a glance of undefinable suspicion.
+
+'What about him?'
+
+'He has been found, in the water, at the bottom of the garden.'
+
+'In the water?'
+
+'In the sea. Drowned.'
+
+He told her all the circumstances, doggedly, conscientiously, under
+the mockery of the tinsel flames that streamed out from the top of
+the columns, and of the distant lights flashing through the windows,
+speaking as a man who proclaims in a foreign country a great truth
+bought by the harsh experience of his soul, to an audience unconversant
+with his alien tongue. This truth that he had won, in the presence
+of quiet stars, quieter death, and simple men, was desecrated by its
+recital to a vain woman in a room where the very architecture was based
+on falsity. Still he persevered, believing that his own intensity
+of feeling must end in piercing its way to the foundations of her
+heart. He laid bare even his harassing conviction of his neglected
+responsibility,--
+
+'I should have suspected ... I should have suspected....'
+
+He looked at Eve; she had broken down and was sobbing, Paul's name
+mingled incoherently with her sobs. He did not doubt that she was
+profoundly shocked, but with a new-found cynicism he ascribed her tears
+to shock rather than to sorrow. He himself would have been incapable of
+shedding a single tear. He waited quietly for her to recover herself.
+
+'Oh, Julian! Poor Paul! How terrible to die like that, alone, in the
+sea, at night....' For a moment her eyes were expressive of real
+horror, and she clasped Julian's hand, gazing at him while all the
+visions of her imagination were alive in her eyes. She seemed to be
+on the point of adding something further, but continued to cry for a
+few moments, and then said, greatly sobered, 'You appear to take for
+granted that he has killed himself?'
+
+He considered this. Up to the present no doubt whatever had existed
+in his mind. The possibility of an accident had not occurred to him.
+The very quality of repose and peace that he had witnessed had offered
+itself to him as the manifest evidence that the man had sought the only
+solution for a life grown unendurable. He had acknowledged the man's
+wisdom, bowing before his recognition of the conclusive infallibility
+of death as a means of escape. Cowardly? so men often said, but
+circumstances were conceivable--circumstances in the present case
+unknown, withheld, and therefore not to be violated by so much as a
+hazarded guess--circumstances were conceivable in which no other course
+was to be contemplated. He replied with gravity,--
+
+'I do believe he put an end to his life.'
+
+The secret reason would probably never be disclosed; even if it came
+within sight, Julian must now turn his eyes the other way. The secret
+which he might have, nay, should have, wrenched from his friend's
+reserve while he still lived, must remain sacred and unprofaned now
+that he was dead. Not only must he guard it from his own knowledge, but
+from the knowledge of others. With this resolution he perceived that he
+had already blundered.
+
+'Eve, I have been wrong; this thing must be presented as an accident. I
+have no grounds for believing that he took his life. I must rely on you
+to support me. In fairness on poor Paul.... He told me nothing. A man
+has a right to his own reticence.'
+
+He paused, startled at the truth of his discovery, and cried out,
+taking his head between his hands,--
+
+'Oh God! the appalling loneliness of us all!'
+
+He shook his head despairingly for a long moment with his hands pressed
+over his temples. Dropping his hands with a gesture of discouragement
+and lassitude, he regarded Eve.
+
+'I've found things out to-night, I think I've aged by five years. I
+know that Paul suffered enough to put an end to himself. We can't
+tell what he suffered from. I never intended to let you think he had
+suffered. We must never let any one else suspect it. But imagine the
+stages and degrees of suffering which led him to that state of mind;
+imagine his hours, his days, and specially his nights. I looked on him
+as a village priest, limited to his village; I thought his long hair
+funny; God forgive me, I slightly despised him. You, Eve, you thought
+him ornamental, a picturesque appendage to the house. And all that
+while, he was moving slowly towards the determination that he must kill
+himself.... Perhaps, probably, he took his decision yesterday, when you
+and I were at the picnic. When Fru Thyregod.... For months, perhaps,
+or for years, he had been living with the secret that was to kill him.
+He knew, but no one else knew. He shared his knowledge with no one. I
+think I shall never look at a man again without awe, and reverence, and
+terror.'
+
+He was trembling strongly, discovering his fellows, discovering
+himself, his glowing eyes never left Eve's face. He went on talking
+rapidly, as though eager to translate all there was to translate into
+words before the aroused energy deserted him.
+
+'You vain, you delicate, unreal thing, do you understand at all? Have
+you ever seen a dead man? You don't know the meaning of pain. You
+inflict pain for your amusement. You thing of leisure, you toy! Your
+deepest emotion is your jealousy. You can be jealous even where you
+cannot love. You make a plaything of men's pain--you woman! You can
+change your personality twenty times a day. You can't understand a
+man's slow, coherent progression; he, always the same person, scarred
+with the wounds of the past. To wound you would be like wounding a
+wraith.'
+
+Under the fury of his unexpected outburst, she protested,--
+
+'Julian, why attack me? I've done, I've said, nothing.'
+
+'You listened uncomprehendingly to me, thinking if you thought at all,
+that by to-morrow I should have forgotten my mood of to-night. You are
+wrong. I've gone a step forward to-day. I've learnt.... Learnt, I mean,
+to respect men who suffer. Learnt the continuity and the coherence of
+life. Days linked to days. For you, an episode is an isolated episode.'
+
+He softened.
+
+'No wonder you look bewildered. If you want the truth, I am angry with
+myself for my blindness towards Paul. Poor little Eve! I only meant
+half I said.'
+
+'You meant every word; one never speaks the truth so fully as when one
+speaks it unintentionally.'
+
+He smiled, but tolerantly and without malice.
+
+'Eve betrays herself by the glibness of the axiom. You know nothing
+of truth. But I've seen truth to-night. All Paul's past life is
+mystery, shadow, enigma to me, but at the same time there is a central
+light--blinding, incandescent light--which is the fact that he
+suffered. Suffered so much that, a priest, he preferred the supreme sin
+to such suffering. Suffered so much that, a man, he preferred death to
+such suffering! All his natural desire for life was conquered. That
+irresistible instinct, that primal law, that persists even to the
+moment when darkness and unconsciousness overwhelm us--the fight for
+life, the battle to retain our birthright--all this was conquered.
+The instinct to escape from life became stronger than the instinct to
+preserve it! Isn't that profoundly illuminating?'
+
+He paused.
+
+'That fact sweeps, for me, like a great searchlight over an abyss of
+pain. The pain the man must have endured before he arrived at such a
+reversal of his religion and of his most primitive instinct! His world
+was, at the end, turned upside down. A terrifying nightmare. He took
+the only course. You cannot think how final death is--so final, so
+simple. So simple. There is no more to be said. I had no idea....'
+
+He spoke himself with the simplicity he was trying to express. He said
+again, candidly, evenly, in a voice from which all the emotion had
+passed,--
+
+'So simple.'
+
+They were silent for a long time. He had forgotten her, and she was
+wondering whether she dared now recall him to the personal. She had
+listened, gratified when he attacked her, resentful when he forgot
+her, bored with his detachment, but wise enough to conceal both her
+resentment and her boredom. She had worshipped him in his anger, and
+had admired his good looks in the midst of his fire. She had been
+infinitely more interested in him than in Paul. Shocked for a moment by
+Paul's death, aware of the stirrings of pity, she had quickly neglected
+both for the sake of the living Julian.
+
+She reviewed a procession of phrases with which she might recall his
+attention.
+
+'You despise me, Julian.'
+
+'No, I only dissociate you. You represent a different sphere. You
+belong to Herakleion. I love you--in your place.'
+
+'You are hurting me.'
+
+He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards the fight. She
+let him have his way, with the disconcerting humility he had sometimes
+found in her. She bore his inspection mutely, her hands dropping
+loosely by her sides, fragile before his strength. He found that his
+thoughts had swept back, away from death, away from Paul, to her
+sweetness and her worthlessness.
+
+'Many people care for you--more fools they,' he said. 'You and I, Eve,
+must be allies now. You say I despise you. I shall do so less if I can
+enlist your loyalty in Paul's cause. He has died as the result of an
+accident. Are you to be trusted?'
+
+He felt her soft shoulders move in the slightest shrug under the
+pressure of his hands.
+
+'Do you think,' she asked, 'that you will be believed?'
+
+'I shall insist upon being believed. There is no evidence--is
+there?--to prove me wrong.'
+
+As she did not answer, he repeated his question, then released her in
+suspicion.
+
+'What do you know? tell me!'
+
+After a very long pause, he said quietly,--
+
+'I understand. There are many ways of conveying information. I am very
+blind about some things. Heavens! if I had suspected that truth, either
+you would not have remained here, or Paul would not have remained here.
+A priest! Unheard of.... A priest to add to your collection. First
+Miloradovitch, now Paul. Moths pinned upon a board. He loved you? Oh,'
+he cried in a passion, 'I see it all: he struggled, you persisted--till
+you secured him. A joke to you. Not a joke now--surely not a joke, even
+to you--but a triumph. Am I right? A triumph! A man, dead for you. A
+priest. You allowed me to talk, knowing all the while.'
+
+'I am very sorry for Paul,' she said absently.
+
+He laughed at the pitiably inadequate word.
+
+'Have the courage to admit that you are flattered. More flattered than
+grieved. Sorry for Paul--yes, toss him that conventional tribute before
+turning to the luxury of your gratified vanity. That such things can
+be! Surely men and women live in different worlds?'
+
+'But, Julian, what could I do?'
+
+'He told you he loved you?'
+
+She acquiesced, and he stood frowning at her, his hands buried in
+his pockets and his head thrust forward, picturing the scenes, which
+had probably been numerous, between her and the priest, letting his
+imagination play over the anguish of his friend and Eve's indifference.
+That she had not wholly discouraged him, he was sure. She would not
+so easily have let him go. Julian was certain, as though he had
+observed their interviews from a hidden corner, that she had amusedly
+provoked him, watched him with half-closed, ironical eyes, dropped him
+a judicious word in her honeyed voice, driven him to despair by her
+disregard, raised him to joy by her capricious friendliness. They had
+had every opportunity for meeting. Eve was strangely secretive. All had
+been carried on unsuspected. At this point he spoke aloud, almost with
+admiration,--
+
+'That you, who are so shallow, should be so deep!'
+
+A glimpse of her life had been revealed to him, but what secrets
+remained yet hidden? The veils were lifting from his simplicity;
+he contemplated, as it were, a new world--Eve's world, ephemerally
+and clandestinely populated. He contemplated it in fascination,
+acknowledging that here was an additional, a separate art, insistent
+for recognition, dominating, imperative, forcing itself impudently upon
+mankind, exasperating to the straight-minded because it imposed itself,
+would not be denied, was subtle, pretended so unswervingly to dignity
+that dignity was accorded it by a credulous humanity--the art which Eve
+practised, so vain, so cruel, so unproductive, the most fantastically
+prosperous of impostors!
+
+She saw the marvel in his eyes, and smiled slightly.
+
+'Well, Julian?'
+
+'I am wondering,' he cried, 'wondering! trying to pierce to your mind,
+your peopled memory, your present occupation, your science. What do you
+know? what have you heard? What have you seen? You, so young.... Who
+are not young. How many secrets like the secret of Paul are buried away
+in your heart? That you will never betray? Do you ever look forward
+to the procession of your life? You, so young. I think you have some
+extraordinary, instinctive, inherited wisdom, some ready-made heritage,
+bequeathed to you by generations, that compensates for the deficiencies
+of your own experience. Because you are so young. And so old, that I am
+afraid.'
+
+'Poor Julian,' she murmured. A gulf of years lay between them, and she
+spoke to him as a woman to a boy. He was profoundly shaken, while she
+remained quiet, gently sarcastic, pitying towards him, who, so vastly
+stronger than she, became a bewildered child upon her own ground. He
+had seen death, but she had seen, toyed with, dissected the living
+heart. She added, 'Don't try to understand. Forget me and be yourself.
+You are annoying me.'
+
+She had spoken the last words with such impatience, that, torn from his
+speculations, he asked,--
+
+'Annoying you? Why?'
+
+After a short hesitation she gave him the truth,--
+
+'I dislike seeing you at fault.'
+
+He passed to a further bewilderment.
+
+'I want you infallible.'
+
+Rousing herself from the chair where she had been indolently lying, she
+said in the deepest tones of her contralto voice,--
+
+'Julian, you think me worthless and vain; you condemn me as that
+without the charity of any further thought. You are right to think me
+heartless towards those I don't love. You believe that I spend my life
+in vanity. Julian, I only ask to be taken away from my life; I have
+beliefs, and I have creeds, both of my own making, but I'm like a ship
+without a rudder. I'm wasting my life in vanity. I'm capable of other
+things. I'm capable of the deepest good, I know, as well as of the most
+shallow evil. Nobody knows, except perhaps Kato a little, how my real
+life is made up of dreams and illusions that I cherish. People are far
+more unreal to me than my own imaginings. One of my beliefs is about
+you. You mustn't ever destroy it. I believe you could do anything.'
+
+'No, no,' he said, astonished.
+
+But she insisted, lit by the flame of her conviction.
+
+'Yes, anything. I have the profoundest contempt for the herd--to which
+you don't belong. I have believed in you since I was a child; believed
+in you, I mean, as something Olympian of which I was frightened. I have
+always known that you would justify my faith.'
+
+'But I am ordinary, normal!' he said, defending himself. He mistrusted
+her profoundly; wondered what attack she was engineering. Experience of
+her had taught him to be sceptical.
+
+'Ah, don't you see, Julian, when I am sincere?' she said, her voice
+breaking. 'I am telling you now one of the secrets of my heart, if you
+only knew it. The gentle, the amiable, the pleasant--yes, they're my
+toys. I'm cruel, I suppose. I'm always told so. I don't care; they're
+worth nothing. It does their little souls good to pass through the
+mill. But you, my intractable Julian....'
+
+'Kyrie,' said Nicolas, appearing, 'Tsantilas Tsigaridis, from Aphros,
+asks urgently whether you will receive him?'
+
+'Bring him in,' said Julian, conscious of relief, for Eve's words had
+begun to trouble him.
+
+Outside, the fireworks continued to flash like summer lightning.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Tsigaridis came forward into the room, his fishing cap between his
+fingers, and his white hair standing out in bunches of wiry curls round
+his face. Determination was written in the set gravity of his features,
+even in the respectful bow with which he came to a halt before Julian.
+Interrupted in their conversation, Eve had fallen, back, half lying, in
+her arm-chair, and Julian, who had been pacing up and down, stood still
+with folded arms, a frown cleaving a deep valley between his brows. He
+spoke to Tsigaridis,--
+
+'You asked for me, Tsantilas?'
+
+'I am a messenger, Kyrie.'
+
+He looked from the young man to the girl, his age haughty towards their
+youth, his devotion submissive towards the advantage of their birth.
+He said to Julian, using almost the same words as he had used once
+before,--
+
+'The people of Aphros are the people of your people,' and he bowed
+again.
+
+Julian had recovered his self-possession; he no longer felt dazed and
+bewildered as he had felt before Eve. In speaking to Tsigaridis he
+was speaking of things he understood. He knew very well the summons
+Tsigaridis was bringing him, the rude and fine old man, single-sighted
+as a prophet, direct and unswerving in the cause he had at heart. He
+imagined, with almost physical vividness, the hand of the fisherman on
+his shoulder, impelling him forward.
+
+'Kyrie,' Tsigaridis continued, 'to-day the flag of Herakleion flew from
+the house of your honoured father until you with your own hand threw it
+down. I was in Herakleion, where the news was brought to me, and there
+is no doubt that by now it is known also on Aphros. Your action can be
+interpreted only in one way. I know that to-day'--he crossed himself
+devoutly--'Father Paul, who was our friend and yours, has met his
+death; I break in upon your sorrow; I dared not wait; even death must
+not delay me. Kyrie, I come to bring you back to Aphros.'
+
+'I will go to-night,' said Julian without hesitation. 'My father and
+my uncle are in Herakleion, and I will start from here before they can
+stop me. Have you a boat?'
+
+'I can procure one,' said Tsigaridis, very erect, and looking at Julian
+with shining eyes.
+
+'Then I will meet you at the private jetty in two hours' time. We shall
+be unnoted in the darkness, and the illuminations will be over by then.'
+
+'Assuredly,' said the fisherman.
+
+'We go in all secrecy,' Julian added. 'Tsantilas, listen: can you
+distribute two orders for me by nightfall? I understand that you have
+organised a system of communications?'
+
+The old man's face relaxed slowly from its stern dignity; it softened
+into a mixture of slyness and pride and tenderness--the tenderness of a
+father for his favourite child. Almost a smile struggled with his lips.
+A strange contortion troubled his brows. Slowly and portentously, he
+winked.
+
+'Then send word to Aphros,' said Julian, 'that no boat be allowed to
+leave the Islands, and send word round the mainland recalling every
+available islander. Is it possible? I know that every islander in
+Herakleion to-night is sitting with boon companions in buried haunts,
+talking, talking, talking. Call them together, Tsantilas.'
+
+'It will be done, Kyrie.'
+
+'And Madame Kato--she must be informed.'
+
+'Kyrie, she sends you a message that she leaves Herakleion by
+to-night's train for Athens. When her work is done in Athens, she also
+will return to Aphros.'
+
+Tsigaridis took a step forward and lifted Julian's hands to his lips as
+was his wont. He bowed, and with his patriarchal gravity left the room.
+
+Julian in a storm of excitement flung himself upon his knees beside
+Eve's chair.
+
+'Eve!' he cried. 'Oh, the wild adventure! Do you understand? It has
+come at last. Paul--I had almost forgotten the Islands for him, and
+now I must forget him for the Islands. Too much has happened to-day.
+To-morrow all Herakleion will know that the Islands have broken away,
+and that I and every islander are upon Aphros. They will come at first
+with threats; they will send representatives. I shall refuse to retract
+our declaration. Then they will begin to carry out their threats.
+Panaïoannou--think of it!--will organise an attack with boats.' He
+became sunk in practical thought, from which emerging he said more
+slowly and carefully, 'They will not dare to bombard the island because
+they know that Italy and Greece are watching every move, and with a
+single man-of-war could blow the whole town of Herakleion higher than
+Mount Mylassa. Kato will watch over us from Athens.... They will dare
+to use no more than reasonable violence. And they will never gain a
+footing.'
+
+Eve was leaning forward; she put both hands on his shoulders as he
+knelt.
+
+'Go on talking to me,' she said, 'my darling.'
+
+In a low, intense voice, with unseeing eyes, he released all the flood
+of secret thought that he had, in his life, expressed only to Paul and
+to Kato.
+
+'I went once to Aphros, more than a year ago; you remember. They
+asked me then, through Tsigaridis, whether I would champion them
+if they needed championship. I said I would. Father was very angry.
+He is incomprehensibly cynical about the Islands, so cynical that I
+have been tempted to think him merely mercenary, anxious to live at
+peace with Herakleion for the sake of his profits. He is as cynical as
+Malteios, or any stay-in-power politician here. He read me a lecture
+and called the people a lot of rebellious good-for-nothings. Eve, what
+do I care? One thing is true, one thing is real: those people suffer.
+Everything on earth is empty, except pain. Paul suffered, so much that
+he preferred to die. But a whole people doesn't die. I went away to
+England, and I put Herakleion aside, but at the bottom of my heart I
+never thought of anything else; I knew I was bound to those people, and
+I lived, I swear to you, with the sole idea that I should come back,
+and that this adventure of rescue would happen some day exactly as it
+is happening now. I thought of Kato and of Tsigaridis as symbolical,
+almost mythological beings; my tutelary deities; Kato vigorous, and
+Tsigaridis stern. Eve, I would rather die than read disappointment in
+that man's eyes. I never made him many promises, but he must find me
+better than my word.'
+
+He got up and walked once or twice up and down the room, beating his
+fist against his palm and saying,--
+
+'Whatever good I do in my life, will be done in the Islands.'
+
+He came back and stood by Eve.
+
+'Eve, yesterday morning when I rode over the hills I saw the Islands
+lying out in the sea.... I thought of father, cynical and indifferent,
+and of Stavridis, a self-seeker. I wondered whether I should grow into
+that. I thought that in illusion lay the only loveliness.'
+
+'Ah, how I agree!' she said fervently.
+
+He dropped on his knees again beside her, and she put her fingers
+lightly on his hair.
+
+'When Tsigaridis came, you were telling me that you believed in
+me--Heaven knows why. For my part, I only believe that one can
+accomplish when one has faith in a cause, and is blind to one's own
+fate. And I believe that the only cause worthy of such faith, is the
+redemption of souls from pain. I set aside all doubt. I will listen to
+no argument, and I will walk straight towards the object I have chosen.
+If my faith is an illusion, I will make that illusion into a reality by
+the sheer force of my faith.'
+
+He looked up at Eve, whose eyes were strangely intent on him.
+
+'You see,' he said, fingering the fringe of her Spanish shawl,
+'Herakleion is my battleground, and if I am to tilt against windmills
+it must be in Herakleion. I have staked out Herakleion for my own, as
+one stakes out a claim in a gold-mining country. The Islands are the
+whole adventure of youth for me.'
+
+'And what am I?' she murmured to him.
+
+He looked at her without appearing to see her; he propped his elbow on
+her knee, leant his chin in his palm, and went on talking about the
+Islands.
+
+'I know that I am making the thing into a religion, but then I could
+never live, simply drifting along. Aimless.... I don't understand
+existence on those terms. I am quite prepared to give everything for
+my idea; father can disinherit me, and I know I am very likely to be
+killed. I don't care. I may be mistaken; I may be making a blunder, an
+error of judgment. I don't care. Those people are mine. Those Islands
+are my faith. I am blind.'
+
+'And you enjoy the adventure,' she said.
+
+'Of course, I enjoy the adventure. But there is more in it than
+that,' he said, shaking his head; 'there is conviction, burnt into me.
+Fanatical. Whoever is ready to pay the ultimate price for his belief,
+has a right to that belief. Heaven preserve me,' he cried, showing his
+fist, 'from growing like father, or Malteios, or Stavridis. Eve, you
+understand.'
+
+She murmured again,--
+
+'And what am I? What part have I got in this world of yours?'
+
+Again he did not appear to hear her, but making an effort to get up, he
+said,--
+
+'I promised to meet Tsantilas, and I must go,' but she pressed her
+hands on his shoulders and held him down.
+
+'Stay a little longer. I want to talk to you.'
+
+Kneeling there, he saw at last that her mouth was very resolute and her
+eyes full of a desperate decision. She sat forward in her chair, so
+close to him that he felt the warmth of her body, and saw that at the
+base of her throat a little pulse was beating quickly.
+
+'What is it, Eve?'
+
+'This,' she said, 'that if I let you go I may never see you again. How
+much time have you?'
+
+He glanced at the heavy clock between the lapis columns.
+
+'An hour and a half.'
+
+'Give me half an hour.'
+
+'Do you want to stop me from going?'
+
+'Could I stop you if I tried?'
+
+'I should never listen to you.'
+
+'Julian,' she said, 'I rarely boast, as you know, but I am wondering
+now how many people in Herakleion would abandon their dearest ideals
+for me? If you think my boast is empty--remember Paul.'
+
+He paused for a moment, genuinely surprised by the point of view she
+presented to him.
+
+'But I am different,' he said then, quite simply and with an air of
+finality.
+
+She laughed a low, delighted laugh.
+
+'You have said it: you are different. Of course you are different. So
+different, that you never notice me. People cringe to me--oh, I may say
+this to you--but you, Julian, either you are angry with me or else you
+forget me.'
+
+She looked at the clock, and for the first time a slight loss of
+self-assurance came over her, surprising and attractive in her, who
+seemed always to hold every situation in such contemptuous control.
+
+'Only half an hour,' she said, 'and I have to say to you all that which
+I have been at such pains to conceal--hoping all the while that you
+would force the gates of my concealment, trample on my hypocrisy!'
+
+Her eyes lost their irony and became troubled; she gazed at him
+with the distress of a child. He was uneasily conscious of his own
+embarrassment; he felt the shame of taking unawares the self-reliant
+in a moment of weakness, the mingled delight and perplexity of the
+hunter who comes suddenly upon the nymph, bare and gleaming, at the
+edge of a pool. All instinct of chivalry urged him to retreat until
+she should have recovered her self-possession. He desired to help her,
+tender and protective; and again, relentlessly, he would have outraged
+her reticence, forced her to the uttermost lengths of self-revelation,
+spared her no abasement, enjoyed her humiliation. Simultaneously, he
+wanted the triumph over her pride, the battle joined with a worthy foe;
+and the luxury of comforting her new and sudden pathos, as he alone,
+he knew, could comfort it. She summoned in him, uncivilised and wholly
+primitive, a passion of tyranny and a passion of possessive protection.
+
+He yielded to the former, and continued to look at her in expectation,
+without speaking.
+
+'Help me a little, Julian,' she murmured piteously, keeping her eyes
+bent on her hands, which were lying in her lap. 'Look back a little,
+and remember me. I can remember you so well: coming and going and
+disregarding me, or furiously angry with me; very often unkind to me;
+tolerant of me sometimes; negligently, insultingly, certain of me
+always!'
+
+'We used to say that although we parted for months, we always came
+together again.'
+
+She raised her eyes, grateful to him, as he still knelt on the floor in
+front of her, but he was not looking at her; he was staring at nothing,
+straight in front of him.
+
+'Julian,' she said, and spoke of their childhood, knowing that her best
+hope lay in keeping his thoughts distant from the present evening.
+
+Her distress, which had been genuine, had passed. She had a vital game
+to play, and was playing it with the full resources of her ability. She
+swept the chords lightly, swift to strike again that chord which had
+whispered in response. She bent a little closer to him.
+
+'I have always had this belief in you, of which I told you. You and I
+both have in us the making of fanatics. We never have led, and never
+should lead, the tame life of the herd.'
+
+She touched him with that, and regained command over his eyes, which
+this time she held unswervingly. But, having forced him to look at her,
+she saw a frown gathering on his brows; he sprang to his feet, and made
+a gesture as if to push her from him.
+
+'You are playing with me; if you saw me lying dead on that rug you
+would turn from me as indifferently as from Paul.'
+
+At this moment of her greatest danger, as he stood towering over her,
+she dropped her face into her hands, and he looked down only upon the
+nape of her neck and her waving hair. Before he could speak she looked
+up again, her eyes very sorrowful under plaintive brows.
+
+'Do I deserve that you should say that to me? I never pretended to be
+anything but indifferent to those I didn't love. I should have been
+more hypocritical. You despise me now, so I pay the penalty of my own
+candour. I have not the pleasant graces of a Fru Thyregod, Julian;
+not towards you, that is. I wouldn't offer you the insult of an easy
+philandering. I might make your life a burden; I might even kill you.
+I know I have often been impossible towards you in the past. I should
+probably be still more impossible in the future. If I loved you less, I
+should, no doubt, love you better. You see that I am candid.'
+
+He was struck, and reflected: she spoke truly, there was indeed a
+vein of candour which contradicted and redeemed the petty deceits and
+untruthfulnesses which so exasperated and offended him. But he would
+not admit his hesitation.
+
+'I have told you a hundred times that you are cruel and vain and
+irredeemably worthless.'
+
+She answered after a pause, in the deep and wonderful voice which she
+knew so well how to use,--
+
+'You are more cruel than I; you hurt me more than I can say.'
+
+He resisted his impulse to renounce his words, to pretend that he had
+chosen them in deliberate malice. As he said nothing, she added,--
+
+'Besides, have I ever shown myself any of those things to you? I
+haven't been cruel to you; I haven't even been selfish; you have no
+right to find fault with me.'
+
+She had blundered; he flew into a rage.
+
+'Your damned feminine reasoning! Your damned personal point of view! I
+can see well enough the fashion in which you treat other men. I don't
+judge you only by your attitude towards myself.'
+
+Off her guard, she was really incapable of grasping his argument; she
+tried to insist, to justify herself, but before his storm of anger she
+cowered away.
+
+'Julian, how you frighten me.'
+
+'You only pretend to be frightened.'
+
+'You are brutal; you mangle every word I say,' she said hopelessly.
+
+He had reduced her to silence; he stood over her threateningly, much as
+a tamer of wild beasts who waits for the next spring of the panther.
+Desperate, her spirit flamed up again, and she cried,--
+
+'You treat me monstrously; I am a fool to waste my time over you; I am
+accustomed to quite different treatment.'
+
+'You are spoilt; you are accustomed to flattery--flattery which means
+less than nothing,' he sneered, stamping upon her attempt at arrogance.
+
+'Ah, Julian!' she said, suddenly and marvellously melting, and
+leaning forward she stretched out both hands towards him, so that he
+was obliged to take them, and she drew him down to his knees once
+more beside her, and smiled into his eyes, having taken command and
+being resolved that no crisis of anger should again arise to estrange
+them, 'I shall never have flattery from you, shall I? my turbulent,
+impossible Julian, whose most meagre compliment I have treasured ever
+since I can remember! but it is over now, my time of waiting for
+you'--she still held his hands, and the smile with which she looked at
+him transfigured all her face.
+
+He was convinced; he trembled. He strove against her faintly,--
+
+'You choose your moment badly; you know that I must leave for Aphros.'
+
+'You cannot!' she cried in indignation.
+
+As his eyes hardened, she checked herself; she knew that for her
+own safety she must submit to his will without a struggle. Spoilt,
+irrational as she was, she had never before so dominated her caprice.
+Her wits were all at work, quick slaves to her passion.
+
+'Of course you must go,' she said.
+
+She played with his fingers, her head bent low, and he was startled by
+the softness of her touch.
+
+'What idle hands,' he said, looking at them; 'you were vain of them, as
+a child.'
+
+But she did not wish him to dwell upon her vanity.
+
+'Julian, have I not been consistent, all my life? Are you taking me
+seriously? Do you know that I am betraying all the truth? One hasn't
+often the luxury of betraying all the truth. I could betray even
+greater depths of truth, for your sake. Are you treating what I tell
+you with the gravity it deserves? You must not make a toy of my secret.
+I have no strength of character, Julian. I suppose, in its stead, I
+have been given strength of love. Do you want what I offer you? Will
+you take the responsibility of refusing it?'
+
+'Is that a threat?' he asked, impressed and moved.
+
+She shrugged slightly and raised her eyebrows; he thought he had never
+so appreciated the wonderful mobility of her face.
+
+'I am nothing without the person I love. You have judged me yourself:
+worthless--what else?--cruel, vain. All that is true. Hitherto I have
+tried only to make the years pass by. Do you want me to return to such
+an existence?'
+
+His natural vigour rebelled against her frailty.
+
+'You are too richly gifted, Eve, to abandon yourself to such slackness
+of life.'
+
+'I told you I had no strength of character,' she said with bitterness,
+'what are my gifts, such as they are, to me? You are the thing I want.'
+
+'You could turn your gifts to any account.'
+
+'With you, yes.'
+
+'No, independently of me or any other human being. One stands alone in
+work. Work is impersonal.'
+
+'Nothing is impersonal to me,' she replied morosely, 'that's my
+tragedy.'
+
+She flung out her hands.
+
+'Julian, I cherish such endless dreams! I loathe my life of petty
+adventures; I undertake them only in order to forget the ideal which
+until now has been denied me. I have crushed down the vision of life
+with you, but always it has remained at the back of my mind, so wide,
+so open, a life so free and so full of music and beauty, Julian! I
+would work--for you. I would create--for you. I don't want to marry
+you, Julian. I value my freedom above all things. Bondage is not for
+you or me. But I'll come with you anywhere--to Aphros if you like.'
+
+'To Aphros?' he repeated.
+
+'Why not?'
+
+She put in, with extraordinary skill,--
+
+'I belong to the Islands no less than you.'
+
+Privately she thought,--
+
+'If you knew how little I cared about the Islands!'
+
+He stared at her, turning her words over in his mind. He was as
+reckless as she, but conscientiously he suggested,--
+
+'There may be danger.'
+
+'I am not really a coward, only in the unimportant things. And you
+said yourself that they could never invade the island,' she added with
+complete confidence in his statement.
+
+He dreamt aloud,--
+
+'I have only just found her. This is Herakleion! She might, who knows?
+be of use to Aphros.'
+
+She wondered which consideration weighed most heavily with him.
+
+'You were like my sister,' he said suddenly.
+
+She gave a rueful smile, but said nothing.
+
+'No, no!' he cried, springing up. 'This can never be; have you
+bewitched me? Let me go, Eve; you have been playing a game with me.'
+
+She shook her head very slowly and tears gathered in her eyes.
+
+'Then the game is my whole life, Julian; put me to any test you choose
+to prove my sincerity.'
+
+She convinced him against his will, and he resented it.
+
+'You have deceived me too often.'
+
+'I have been obliged to deceive you, because I could not tell you the
+truth.'
+
+'Very plausible,' he muttered.
+
+She waited, very well acquainted with the vehemence of his moods and
+reactions. She was rewarded; he said next, with laughter lurking in his
+eyes,--
+
+'Ever since I can remember, I have quarrelled with you several times a
+day.'
+
+'But this evening we have no time to waste in quarrelling,' she
+replied, relieved, and stretching out her hands to him again. As he
+took them, she added in a low voice, 'You attract me fatally, my
+refractory Julian.'
+
+'We will go to Aphros,' he said, 'as friends and colleagues.'
+
+'On any terms you choose to dictate,' she replied with ironical gravity.
+
+A flash of clear-sightedness pierced his attempt at self-deception;
+he saw the danger into which they were deliberately running, he and
+she, alone amidst fantastic happenings, living in fairyland, both
+headstrong and impatient creatures, unaccustomed to forgo their whims,
+much less their passions.... He was obliged to recognise the character
+of the temple which stood at the end of the path they were treading,
+and of the deity to whom it was dedicated; he saw the temple with the
+eyes of his imagination as vividly as his mortal eyes would have seen
+it: white and lovely amongst cypresses, shadowy within; they would
+surely enter. Eve he certainly could not trust; could he trust himself?
+His honesty answered no. She observed the outward signs of what was
+passing in his mind, he started, he glanced at her, a look of horror
+and vigorous repudiation crossed his face, his eyes dwelt on her, then
+she saw--for she was quick to read him--by the slight toss of his head
+that he had banished sagacity.
+
+'Come on to the veranda,' she said, tugging at his hand.
+
+They stood on the veranda, watching the lights in the distance; the
+sky dripped with gold; balls of fire exploded into sheaves of golden
+feathers, into golden fountains and golden rain; golden slashes like
+the blades of scimitars cut across the curtain of night. Eve cried out
+with delight. Fiery snakes rushed across the sky, dying in a shower
+of sparks. At one moment the whole of the coast-line was lit up by a
+violet light, which most marvellously gleamed upon the sea.
+
+'Fairyland!' cried Eve, clapping her hands.
+
+She had forgotten Aphros. She had forgotten Paul.
+
+
+The fireworks were over. Tsigaridis pulled strongly and without haste
+at his oars across a wide sea that glittered now like black diamonds
+under the risen moon. The water rose and fell beneath the little boat
+as gently and as regularly as the breathing of a sleeper. In a milky
+sky, spangled with stars, the immense moon hung flat and motionless,
+casting a broad path of rough silver up the blackness of the waters,
+and illuminating a long stretch of little broken clouds that lay above
+the horizon like the vertebræ of some gigantic crocodile. The light at
+the tip of the pier showed green, for they saw it still from the side
+of the land, but as they drew farther out to sea and came on a parallel
+line with the light, they saw it briefly half green, half ruby; then,
+as they passed it, looking back they saw only the ruby glow. Tsigaridis
+rowed steadily, silently but for the occasional drip of the water
+with the lifting of an oar, driving his craft away from the lights of
+the mainland--the stretch of Herakleion along the coast--towards the
+beckoning lights in the heart of the sea.
+
+For ahead of them clustered the little yellow lights of the
+sheerly-rising village on Aphros; isolated lights, three or four
+only, low down at the level of the harbour, then, after a dark
+gap representing the face of the cliff, the lights in the houses,
+irregular, tier above tier. But it was not to these yellow lights that
+the glance was drawn. High above them all, upon the highest summit of
+the island, flared a blood-red beacon, a fierce and solitary stain of
+scarlet, a flame like a flag, like an emblem, full of hope as it leapt
+towards the sky, full of rebellion as it tore its angry gash across
+the night. In the moonlight the tiny islands of the group lay darkly
+outlined in the sea, but the moonlight, placid and benign, was for
+them without significance: only the beacon, insolently red beneath the
+pallor of the moon, burned for them with a message that promised to all
+men strife, to others death, and to the survivors liberty.
+
+The form of Aphros was no more than a silhouette under the moon, a
+silhouette that rose, humped and shadowy, bearing upon its crest
+that flower of flame; dawn might break upon an island of the purest
+loveliness, colour blown upon it as upon the feathers of a bird,
+fragile as porcelain, flushed as an orchard in blossom; to-night it
+lay mysterious, unrevealed, with that single flame as a token of
+the purpose that burned within its heart. Tenderness, loveliness,
+were absent from the dark shape crowned by so living, so leaping an
+expression of its soul. Here were resolution, anticipation, hope,
+the perpetual hope of betterment, the undying chimera, the sublime
+illusion, the lure of adventure to the rebel and the idealist alike.
+The flame rang out like a bugle call in the night, its glare in the
+darkness becoming strident indeed as the note of a bugle in the midst
+of silence.
+
+A light breeze brushed the little boat as it drew away from the coast,
+and Tsigaridis with a word of satisfaction shipped his oars and rose,
+the fragile craft rocking as he moved; Eve and Julian, watching from
+the prow, saw a shadow creep along the mast and the triangular shape of
+a sail tauten itself darkly against the path of the moon. Tsigaridis
+sank back into an indistinguishable block of intenser darkness in the
+darkness at the bottom of the boat. A few murmured words had passed,--
+
+'I will take the tiller, Tsigaridis.'
+
+'Malista, Kyrie,' and the silence had fallen again, the boat sailing
+strongly before the breeze, the beacon high ahead, and the moon
+brilliant in the sky. Eve, not daring to speak, glanced at Julian's
+profile as she sat beside him. He was scowling. Had she but known, he
+was intensely conscious of her nearness, assailed again with that now
+familiar ghost, the ghost of her as he had once held her angrily in his
+arms, soft, heavy, defenceless; and his fingers as they closed over the
+tiller closed as delicately as upon the remembered curves of her body;
+she had taken off her hat, and the scent of her hair reached him,
+warm, personal she was close to him, soft, fragrant, silent indeed,
+but mysteriously alive; the desire to touch her grew, like the desire
+of thirst; life seemed to envelop him with a strange completeness.
+Still a horror held him back: was it Eve, the child to whom he had
+been brotherly? or Eve, the woman? but in spite of his revulsion--for
+it was not his habit to control his desires--he changed the tiller to
+the other hand, and his free arm fell round her shoulders; he felt
+her instant yielding, her movement nearer towards him, her shortened
+breath, the falling back of her head; he knew that her eyes were shut;
+his fingers moulded themselves lingeringly round her throat; she
+slipped still lower within the circle of his arm, and his hand, almost
+involuntarily, trembled over the softness of her breast.
+
+
+
+
+PART III--APHROS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+In the large class-room of the school-house the dejected group of
+Greek officials sat among the hideous yellow desks and benches of
+the school-children of Aphros. Passion and indignation had spent
+themselves fruitlessly during the preceding evening and night. To do
+the islanders justice, the Greeks had not been treated with incivility.
+But all demands for an interview with the highest authority were met
+not only with a polite reply that the highest authority had not yet
+arrived upon the island, but also a refusal to disclose his name. The
+Greek officials, having been brought from their respective lodgings
+to the central meeting-point of the school, had been given the run of
+two class-rooms, one for the men, of whom there were, in all, twenty,
+and one for the women, of whom there were only six. They were told
+that they might communicate, but that armed guards would be placed in
+both rooms. They found most comfort in gathering, the six-and-twenty
+of them, in the larger class-room, while the guards, in their kilted
+dresses, sat on chairs, two at each entrance, with suspiciously modern
+and efficient-looking rifles laid across their knees.
+
+A large proportion of the officials were, naturally, those connected
+with the school. They observed morosely that all notices in the
+pure Greek of Herakleion had already been removed, also the large
+lithographs of Malteios and other former Presidents, so that the walls
+of pitch pine--the school buildings were modern, and of wood--were now
+ornamented only with maps, anatomical diagrams, and some large coloured
+plates published by some English manufacturing firm for advertisement;
+there were three children riding a gray donkey, and another child
+trying on a sun-bonnet before a mirror; but any indication of the
+relationship of Aphros to Herakleion there was none.
+
+'It is revolution,' the postmaster said gloomily.
+
+The guards would not speak. Their natural loquacity was in
+abeyance before the first fire of their revolutionary ardour. From
+vine-cultivators they had become soldiers, and the unfamiliarity of the
+trade filled them with self-awe and importance. Outside, the village
+was surprisingly quiet; there was no shouting, no excitement; footsteps
+passed rapidly to and fro, but they seemed to be the footsteps of men
+bent on ordered business; the Greeks could not but be impressed and
+disquieted by the sense of organisation.
+
+'Shall we be allowed to go free?' they asked the guards.
+
+'You will know when he comes,' was all the guards would reply.
+
+'Who is he?'
+
+'You will know presently.'
+
+'Has he still not arrived?'
+
+'He has arrived.'
+
+'We heard nothing; he must have arrived during the night.'
+
+To this they received no answer, nor any to their next remark,--
+
+'Why so much mystery? It is, of course, the scatterbrained young
+Englishman.'
+
+The guards silently shrugged their shoulders, as much as to say, that
+any one, even a prisoner, had a right to his own opinion.
+
+The school clock pointed to nine when the first noise of agitation
+began in the street. It soon became clear that a large concourse of
+people was assembling in the neighbourhood of the school; a slight
+excitement betrayed itself by some shouting and laughter, but a voice
+cried 'Silence!' and silence was immediately produced. Those within the
+school heard only the whisperings and rustlings of a crowd. They were
+not extravagantly surprised, knowing the islanders to be an orderly,
+restrained, and frugal race, their emotions trained into the sole
+channel of patriotism, which here was making its supreme demand upon
+their self-devotion. The Greeks threw wondering glances at the rifles
+of the guards. Ostensibly school-teachers, post and telegraph clerks,
+and custom-house officers, they were, of course, in reality the spies
+of the government of Herakleion, and as such should have had knowledge
+of the presence of such weapons on the island. They reflected that,
+undesirable as was a prolonged imprisonment in the school-house, at the
+mercy of a newly-liberated and probably rancorous population, a return
+to Herakleion might prove a no less undesirable fate at the present
+juncture.
+
+Outside, some sharp words of command were followed by the click of
+weapons on the cobblestones; the postmaster looked at the chief
+customs-house clerk, raised his eyebrows, jerked his head, and made
+a little noise: 'Tcha!' against his teeth, as much as to say, 'The
+deceitful villains! under our noses!' but at the back of his mind
+was, 'No further employment, no pension, for any of us.' A burst of
+cheering followed in the street. The voice cried 'Silence!' again, but
+this time was disregarded. The cheering continued for some minutes,
+the women's note joining in with the men's deep voices, and isolated
+words were shouted, all with the maximum of emotion. The Greeks tried
+to look out of the windows, but were prevented by the guards. Some
+one in the street began to speak, when the cheering had died away,
+but through the closed windows it was impossible to distinguish the
+words. A moment's hush followed this speaking, and then another voice
+began, reading impressively--it was obvious, from the unhesitating
+and measured scansion, that he was reading. Sections of his address,
+or proclamation, whichever it was, were received with deep growls of
+satisfaction from the crowd. At one moment he was wholly interrupted
+by repeated shouts of 'Viva! viva! viva!' and when he had made an end
+thunderous shouts of approval shook the wooden building. The Greeks
+were by now very pale; they could not tell whether this proclamation
+did not contain some reference, some decision, concerning themselves.
+
+After the proclamation, another voice spoke, interrupted at every
+moment by various cries of joy and delight, especially from the women;
+the crowd seemed alternately rocked with enthusiasm, confidence, fire,
+and laughter. The laughter was not the laughter of amusement so much
+as the grim laughter of resolution and fraternity; an extraordinarily
+fraternal and unanimous spirit seemed to prevail. Then silence again,
+broken by voices in brief confabulation, and then the shifting of the
+crowd which, to judge from the noise, was pressing back against the
+school-buildings in order to allow somebody a passage down the street.
+
+The door opened, and Zapantiotis, appearing, announced,--
+
+'Prisoners, the President.'
+
+The word created a sensation among the little herd of hostages, who,
+for comfort and protection, had instinctively crowded together. They
+believed themselves miraculously rescued, at least from the spite and
+vengeance of the islanders, and expected to see either Malteios or
+Stavridis, frock-coated and top-hatted, in the doorway. Instead, they
+saw Julian Davenant, flushed, untidy, bareheaded, and accompanied by
+two immense islanders carrying rifles.
+
+He paused and surveyed the little speechless group, and a faint smile
+ran over his lips at the sight of the confused faces of his prisoners.
+They stared at him, readjusting their ideas: in the first instance they
+had certainly expected Julian, then for one flashing moment they had
+expected the President of Herakleion, then they were confronted with
+Julian. A question left the lips of the postmaster,--
+
+'President of what?'
+
+Perhaps he was tempted madly to think that neither Malteios, nor
+Stavridis, but Julian, had been on the foregoing day elected President
+of Herakleion.
+
+Zapantiotis answered gravely,--
+
+'Of the Archipelago of San Zacharie.'
+
+'Are we all crazy?' cried the postmaster.
+
+'You see, gentlemen,' said Julian, speaking for the first time, 'that
+the folly of my grandfather's day has been revived.'
+
+He came forward and seated himself at the schoolmaster's desk, his
+bodyguard standing a little behind him, one to each side.
+
+'I have come here,' he said, 'to choose amongst you one representative
+who can carry to Herakleion the terms of the proclamation which
+has just been read in the market-place outside. These terms must
+be communicated to the present government. Zapantiotis, hand the
+proclamation to these gentlemen.'
+
+The outraged Greeks came closer together to read the proclamation over
+each other's shoulder; it set forth that the islands constituting
+the Archipelago of San Zacharie, and including the important island
+of Aphros, by the present proclamation, and after long years of
+oppression, declared themselves a free and independent republic under
+the presidency of Julian Henry Davenant, pending the formation of a
+provisional government; that if unmolested they were prepared to live
+in all peace and neighbourly good-fellowship with the republic of
+Herakleion, but that if molested in any way they were equally prepared
+to defend their shores and their liberty to the last drop of blood in
+the last man upon the Islands.
+
+There was a certain nobleness in the resolute gravity of the wording.
+
+Julian wore a cryptic smile as he watched the Greeks working their
+way through this document, which was in the Italianate Greek of the
+Islands. Their fingers pointed certain paragraphs out to one another,
+and little repressed snorts came from them, snorts of scorn and of
+indignation, and glances were flung at Julian lounging indifferently
+in the schoolmaster's chair. The doors had been closed to exclude the
+crowd, and of the islanders, only Zapantiotis and the guards remained
+in the room. Although it was early, the heat was beginning to make
+itself felt, and the flies were buzzing over the window-panes.
+
+'If you have finished reading, gentlemen,' said Julian presently, 'I
+shall be glad if you will decide upon a representative, as I have much
+to attend to; a boat is waiting to take him and these ladies to the
+shore.'
+
+Immense relief was manifested by the ladies.
+
+'This thing,' said the head of the school, hitting the proclamation
+with his closed fingers, 'is madness; I beg you, young man--I know you
+quite well--to withdraw before it is too late.'
+
+'I can have no argument; I give you five minutes to decide,' Julian
+replied, laying his watch on the desk.
+
+His followers had no longer cause to fret against his indecision.
+
+Seeing him determined, the Greeks excitedly conferred; amongst them
+the idea of self-preservation, rather than of self-immolation,
+was obviously dominant. Herakleion, for all the displeasure of the
+authorities, was, when it came to the point, preferable to Aphros
+in the hands of the islanders and their eccentric, if not actually
+bloodthirsty, young leader. The postmaster presented himself as senior
+member of the group; the schoolmaster as the most erudite, therefore
+the most fitted to represent his colleagues before the Senate; the head
+clerk of the customs-house urged his claim as having the longest term
+of official service. The conference degenerated into a wrangle.
+
+'I see, gentlemen, that I must take the decision out of your hands,'
+Julian said at length, breaking in upon them, and appointed the
+customs-house clerk.
+
+But in the market-place, whither the Greek representative and the women
+of the party were instantly hurried, the silent throng of population
+waited in packed and coloured ranks. The men stood apart, arms folded,
+handkerchiefs bound about their heads under their wide straw hats--they
+waited, patient, confident, unassuming. None of them was armed with
+rifles, although many carried a pistol or a long knife slung at his
+belt; the customs-house clerk, through all his confusion of mingled
+terror and relief, noted the fact; if he delivered it at a propitious
+moment, it might placate an irate Senate. No rifles, or, at most, eight
+in the hands of the guards! Order would very shortly be restored in
+Aphros.
+
+Nevertheless, that sense of organisation, of discipline, of which the
+Greeks had been conscious while listening to the assembling of the
+crowd through the boards of the school-house, was even more apparent
+here upon the market-place. These islanders knew their business. A
+small file of men detached itself as an escort for the representative
+and the women. Julian came from the school at the same moment with
+his two guards, grim and attentive, behind him. A movement of
+respect produced itself in the crowd. The customs-house clerk and his
+companions were not allowed to linger, but were marched away to the
+steps which led down to the jetty. They carried away with them as their
+final impression of Aphros the memory of the coloured throng and of
+Julian, a few paces in advance, watching their departure.
+
+
+The proclamation, the scene in the school-house, remained as the
+prelude to the many pictures which populated Julian's memory,
+interchangeably, of that day. He saw himself, speaking rarely, but,
+as he knew, to much purpose, seated at the head of a table in the
+village assembly-room, and, down each side of the table, the principal
+men of the Islands, Tsigaridis and Zapantiotis on his either hand,
+grave counsellors; he heard their speech, unreproducibly magnificent,
+because a bodyguard of facts supported every phrase; because, in the
+background, thronged the years of endurance and the patient, steadfast
+hope. He heard the terms of the new constitution, and the oath of
+resolution to which every man subscribed. With a swimming brain, and
+his eyes fixed upon the hastily-restored portrait of his grandfather,
+he heard the references to himself as head of the state--a state in
+which the citizens numbered perhaps five thousand. He heard his own
+voice, issuing orders whose wisdom was never questioned: no boat to
+leave the Islands, no boats to be admitted to the port, without his
+express permission, a system of sentries to be instantly instituted and
+maintained, day and night. As he delivered these orders, men rose in
+their places, assuming the responsibility, and left the room to execute
+them without delay.
+
+He saw himself later, still accompanied by Tsigaridis and Zapantiotis,
+but having rid himself of his two guards, in the interior of the
+island, on the slopes where the little rough stone walls retained the
+terraces, and where between the trunks of the olive-trees the sea
+moved, blue and glittering, below. Here the island was dry and stony;
+mule-paths, rising in wide, low steps, wandered up the slopes and lost
+themselves over the crest of the hill. A few goats moved restlessly
+among cactus and bramble-bushes, cropping at the prickly stuff, and
+now and then raising their heads to bleat for the kids that, more
+light-hearted because not under the obligation of searching for food
+amongst the vegetation, leapt after one another, up and down, in a
+happy chain on their little stiff certain legs from terrace to terrace.
+An occasional cypress rose in a dark spire against the sky. Across the
+sea, the town of Herakleion lay, white, curved, and narrow, with its
+coloured sunblinds no bigger than butterflies, along the strip of coast
+that Mount Mylassa so grudgingly allowed it.
+
+The stepped paths being impassable for carts, Tsigaridis had collected
+ten mules with panniers, that followed in a string. Julian rode ahead
+upon another mule; Zapantiotis walked, his tall staff in his hand,
+and his dog at his heels. Julian remembered idly admiring the health
+which enabled this man of sixty-five to climb a constantly-ascending
+path under a burning sun without showing any signs of exhaustion. As
+they went, the boy in charge of the mules droned out a mournful native
+song which Julian recognised as having heard upon the lips of Kato.
+The crickets chirped unceasingly, and overhead the seagulls circled
+uttering their peculiar cry.
+
+They had climbed higher, finally leaving behind them the olive-terraces
+and coming to a stretch of vines, the autumn vine-leaves ranging
+through every shade of yellow, red, and orange; here, away from the
+shade of the olives, the sun burned down almost unbearably, and the
+stones of the rough walls were too hot for the naked hand to touch.
+Here it was that the grapes were spread out, drying into currants--a
+whole terrace heaped with grapes, over which a party of young men,
+who sat playing at dice beneath a rough shelter made out of reeds and
+matting, were mounting guard.
+
+Julian, knowing nothing of this business, and present only out
+of interested curiosity, left the command to Zapantiotis. A few
+stone-pines grew at the edge of the terrace; he moved his mule into
+their shade while he watched. They had reached the summit of the
+island--no doubt, if he searched far enough, he would come across the
+ruins of last night's beacon, but he preferred to remember it as a
+living thing rather than to stumble with his foot against ashes, gray
+and dead; he shivered a little, in spite of the heat, at the thought
+of that flame already extinguished--and from the summit he could look
+down upon both slopes, seeing the island actually as an island, with
+the sea below upon every side, and he could see the other islands of
+the group, speckled around, some of them too tiny to be inhabited,
+but all deserted now, when in the common cause every soul had been
+summoned by the beacon, the preconcerted signal, to Aphros. He imagined
+the little isolated boats travelling across the moonlit waters during
+the night, as he himself had travelled; little boats, each under its
+triangular sail, bearing the owner, his women, his children, and such
+poor belongings as he could carry, making for the port or the creeks
+of Aphros, relying for shelter upon the fraternal hospitality of the
+inhabitants. No doubt they, like himself, had travelled with their eyes
+upon the beacon....
+
+The young men, grinning broadly and displaying a zest they would not
+have contributed towards the mere routine of their lives, had left
+their skeleton shelter and had fallen to work upon the heaps of drying
+grapes with their large, purple-stained, wooden shovels. Zapantiotis
+leant upon his staff beside Julian's mule.
+
+'See, Kyrie!' he had said. 'It was a crafty thought, was it not? Ah,
+women! only a woman could have thought of such a thing.'
+
+'A woman?'
+
+'Anastasia Kato,' the overseer had replied, reverent towards the brain
+that had contrived thus craftily for the cause, but familiar towards
+the great singer--of whom distinguished European audiences spoke with
+distant respect--as towards a woman of his own people. He probably,
+Julian had reflected, did not know of her as a singer at all.
+
+Beneath the grapes rifles were concealed, preserved from the fruit by
+careful sheets of coarse linen; rifles, gleaming, modern rifles, laid
+out in rows; a hundred, two hundred, three hundred; Julian had no means
+of estimating.
+
+He had dismounted and walked over to them; the young men were still
+shovelling back the fruit, reckless of its plenty, bringing more
+weapons and still more to light. He had bent down to examine more
+closely.
+
+'Italian,' he had said then, briefly, and had met Tsigaridis' eye, had
+seen the slow, contented smile which spread on the old man's face, and
+which he had discreetly turned aside to conceal.
+
+Then Julian, with a glimpse of all those months of preparation, had
+ridden down from the hills, the string of mules following his mule in
+single file, the shining barrels bristling out of the panniers, and in
+the market-place he had assisted, from the height of his saddle, at
+the distribution of the arms. Two hundred and fifty, and five hundred
+rounds of ammunition to each.... He thought of the nights of smuggling
+represented there, of the catch of fish--the 'quick, shining harvest
+of the sea'--beneath which lay the deadlier catch that evaded the eyes
+of the customs-house clerks. He remembered the robbery at the casino,
+and was illuminated. Money had not been lacking.
+
+These were not the only pictures he retained of that day; the affairs
+to which he was expected to attend seemed to be innumerable; he had
+sat for hours in the village assembly-room, while the islanders came
+and went, surprisingly capable, but at the same time utterly reliant
+upon him. Throughout the day no sign came from Herakleion. Julian grew
+weary, and could barely restrain his thoughts from wandering to Eve. He
+would have gone to her room before leaving the house in the morning,
+but she had refused to see him. Consequently the thought of her had
+haunted him all day. One of the messages which reached him as he sat in
+the assembly-room had been from her: Would he send a boat to Herakleion
+for Nana?
+
+He had smiled, and had complied, very much doubting whether the boat
+would ever be allowed to return. The message had brought him, as
+it were, a touch from her, a breath of her personality which clung
+about the room long after. She was near at hand, waiting for him, so
+familiar, yet so unfamiliar, so undiscovered. He felt that after a
+year with her much would still remain to be discovered; that there
+was, in fact, no end to her interest and her mystery. She was of no
+ordinary calibre, she who could be, turn by turn, a delicious or
+plaintive child, a woman of ripe seduction, and--in fits and starts--a
+poet in whose turbulent and undeveloped talent he divined startling
+possibilities! When she wrote poetry she smothered herself in ink,
+as he knew; so mingled in her were the fallible and the infallible.
+He refused to analyse his present relation to her; a sense, not of
+hypocrisy, but of decency, held him back; he remembered all too
+vividly the day he had carried her in his arms; his brotherliness had
+been shocked, offended, but since then the remembrance had persisted
+and had grown, and now he found himself, with all that brotherliness of
+years still ingrained in him, full of thoughts and on the brink of an
+adventure far from brotherly. He tried not to think these thoughts. He
+honestly considered them degrading, incestuous. But his mood was ripe
+for adventure; the air was full of adventure; the circumstances were
+unparalleled; his excitement glowed--he left the assembly-room, walked
+rapidly up the street, and entered the Davenant house, shutting the
+door behind him.
+
+The sounds of the street were shut out, and the water plashed coolly
+in the open courtyard; two pigeons walked prinking round the flat edge
+of the marble basin, the male cooing and bowing absurdly, throwing out
+his white chest, ruffling his tail, and putting down his spindly feet
+with fussy precision. When Julian appeared, they fluttered away to the
+other side of the court to resume their convention of love-making.
+Evening was falling, warm and suave, and overhead in the still blue sky
+floated tiny rosy clouds. In the cloisters round the court the frescoes
+of the life of Saint Benedict looked palely at Julian, they so faded,
+so washed-out, he so young and so full of strength. Their pallor taught
+him that he had never before felt so young, so reckless, or so vigorous.
+
+He was astonished to find Eve with the son of Zapantiotis, learning
+from him to play the flute in the long, low room which once had been
+the refectory and which ran the full length of the cloisters. Deeply
+recessed windows, with heavy iron gratings, looked down over the roofs
+of the village to the sea. In one of these windows Eve leaned against
+the wall holding the flute to her lips, and young Zapantiotis, eager,
+handsome, showed her how to place her fingers upon the holes. She
+looked defiantly at Julian.
+
+'Nico has rescued me,' she said; 'but for him I should have been alone
+all day. I have taught him to dance.' She pointed to a gramophone upon
+a table.
+
+'Where did that come from?' Julian said, determined not to show his
+anger before the islander.
+
+'From the café,' she replied.
+
+'Then Nico had better take it back; they will need it.' Julian said,
+threats in his voice, 'and he had better see whether his father cannot
+find him employment; we have not too many men.'
+
+'You left me the whole day,' she said when Nico had gone; 'I am sorry I
+came with you, Julian; I would rather go back to Herakleion; even Nana
+has not come. I did not think you would desert me.'
+
+He looked at her, his anger vanished, and she was surprised when he
+answered her gently, even amusedly,--
+
+'You are always delightfully unexpected and yet characteristic of
+yourself: I come back, thinking I shall find you alone, perhaps glad
+to see me, having spent an unoccupied day, but no, I find you with the
+best-looking scamp of the village, having learnt from him to play the
+flute, taught him to dance, and borrowed a gramophone from the local
+café!'
+
+He put his hands heavily upon her shoulders with a gesture she knew of
+old.
+
+'I suppose I love you,' he said roughly, and then seemed indisposed to
+talk of her any more, but told her his plans and arrangements, to which
+she did not listen.
+
+They remained standing in the narrow window-recess, leaning, opposite
+to one another, against the thick stone walls of the old Genoese
+building. Through the grating they could see the sea, and, in the
+distance, Herakleion.
+
+'It is sufficiently extraordinary,' he remarked, gazing across the bay,
+'that Herakleion has made no sign. I can only suppose that they will
+try force as soon as Panaïoannou can collect his army, which, as it was
+fully mobilised no later than yesterday, ought not to take very long.'
+
+'Will there be fighting?' she asked, with a first show of interest.
+
+'I hope so,' he replied.
+
+'I should like you to fight,' she said.
+
+Swaying as he invariably did between his contradictory opinions of her,
+he found himself inwardly approving her standpoint, that man, in order
+to be worthy of woman, must fight, or be prepared to fight, and to
+enjoy the fighting. From one so self-indulgent, so pleasure-loving, so
+reluctant to face any unpleasantness of life, he might pardonably have
+expected the less heroic attitude. If she resented his absence all day
+on the business of preparations for strife, might she not equally have
+resented the strife that called him from her side? He respected her
+appreciation of physical courage, and remodelled his estimate to her
+advantage.
+
+To his surprise, the boat he had sent for Nana returned from
+Herakleion. It came, indeed, without Nana, but bearing in her place a
+letter from his father:--
+
+
+    'DEAR JULIAN,--By the courtesy of M. Stavridis--by whose orders
+    this house is closely guarded, and for which I have to thank your
+    folly--I am enabled to send you this letter, conditional on M.
+    Stavridis's personal censorship. Your messenger has come with
+    your astonishing request that your cousin's nurse may be allowed
+    to return with the boat to Aphros. I should have returned with
+    it myself in the place of the nurse, but for M. Stavridis's very
+    natural objection to my rejoining you or leaving Herakleion.
+
+    'I am at present too outraged to make any comment upon your
+    behaviour. I try to convince myself that you must be completely
+    insane. M. Stavridis, however, will shortly take drastic steps
+    to restore you to sanity. I trust only that no harm will befall
+    you--for I remember still that you are my son--in the process.
+    In the meantime, I demand of you most urgently, in my own name
+    and that of your uncle and aunt, that you will send back your
+    cousin without delay to Herakleion. M. Stavridis has had the great
+    kindness to give his consent to this. A little consideration will
+    surely prove to you that in taking her with you to Aphros you
+    have been guilty of a crowning piece of folly from every point of
+    view. I know you to be headstrong and unreflecting. Try to redeem
+    yourself in this one respect before it is too late.
+
+    'I fear that I should merely be wasting my time by attempting to
+    dissuade you from the course you have chosen with regard to the
+    Islands. My poor misguided boy, do you not realise that your effort
+    is _bound_ to end in disaster, and will serve but to injure those
+    you most desire to help?
+
+    'I warn you, too, most gravely and solemnly, that your obstinacy
+    will entail _very serious consequences_ for yourself. I shall
+    regret the steps I contemplate taking, but I have the interest of
+    our family to consider, and I have your uncle's entire approval.
+
+    'I am very deeply indebted to M. Stavridis, who, while unable to
+    neglect his duty as the first citizen of Herakleion, has given me
+    every proof of his personal friendship and confidence.
+
+    W. DAVENANT.'
+
+
+Julian showed this letter to Eve.
+
+'What answer shall you send?'
+
+'This,' he replied, tearing it into pieces.
+
+'You are angry. Oh, Julian, I love you for being reckless.'
+
+'I see red. He threatens me with disinheriting me. He takes good care
+to remain in Stavridis' good books himself. Do you want to go back?'
+
+'No, Julian.'
+
+'Of course, father is quite right: I am insane, and so are you. But,
+after all, you will run no danger, and as far compromising you, that
+is absurd: we have often been alone together before now. Besides,' he
+added brutally, 'you said yourself you belonged to the Islands no less
+than I; you can suffer for them a little if necessary.'
+
+'I make no complaint,' she said with an enigmatic smile.
+
+They dined together near the fountain in the courtyard, and overhead
+the sky grew dark, and the servant brought lighted candles for the
+table. Julian spoke very little; he allowed himself the supreme luxury
+of being spoilt by a woman who made it her business to please him;
+observing her critically, appreciatively; acknowledging her art; noting
+with admiration how the instinct of the born courtesan filled in the
+gaps in the experience of the child. He was, as yet, more mystified by
+her than he cared to admit.
+
+But he yielded himself to her charm. The intimacy of this meal, their
+first alone together, enveloped him more and more with the gradual
+sinking of night, and his observant silence, which had originated
+with the deliberate desire to test her skill and also to indulge his
+own masculine enjoyment, insensibly altered into a shield against the
+emotion which was gaining him. The servant had left them. The water
+still plashed into the marble basin. The candles on the table burned
+steadily in the unruffled evening, and under their light gleamed
+the wine--rough, native wine, red and golden--in the long-necked,
+transparent bottles, and the bowl of fruit: grapes, a cut melon, and
+bursting figs, heaped with the lavishness of plenty. The table was a
+pool of light, but around it the court and cloisters were full of dim,
+mysterious shadows.
+
+Opposite Julian, Eve leaned forward, propping her bare elbows on the
+table, disdainfully picking at the fruit, and talking. He looked at
+her smooth, beautiful arms, and little white hands that he had always
+loved. He knew that he preferred her company to any in the world. Her
+humour, her audacity, the width of her range, the picturesqueness of
+her phraseology, her endless inventiveness, her subtle undercurrent
+of the personal, though 'you' or 'I' might be entirely absent from
+her lips all seemed to him wholly enchanting. She was a sybarite of
+life, an artist; but the glow and recklessness of her saved her from
+all taint of intellectual sterility. He knew that his life had been
+enriched and coloured by her presence in it; that it would, at any
+moment, have become a poorer, a grayer, a less magical thing through
+the loss of her. He shut his eyes for a second as he realised that
+she could be, if he chose, his own possession, she the elusive and
+unattainable; he might claim the redemption of all her infinite
+promise; might discover her in the rôle for which she was so obviously
+created; might violate the sanctuary and tear the veils from the wealth
+of treasure hitherto denied to all; might exact for himself the first
+secrets of her unplundered passion. He knew her already as the perfect
+companion, he divined her as the perfect mistress; he reeled and shrank
+before the unadmitted thought, then looked across at her where she sat
+with an open fig half-way to her lips, and knew fantastically that they
+were alone upon an island of which he was all but king.
+
+'A deserted city,' she was saying, 'a city of Portuguese settlers; pink
+marble palaces upon the edge of the water; almost crowded into the
+water by the encroaching jungle; monkeys peering through their ruined
+windows; on the sand, great sleepy tortoises; and, twining in and out
+of the broken doorways of the palaces, orchids and hibiscus--that
+is Trincomali! Would you like the tropics, I wonder, Julian? their
+exuberance, their vulgarity?... One buys little sacks full of precious
+stones; one puts in one's hand, and lets the sapphires and the rubies
+and the emeralds run through one's fingers.'
+
+Their eyes met; and her slight, infrequent confusion overcame her....
+
+'You aren't listening,' she murmured.
+
+'You were only fifteen when you went to Ceylon,' he said, gazing at the
+blue smoke of his cigarette. 'You used to write to me from there. You
+had scarlet writing-paper. You were a deplorably affected child.'
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'the only natural thing about me was my affectation.'
+
+They laughed, closely, intimately.
+
+'It began when you were three,' he said, 'and insisted upon always
+wearing brown kid gloves; your voice was even deeper then than it is
+now, and you always called your father Robert.'
+
+'You were five; you used to push me into the prickly pear.'
+
+'And you tried to kill me with a dagger; do you remember?'
+
+'Oh, yes,' she said quite gravely, 'there was a period when I always
+carried a dagger.'
+
+'When you came back from Ceylon you had a tiger's claw.'
+
+'With which I once cut my initials on your arm.'
+
+'You were very theatrical.'
+
+'You were very stoical.'
+
+Again they laughed.
+
+'When you went to Ceylon,' he said, 'one of the ship's officers fell in
+love with you; you were very much amused.'
+
+'The only occasion, I think, Julian, when I ever boasted to
+you of such a thing? You must forgive me--il ne faut pas m'en
+vouloir--remember I was only fifteen.'
+
+'Such things amuse you still,' he said jealously.
+
+'C'est possible,' she replied.
+
+He insisted,--
+
+'When did you really become aware of your own heartlessness?'
+
+She sparkled with laughter.
+
+'I think it began life as a sense of humour,' she said, 'and
+degenerated gradually into its present state of spasmodic infamy.'
+
+He had smiled, but she saw his face suddenly darken, and he got up
+abruptly, and stood by the fountain, turning his back on her.
+
+'My God,' she thought to herself in terror, 'he has remembered Paul.'
+
+She rose also, and went close to him, slipping her hand through his
+arm, endeavouring to use, perhaps unconsciously, the powerful weapon of
+her physical nearness. He did not shake away her hand, but he remained
+unresponsive, lost in contemplation of the water. She hesitated as to
+whether she should boldly attack the subject--she knew her danger; he
+would be difficult to acquire, easy to lose, no more tractable than a
+young colt--then in the stillness of the night she faintly heard the
+music of the gramophone playing in the village café.
+
+'Come into the drawing-room and listen to the music, Julian,' she said,
+pulling at his arm.
+
+He came morosely; they exchanged the court with its pool of light
+for the darkness of the drawing-room; she felt her way, holding his
+hand, towards a window seat; sat down, and pulled him down beside her;
+through the rusty iron grating they saw the sea, lit up by the rising
+moon.
+
+'We can just hear the music,' she whispered.
+
+Her heart was beating hard and fast: they had been as under a spell,
+so close were they to one another, but now she was bitterly conscious
+of having lost him. She knew that he had slipped from the fairyland of
+Aphros back to the world of principles, of morals both conventional and
+essential. In fairyland, whither she had enticed him, all things were
+feasible, permissible, even imperative. He had accompanied her, she
+thought, very willingly, and they had strayed together down enchanted
+paths, abstaining, it is true, from adventuring into the perilous
+woods that surrounded them, but hand in hand, nevertheless, their
+departure from the path potential at any rate, if not imminent. They
+had been alone; she had been so happy, so triumphant. Now he had fled
+her, back to another world inhabited by all the enemies she would have
+had him forget: her cruelties, her vanities--her vanities! he could
+never reconcile her vanities and her splendour; he was incapable of
+seeing them both at the same time; the one excluded the other, turn
+and turn about, in his young eyes; her deceptions, her evasions of
+the truth, the men she had misled, the man, above all, that she had
+killed and whose death she had accepted with comparative indifference.
+These things rose in a bristling phalanx against her, and she faced
+them, small, afraid, and at a loss. For she was bound to admit their
+existence, and the very vivid, the very crushing, reality of their
+existence, all-important to her, in Julian's eyes; although she
+herself might be too completely devoid of moral sense, in the ordinary
+acceptance of the word, to admit any justification for his indignation.
+She knew with sorrow that they would remain for ever as a threat in
+the background, and that she would be fortunate indeed if in that
+background she could succeed in keeping them more or less permanently.
+Her imagination sighed for a potion of forgetfulness. Failing that,
+never for an instant must she neglect her rôle of Calypso. She knew
+that on the slightest impulse to anger on Julian's part--and his
+impulses to anger were, alas, both violent and frequent--all those
+enemies in their phalanx would instantly rise and range themselves on
+his side against her. Coaxed into abeyance, they would revive with
+fatal ease.
+
+She knew him well in his present mood of gloom. She was afraid, and a
+desperate anxiety to regain him possessed her. Argument, she divined,
+would be futile. She whispered his name.
+
+He turned on her a face of granite.
+
+'Why have you changed?' she said helplessly. 'I was so happy, and you
+are making me so miserable.'
+
+'I have no pity for you,' he said, 'you are too pitiless yourself to
+deserve any.'
+
+'You break my heart when you speak to me like that.'
+
+'I should like to break it,' he replied, unmoved.
+
+She did not answer, but presently he heard her sobbing. Full of
+suspicion, he put out his hand and felt the tears running between her
+fingers.
+
+'I have made you cry,' he said.
+
+'Not for the first time,' she answered.
+
+She knew that he was disconcerted, shaken in his harshness, and added,--
+
+'I know what you think of me sometimes, Julian. I have nothing to say
+in my own defence. Perhaps there is only one good thing in me, but that
+you must promise me never to attack.'
+
+'What is it?'
+
+'You sound very sceptical,' she answered wistfully. 'My love for you;
+let us leave it at that.'
+
+'I wonder!' he said; and again, 'I wonder!...'
+
+She moved a little closer to him, and leaned against him, so that her
+hair brushed his cheek. Awkwardly and absent-mindedly, he put his arms
+round her; he could feel her heart beating through her thin muslin
+shirt, and lifting her bare arm in his hand he weighed it pensively;
+she lay against him, allowing him to do as he pleased; physically he
+held her nearer, but morally he was far away. Humiliating herself, she
+lay silent, willing to sacrifice the pride of her body if therewith
+she might purchase his return. But he, awaking with a start from
+his brooding grievances, put her away from him. If temptation was
+to overcome him, it must rush him by assault; not thus, sordid and
+unlit.... He rose, saying,--
+
+'It is very late; you must go to bed; good-night.'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Panaïoannou attempted a landing before sunrise on the following day.
+
+A few stars were still visible, but the moon was paling, low in the
+heavens, and along the eastern horizon the sky was turning rosy and
+yellow above the sea. Earth, air, and water were alike bathed in purity
+and loveliness. Julian, hastily aroused, remembered the Islands as he
+had seen them from the mainland on the day of Madame Lafarge's picnic.
+In such beauty they were lying now, dependent on his defence....
+Excited beyond measure, he dressed rapidly, and as he dressed he heard
+the loud clanging of the school bell summoning the men to arms; he
+heard the village waking, the clatter of banging doors, of wooden soles
+upon the cobbles, and excited voices. He rushed from his room into the
+passage, where he met Eve.
+
+She was very pale, and her hair was streaming round her shoulders. She
+clung to him.
+
+'Oh, Julian, what is it? why are they ringing the bells? why are you
+dressed? where are you going?'
+
+He explained, holding her, stroking her hair.
+
+'Boats have been sighted, setting out from Herakleion; I suppose they
+think they will take us by surprise. You know, I have told off two men
+to look after you; you are to go into the little hut which is prepared
+for you in the very centre of the island. They will never land, and you
+will be perfectly safe there. I will let you know directly they are
+driven off. You must let me go, darling.'
+
+'Oh, but you? but you?' she cried desperately.
+
+'They won't come near me,' he replied laughing.
+
+'Julian, Julian,' she said, holding on to his coat as he tried to
+loosen her fingers, 'Julian, I want you to know: you're all my life, I
+give you myself, on whatever terms you like, for ever if you like, for
+a week if you like; you can do with me whatever you choose; throw me
+away when you've done with me; you think me worthless; I care only for
+you in the world.'
+
+He was astonished at the starkness and violence of the passion in her
+eyes and voice.
+
+'But I am not going into any danger,' he said, trying to soothe her.
+
+'For God's sake, kiss me,' she said, distraught, and seeing that he was
+impatient to go.
+
+'I'll kiss you to-night,' he answered tempestuously, with a ring of
+triumph as one who takes a decision.
+
+'No, no: now.'
+
+He kissed her hair, burying his face in its thickness.
+
+'This attack is a comedy, not a tragedy,' he called back to her as he
+ran down the stairs.
+
+
+The sentry who had first sighted the fleet of boats was still standing
+upon his headland, leaning on his rifle, and straining his eyes over
+the sea. Julian saw him thus silhouetted against the morning sky. Day
+was breaking as Julian came up the mule-path, a score of islanders
+behind him, walking with the soft, characteristic swishing of their
+white woollen skirts, and the slight rattle of slung rifles. All paused
+at the headland, which was above a little rocky creek; the green and
+white water foamed gently below. Out to sea the boats were distinctly
+visible, dotted about the sea, carrying each a load of men; there might
+be twenty or thirty, with ten or fifteen men in each.
+
+'They must be out of their senses,' Tsigaridis growled; 'their only
+hope would have lain in a surprise attack at night--which by the
+present moonlight would indeed have proved equally idle--but at present
+they but expose themselves to our butchery.'
+
+'The men are all at their posts?' Julian asked.
+
+'Malista, Kyrie, malista.' They remained for a little watching the
+boats as the daylight grew. The colours of the dawn were shifting,
+stretching, widening, and the water, turning from iron-gray to violet,
+began along the horizon to reflect the transparency of the sky. The
+long, low, gray clouds caught upon their edges an orange flush; a
+sudden bar of gold fell along the line where sky and water met; a
+drift of tiny clouds turned red like a flight of flamingoes; and the
+blue began insensibly to spread, pale at first, then deepening as the
+sun rose out of the melting clouds and flooded over the full expanse
+of sea. To the left, the coast of the mainland, with Mount Mylassa
+soaring, and Herakleion at its base, broke the curve until it turned
+at an angle to run northward. Smoke began to rise in steady threads of
+blue from the houses of Herakleion. The red light died away at the tip
+of the pier. The gulls circled screaming, flashes of white and gray,
+marbled birds; and beyond the thin line of foam breaking against the
+island the water was green in the shallows.
+
+All round Aphros the islanders were lying in pickets behind defences,
+the naturally rocky and shelving coast affording them the command
+of every approach. The port, which was the only really suitable
+landing-place, was secure, dominated as it was by the village; no boat
+could hope to live for five minutes under concentrated rifle fire from
+the windows of the houses. The other possible landing-places--the
+creeks and little beaches--could be held with equal ease by half a
+dozen men with rifles lying under shelter upon the headlands or on
+the ledges of the rocks. Julian was full of confidence. The danger
+of shelling he discounted, firstly because Herakleion possessed no
+man-of-war, or, indeed, any craft more formidable than the police
+motor-launch, and secondly because the authorities in Herakleion
+knew well enough that Italy, for reasons of her own, neither wholly
+idealistic nor disinterested, would never tolerate the complete
+destruction of Aphros. Moreover, it would be hopeless to attempt to
+starve out an island whose population lived almost entirely upon the
+fish caught round their own shores, the vegetables and fruit grown upon
+their own hillsides, the milk and cheeses from their own rough-feeding
+goats, and the occasional but sufficient meat from their own sheep and
+bullocks.
+
+'Kyrie,' said Tsigaridis, 'should we not move into shelter?'
+
+Julian abandoned the headland regretfully. For his own post he
+had chosen the Davenant house in the village. He calculated that
+Panaïoannou, unaware of the existence of a number of rifles on the
+island, would make his first and principal attempt upon the port,
+expecting there to encounter a hand to hand fight with a crowd
+diversely armed with knives, stones, pitchforks, and a few revolvers--a
+brief, bloody, desperate resistance, whose term could be but a matter
+of time, after which the village would fall into the hands of the
+invaders and the rebellion would be at an end. At most, Panaïoannou
+would argue, the fighting would be continued up into the main street of
+the village, the horizontal street that was its backbone, terminating
+at one end by the market-place above the port, and at the other by the
+Davenants' house; and ramifications of fighting--a couple of soldiers
+here and there pursuing a fleeing islander--up the sloping, narrow,
+stepped streets running between the houses, at right angles from the
+main street, up the hill. Julian sat with his rifle cocked across his
+knees in one of the window recesses of his own house, and grinned as
+he anticipated Panaïoannou's surprise. He did not want a massacre of
+the fat, well-meaning soldiers of Herakleion--the casino, he reflected,
+must be closed to-day, much to the annoyance of the gambling dagos;
+however, they would have excitement enough, of another kind, to console
+them--he did not want a massacre of the benevolent croupier-soldiers he
+had seen parading the _platia_ only two days before, but he wanted them
+taught that Aphros was a hornets' nest out of which they had better
+keep their fingers. He thought it extremely probable that after a first
+repulse they would refuse to renew the attack. They liked well enough
+defiling across the _platia_ on Independence Day, and recognising their
+friends amongst the admiring crowd, but he doubted whether they would
+appreciate being shot down in open boats by an enemy they could not
+even see.
+
+In the distance, from the windows of his own house, he heard firing,
+and from the advancing boats he could see spurts of smoke. He discerned
+a commotion in one boat; men got up and changed places, and the
+boat turned round and began to row in the opposite direction. Young
+Zapantiotis called to him from another window,--
+
+'You see them, Kyrie? Some one has been hit.'
+
+Julian laughed exultantly. On a table near him lay a crumpled
+handkerchief of Eve's, and a gardenia; he put the flower into his
+buttonhole. Behind all his practical plans and his excitement lay the
+memory of his few words with her in the passage; under the stress of
+her emotion she had revealed a depth and vehemence of truth that he
+hitherto scarcely dared to imagine. To-day would be given to him surely
+more than his fair share for any mortal man: a fight, and the most
+desirable of women! He rejoiced in his youth and his leaping blood. Yet
+he continued sorry for the kindly croupier-soldiers.
+
+The boats came on, encouraged by the comparative silence on the
+island. Julian was glad it was not the fashion among the young men of
+Herakleion, his friends, to belong to the army. He wondered what Grbits
+was thinking of him. He was probably on the quay, watching through a
+telescope. Or had the expedition been kept a secret from the still
+sleeping Herakleion? Surely! for he could distinguish no crowd upon the
+distant quays across the bay.
+
+A shot rang out close at hand, from some window of the village, and in
+one of the foremost boats he saw a man throw up his hands and fall over
+backwards.
+
+He sickened slightly. This was inevitable, he knew, but he had no lust
+for killing in this cold-blooded fashion. Kneeling on the window-seat
+he took aim between the bars of the grating, and fired a quantity of
+shots all round the boat; they splashed harmlessly into the water, but
+had the effect he desired; the boat turned round in retreat.
+
+Firing crackled now from all parts of the island. The casualties in
+the boats increased. In rage and panic the soldiers fired wildly back
+at the island, especially at the village; bullets ping-ed through the
+air and rattled on the roofs; occasionally there came a crash of broken
+glass. Once Julian heard a cry, and, craning his head to look down the
+street, he saw an islander lying on his face on the ground between
+the houses with his arms outstretched, blood running freely from his
+shoulder and staining his white clothes.
+
+'My people!' Julian cried in a passion, and shot deliberately into a
+boat-load of men.
+
+'God!' he said to himself a moment later, 'I've killed him.'
+
+He laid down his rifle with a gesture of horror, and went out into
+the courtyard where the fountain still played and the pigeons prinked
+and preened. He opened the door into the street, went down the steps
+and along the street to where the islander lay groaning, lifted him
+carefully, and dragged him into the shelter of the house. Zapantiotis
+met him in the court.
+
+'Kyrie,' he said, scared and reproachful, 'you should have sent me.'
+
+Julian left him to look after the wounded man, and returned to
+the window; the firing had slackened, for the boats were now
+widely dispersed over the sea, offering only isolated targets at a
+considerable distance. Time had passed rapidly, and the sun had climbed
+high overhead. He looked at the little dotted boats, bearing their
+burden of astonishment, death, and pain. Was it possible that the
+attack had finally drawn away?
+
+At that thought, he regretted that the fighting had not given an
+opportunity of a closer, a more personal struggle.
+
+An hour passed. He went out into the village, where life was beginning
+to flow once more into the street and market-place; the villagers came
+out to look at their broken windows, and their chipped houses; they
+were all laughing and in high good-humour, pointing proudly to the
+damage, and laughing like children to see that in the school-house,
+which faced the sea and in which the remaining Greek officials were
+still imprisoned, nearly all the windows were broken. Julian, shaking
+off the people, men and women, who were trying to kiss his hands or his
+clothes, appeared briefly in the class-room to reassure the occupants.
+They were all huddled into a corner, behind a barricade of desks and
+benches. The one guard who had been left with them had spent his time
+inventing terrible stories for their distress. The wooden wall opposite
+the windows was pocked in two or three places by bullets.
+
+As Julian came out again into the market-place he saw old Tsigaridis
+riding down on his great white mule from the direction of the hills,
+accompanied by two runners on foot. He waited while the mule picked its
+way carefully and delicately down the stepped path that led from the
+other side of the market-place up into the interior of the island.
+
+'They are beaten off, Tsantilas.'
+
+'No imprudences,' said the grave old man, and recommended to the
+people, who came crowding round his mule, to keep within the shelter of
+their houses.
+
+'But, Tsantilas, we have the boats within our sight; they cannot return
+without our knowledge in ample time to seek shelter.'
+
+'There is one boat for which we cannot account--the motor-boat--it
+is swift and may yet take us by surprise,' Tsigaridis replied
+pessimistically.
+
+He dismounted from his mule, and walked up the street with Julian
+by his side, while the people, crestfallen, dispersed with lagging
+footsteps to their respective doorways. The motor-launch, it would
+appear, had been heard in the far distance, 'over there,' said
+Tsigaridis, extending his left arm; the pickets upon the eastern coasts
+of the island had distinctly heard the echo of its engines--it was,
+fortunately, old and noisy--but early in the morning the sound had
+ceased, and since then had not once been renewed. Tsigaridis inferred
+that the launch was lying somewhere in concealment amongst the tiny
+islands, from where it would emerge, unexpectedly and in an unexpected
+place, to attack.
+
+'It must carry at least fifty men,' he added.
+
+Julian revelled in the news. A motor-launch with such a crew would
+provide worthier game than little cockleshell rowing-boats. Panaïoannou
+himself might be of the party. Julian saw the general already as his
+prisoner.
+
+He remembered Eve. So long as the launch lay in hiding he could not
+allow her to return to the village. It was even possible that they
+might have a small gun on board. He wanted to see her, he ached with
+the desire to see her, but, an instinctive Epicurean, he welcomed the
+circumstances that forced him to defer their meeting until nightfall....
+
+He wrote her a note on a leaf of his pocket-book, and despatched it to
+her by one of Tsigaridis' runners.
+
+The hours of waiting fretted him, and to ease his impatience he started
+on a tour of the island with Tsigaridis. They rode on mules, nose to
+tail along the winding paths, not climbing up into the interior, but
+keeping to the lower track that ran above the sea, upon the first flat
+ledge of the rock, all around the island. In some places the path
+was so narrow and so close to the edge that Julian could, by leaning
+sideways in his saddle, look straight down the cliff into the water
+swirling and foaming below. He was familiar with almost every creek, so
+often had he bathed there as a boy. Looking at the foam, he murmured to
+himself,--
+
+'Aphros....'
+
+There were no houses here among the rocks, and no trees, save for an
+occasional group of pines, whose little cones clustered among the
+silvery branches, quite black against the sky. Here and there, above
+creeks or the little sandy beaches where a landing for a small boat
+would have been possible, the picket of islanders had come out from
+their shelter behind the boulders, and were sitting talking on the
+rocks, holding their rifles upright between their knees, while a
+solitary sentinel kept watch at the extremity of the point, his kilted
+figure white as the circling seagulls or as the foam. A sense of lull
+and of siesta lay over the afternoon. At every picket Julian asked the
+same question, and at every picket the same answer was returned,--
+
+'We have heard no engines since earliest morning, Kyrie.'
+
+Round the curve of the island, the first tiny, uninhabited islands
+came into view. Some of them were mere rocks sticking up out of the
+sea; others, a little larger, grew a few trees, and a boat could have
+hidden, invisible from Aphros, on their farther side. Julian looked
+longingly at the narrow stretches of water which separated them. He
+even suggested starting to look for the launch.
+
+'It would be madness, Kyrie.'
+
+Above a little bay, where the ground sloped down less abruptly, and
+where the sand ran gently down under the thin wavelets, they halted
+with the picket of that particular spot. Their mules were led away
+by a runner. Julian enjoyed sitting amongst these men, hearing them
+talk, and watching them roll cigarette after cigarette with the
+practised skill of their knotty fingers. Through the sharp lines of
+their professional talk, and the dignity of their pleasant trades--for
+they were all fishermen, vintagers, or sheep and goat-herds--he smiled
+to the hidden secret of Eve, and fancied that the soft muslin of her
+garments brushed, as at the passage of a ghost, against the rude
+woollen garments of the men; that her hands, little and white and idle,
+fluttered over their hardened hands; that he alone could see her pass
+amongst their group, smile to him, and vanish down the path. He was
+drowsy in the drowsy afternoon; he felt that he had fought and had
+earned his rest, and, moreover, was prepared to rise from his sleep
+with new strength to fight again. Rest between a battle and a battle.
+Strife, sleep, and love; love, sleep, and strife; a worthy plan of life!
+
+He slept.
+
+When he woke the men still sat around him, talking still of their
+perennial trades, and without opening his eyes he lay listening to
+them, and thought that in such a simple world the coming and going of
+generations was indeed of slight moment, since in the talk of crops
+and harvests, of the waxing and waning of moons, of the treachery of
+the sea or the fidelity of the land, the words of the ancestor might
+slip unchanged as an inheritance to grandson and great-grandson. Of
+such kindred were they with nature, that he in his half-wakefulness
+barely distinguished the voices of the men from the wash of waves on
+the shore. He opened his eyes. The sun, which he had seen rising out
+of the sea in the dawn, after sweeping in its great flaming arc across
+the sky, had sunk again under the horizon. Heavy purple clouds like
+outpoured wine stained the orange of the west. The colour of the sea
+was like the flesh of a fig.
+
+Unmistakably, the throb of an engine woke the echoes between the
+islands.
+
+All eyes met, all voices hushed; tense, they listened. The sound grew;
+from a continuous purr it changed into separate beats. By mutual
+consent, and acting under no word of command, the men sought the cover
+of their boulders, clambering over the rocks, carrying their rifles
+with them, white, noiseless, and swift. Julian found himself with three
+others in a species of little cave the opening of which commanded the
+beach; the cave was low, and they were obliged to crouch; one man knelt
+down at the mouth with his rifle ready to put to his shoulder. Julian
+could smell, in that restricted place, the rough smell of their woollen
+clothes, and the tang of the goat which clung about one man, who must
+be a goat-herd.
+
+Then before their crouching position could begin to weary them, the
+beat of the engines became insistent, imminent; and the launch shot
+round the curve, loaded with standing men, and heading directly for
+the beach. A volley of fire greeted them, but the soldiers were
+already overboard, waist-deep in water, plunging towards the shore with
+their rifles held high over their heads, while the crew of the launch
+violently reversed the engines and drove themselves off the sand by
+means of long poles, to save the launch from an irrevocable grounding.
+The attack was well planned, and executed by men who knew intimately
+the lie of the coast. With loud shouts, they emerged dripping from the
+water on to the beach.
+
+They were at least forty strong; the island picket numbered only a
+score, but they had the advantage of concealment. A few of the soldiers
+dropped while yet in the water; others fell forward on to their faces
+with their legs in the water and their heads and shoulders on dry land;
+many gained a footing but were shot down a few yards from the edge of
+the sea; the survivors flung themselves flat behind hummocks of rock
+and fired in the direction of the defending fire. Everything seemed to
+have taken place within the compass of two or three minutes. Julian had
+himself picked off three of the invaders; his blood was up, and he had
+lost all the sickening sense of massacre he had felt during the early
+part of the day.
+
+He never knew how the hand to hand fight actually began; he only knew
+that suddenly he was out of the cave, in the open, without a rifle,
+but with his revolver in his grasp, backed and surrounded by his own
+shouting men, and confronted by the soldiers of Herakleion, heavily
+impeded by their wet trousers, but fighting sheerly for their lives,
+striving to get at him, losing their heads and aiming wildly, throwing
+aside their rifles and grappling at last bodily with their enemies,
+struggling not to be driven back into the sea, cursing the islanders,
+and calling to one another to rally, stumbling over the dead and the
+wounded. Julian scarcely recognised his own voice in the shout of,
+'Aphros!' He was full of the lust of fighting; he had seen men roll
+over before the shot of his revolver, and had driven them down before
+the weight of his fist. He was fighting joyously, striking among the
+waves of his enemies as a swimmer striking out against a current. All
+his thought was to kill, and to rid his island of these invaders;
+already the tide had turned, and that subtle sense of defeat and
+victory that comes upon the crest of battle was infusing respectively
+despair and triumph. There was now no doubt in the minds of either the
+attackers or the defenders in whose favour the attack would end. There
+remained but three alternatives: surrender, death, or the sea.
+
+Already many were choosing the first, and those that turned in the
+hope of regaining the launch were shot down or captured before they
+reached the water. The prisoners, disarmed, stood aside in a little
+sulky group under the guard of one islander, watching, resignedly, and
+with a certain indifference born of their own secession from activity,
+the swaying clump of men, shouting, swearing, and stumbling, and the
+feeble efforts of the wounded to drag themselves out of the way of the
+trampling feet. The sand of the beach was in some places, where blood
+had been spilt, stamped into a dark mud. A wounded soldier, lying half
+in and half out of the water, cried out pitiably as the salt water
+lapped over his wounds.
+
+The decision was hastened by the crew of the launch, who, seeing a bare
+dozen of their companions rapidly overpowered by a superior number of
+islanders, and having themselves no fancy to be picked off at leisure
+from the shore, started their engines and made off to sea. At that
+a cry of dismay went up; retreat, as an alternative, was entirely
+withdrawn; death an empty and unnecessary display of heroism; surrender
+remained; they chose it thankfully.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Julian never knew, nor did he stop to inquire, why Eve had returned to
+the village without his sanction. He only knew that as he came up the
+street, escorted by all the population, singing, pressing around him,
+taking his hands, throwing flowers and even fruit in his path, holding
+up their children for him to touch, he saw her standing in the doorway
+of their house, the lighted courtyard yellow behind her. She stood
+there on the highest of the three steps, her hands held out towards
+him. He knew, too, although no word was spoken, that the village
+recognised them as lovers. He felt again the triumphant completeness of
+life; a fulfilment, beyond the possibility of that staid world that,
+somewhere, moved upon its confused, mercenary, mistaken, and restricted
+way. Here, the indignities of hypocrisy were indeed remote. There,
+men shorn of candour entangled the original impulse of their motives
+until in a sea of perplexity they abandoned even to the ultimate grace
+of self-honesty; here, in an island of enchantment, he had fought for
+his dearest and most constituent beliefs--O honourable privilege!
+unhindered and rare avowal!--fought, not with secret weapons, but with
+the manhood of his body; and here, under the eyes of fellow-creatures,
+their presence no more obtrusive than the presence of the sea or the
+evening breeze, under their unquestioning eyes he claimed the just
+reward, the consummation, the right of youth, which in that pharisaical
+world would have been denied him.
+
+Eve herself was familiar with his mood. Whereas he had noted,
+marvelled, and rejoiced at the simplicity with which they came
+together, before that friendly concourse of people, she had stretched
+out her hands to him with an unthinking gesture of possession. She had
+kept her counsel during the unpropitious years, with a secrecy beyond
+the determination of a child; but here, having gained him for her own;
+having enticed him into the magical country where the standards drew
+near to her own standards; where she, on the one hand, no less than he
+upon the other, might fight with the naked weapons of nature for her
+desires and beliefs--here she walked at home and without surprise in
+the perfect liberty; that liberty which he accepted with gratitude, but
+she as a right out of which man elsewhere was cheated. He had always
+been surprised, on the rare occasions when a hint of her philosophy, a
+fragment of her creed, had dropped from her lips unawares. From these
+fragments he had been incapable of reconstructing the whole. He had
+judged her harshly, too young and too ignorant to query whether the
+falseness of convention cannot drive those, temperamentally direct and
+uncontrolled, into the self-defence of a superlative falseness.... He
+had seen her vanity; he had not seen what he was now, because himself
+in sympathy, beginning to apprehend, her whole-heartedness that was,
+in its way, so magnificent. Very, very dimly he apprehended; his
+apprehension, indeed, limited chiefly to the recognition of a certain
+correlation in her to the vibrant demands alive in him: he asked from
+her, weakness to fling his strength into relief; submission to entice
+his tyranny; yet at the same time, passion to match his passion, and
+mettle to exalt his conquest in his own eyes; she must be nothing less
+than the whole grace and rarity of life for his pleasure; flattery, in
+short, at once subtle and blatant, supreme and meticulous, was what he
+demanded, and what she was, he knew, so instinctively ready to accord.
+
+As she put her hand into his, he felt the current of her pride as
+definitely as though he had seen a glance of understanding pass between
+her and the women of the village. He looked up at her, smiling. She had
+contrived for herself a garment out of some strip of dark red silk,
+which she had wound round her body after the fashion of an Indian sari;
+in the opening of that sombre colour her throat gleamed more than
+usually white, and above her swathed slenderness her lips were red in
+the pallor of her face, and her waving hair held glints of burnish as
+the leaves of autumn. She was not inadequate in her anticipation of his
+unspoken demands: the exploitation of her sensuous delicacy was all for
+him--for him!
+
+He had expected, perhaps, that after her proud, frank welcome before
+the people, she would turn to him when they were alone; but he
+found her manner full of a deliberate indifference. She abstained
+even from any allusion to her day's anxiety. He was reminded of all
+their meetings when, after months, she betrayed no pleasure at his
+return, but rather avoided him, and coldly disregarded his unthinking
+friendliness. Many a time, as a boy, he had been hurt and puzzled by
+this caprice, which, ever meeting him unprepared, was ever renewed
+by her. To-night he was neither hurt nor puzzled, but with a grim
+amusement accepted the pattern she set; he could allow her the
+luxury of a superficial control. With the harmony between them, they
+could play the game of pretence. He delighted in her unexpectedness.
+Her reticence stirred him, in its disconcerting contrast with his
+recollection of her as he had left her that morning. She moved from
+the court into the drawing-room, and from the drawing-room back into
+the court, and he followed her, impersonal as she herself, battening
+down all outward sign of his triumph, granting her the grace of that
+Epicurean and ironic chivalry. He knew their quietness was ominous.
+They moved and spoke like people in the near, unescapable neighbourhood
+of a wild beast, whose attention they must on no account arouse, whose
+presence they must not mention, while each intensely aware of the
+peril, and each alive to the other's knowledge of it. She spoke and
+laughed, and he, in response to her laughter, smiled gravely; silence
+fell, and she broke it; she thought that he took pleasure in testing
+her power of reviving their protective talk; the effort increased in
+difficulty; he seemed to her strangely and paralysingly sinister.
+
+Harmony between them! if such harmony existed, it was surely the
+harmony of hostility. They were enemies that evening, not friends.
+If an understanding existed, it was, on her part, the understanding
+that he was mocking her; on his part, the understanding that she,
+in her fear, must preserve the veneer of self-assurance, and that
+some fundamental convention--if the term was not too inherently
+contradictory--demanded his co-operation. He granted it. On other
+occasions his manner towards her might be rough, violent, uncontrolled;
+this evening it was of an irreproachable civility. For the first time
+in her life she felt herself at a disadvantage. She invented pretext
+after feverish pretext for prolonging their evening. She knew that if
+she could once bring a forgetful laugh to Julian's lips, she would fear
+him less; but he continued to smile gravely at her sallies, and to
+watch her with that same unbending intent. In the midst of her phrase
+she would look up, meet his eyes bent upon her, and forget her words in
+confusion. Once he rose, and stretched his limbs luxuriously against
+the background of the open roof and the stars; she thought he would
+speak, but to her relief he sat down again in his place, removed his
+eyes from her, and fell to the dissection, grain by grain, of a bunch
+of grapes.
+
+She continued to speak; she talked of Kato, even of Alexander
+Christopoulos; she scarcely knew he was not listening to her until
+he broke with her name into the heart of her sentence, unaware that
+he interrupted. He stood up, came round to her chair, and put his
+hand upon her shoulder; she could not control her trembling. He said
+briefly, but with all the repressed triumph ringing in his voice, 'Eve,
+come'; and without a word she obeyed, her eyes fastened to his, her
+breath shortened, deceit fallen from her, nothing but naked honesty
+remaining. She had lost even her fear of him. In their stark desire for
+each other they were equals. He put out his hand and extinguished the
+candles; dimness fell over the court.
+
+'Eve,' he said, still in that contained voice, 'you know we are alone
+in this house.'
+
+She acquiesced, 'I know,' not meaning to speak in a whisper, but
+involuntarily letting the words glide out with her breath.
+
+As he paused, she felt his hand convulsive upon her shoulder; her
+lids lay shut upon her eyes like heavy petals. Presently he said
+wonderingly,--
+
+'I have not kissed you.'
+
+'No,' she replied, faint, yet marvellously strong.
+
+He put his arm round her, and half carried her towards the stairs.
+
+'Let me go,' she whispered, for the sake of his contradiction.
+
+'No,' he answered, holding her more closely to him.
+
+'Where are you taking me, Julian?'
+
+He did not reply, but together they began to mount the stairs, she
+failing and drooping against his arm, her eyes still closed and her
+lips apart. They reached her room, bare, full of shadows, whitewashed,
+with the windows open upon the black moonlit sea.
+
+'Eve!' he murmured exultantly. 'Aphros!...'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The lyric of their early days of love piped clear and sweet upon the
+terraces of Aphros.
+
+Their surroundings entered into a joyous conspiracy with their youth.
+Between halcyon sky and sea the island lay radiantly; as it were
+suspended, unattached, coloured like a rainbow, and magic with the
+enchantment of its isolation. The very foam which broke around its
+rocks served to define, by its lacy fringe of white, the compass of
+the magic circle. To them were granted solitude and beauty beyond all
+dreams of lovers. They dwelt in the certainty that no intruder could
+disturb them--save those intruders to be beaten off in frank fight--no
+visitor from the outside world but those that came on wings, swooping
+down out of the sky, poising for an instant upon the island, that
+halting place in the heart of the sea, and flying again with restless
+cries, sea-birds, the only disturbers of their peace. From the shadow
+of the olives, or of the stunted pines whose little cones hung like
+black velvet balls in the transparent tracery of the branches against
+the sky, they lay idly watching the gulls, and the tiny white clouds
+by which the blue was almost always flaked. The population of the
+island melted into a harmony with nature like the trees, the rocks and
+boulders, or the roving flocks of sheep and herds of goats. Eve and
+Julian met with neither curiosity nor surprise; only with acquiescence.
+Daily as they passed down the village street, to wander up the
+mule-tracks into the interior of Aphros, they were greeted by smiles
+and devotion that were as unquestioning and comfortable as the shade
+of the trees or the cool splash of the water; and nightly as they
+remained alone together in their house, dark, roofed over with stars,
+and silent but for the ripple of the fountain, they could believe that
+they had been tended by invisible hands in the island over which they
+reigned in isolated sovereignty.
+
+They abandoned themselves to the unbelievable romance. He, indeed, had
+striven half-heartedly; but she, with all the strength of her nature,
+had run gratefully, nay, clamantly, forward, exacting the reward of
+her patience, demanding her due. She rejoiced in the casting aside of
+shackles which, although she had resolutely ignored them in so far
+as was possible, had always irked her by their latent presence. At
+last she might gratify to the full her creed of living for and by the
+beloved, in a world of beauty where the material was denied admittance.
+In such a dream, such an ecstasy of solitude, they gained marvellously
+in one another's eyes. She revealed to Julian the full extent of her
+difference and singularity. For all their nearness in the human sense,
+he received sometimes with a joyful terror the impression that he
+was living in the companionship of a changeling, a being strayed by
+accident from another plane. The small moralities and tendernesses
+of mankind contained no meaning for her. They were burnt away by the
+devastating flame of her own ideals. He knew now, irrefutably, that she
+had lived her life withdrawn from all but external contact with her
+surroundings.
+
+Her sensuality, which betrayed itself even in the selection of the arts
+she loved, had marked her out for human passion. He had observed her
+instinct to deck herself for his pleasure; he had learnt the fastidious
+refinement with which she surrounded her body. He had marked her
+further instinct to turn the conduct of their love into a fine art.
+She had taught him the value of her reserve, her evasions, and of her
+sudden recklessness. He never discovered, and, no less epicurean than
+she, never sought to discover, how far her principles were innate,
+unconscious, or how far deliberate. They both tacitly esteemed the veil
+of some slight mystery to soften the harshness of their self-revelation.
+
+He dared not invoke the aid of unshrinking honesty to apportion the
+values between their physical and their mental affinity.
+
+What was it, this bond of flesh? so material, yet so imperative, so
+compelling, as to become almost a spiritual, not a bodily, necessity?
+so transitory, yet so recurrent? dying down like a flame, to revive
+again? so unimportant, so grossly commonplace, yet creating so close
+and tremulous an intimacy? this magic that drew together their hands
+like fluttering butterflies in the hours of sunlight, and linked them
+in the abandonment of mastery and surrender in the hours of night? that
+swept aside the careful training, individual and hereditary, replacing
+pride by another pride? this unique and mutual secret? this fallacious
+yet fundamental and dominating bond? this force, hurling them together
+with such cosmic power that within the circle of frail human entity
+rushed furiously the tempest of an inexorable law of nature?
+
+They had no tenderness for one another. Such tenderness as might have
+crept into the relationship they collaborated in destroying, choosing
+to dwell in the strong clean air of mountain-tops, shunning the
+ease of the valleys. Violence was never very far out of sight. They
+loved proudly, with a flame that purged all from their love but the
+essential, the ideal passion.
+
+'I live with a Mænad,' he said, putting out his hand and bathing his
+fingers in her loosened hair.
+
+From the rough shelter of reeds and matting where they idled then among
+the terraced vineyards, the festoons of the vines and the bright reds
+and yellows of the splay leaves, brilliant against the sun, framed her
+consonant grace. The beautiful shadows of lacing vines dappled the
+ground, and the quick lizards darted upon the rough terrace walls.
+
+He said, pursuing his thought,--
+
+'You have never the wish of other women--permanency? a house with me?
+never the inkling of such a wish?'
+
+'Trammels!' she replied, 'I've always hated possessions.'
+
+He considered her at great length, playing with her hair, fitting his
+fingers into its waving thicknesses, putting his cheek against the
+softness of her cheek, and laughing.
+
+'My changeling. My nymph,' he said.
+
+She lay silent, her arms folded behind her head, and her eyes on him as
+he continued to utter his disconnected sentences.
+
+'Where is the Eve of Herakleion? The mask you wore! I dwelt only upon
+your insignificant vanity, and in your pride you made no defence. Most
+secret pride! Incredible chastity of mind! Inviolate of soul, to all
+alike. Inviolate. Most rare restraint! The expansive vulgarity of the
+crowd! My Eve....'
+
+He began again,--
+
+'So rarely, so stainlessly mine. Beyond mortal hopes. You allowed all
+to misjudge you, myself included. You smiled, not even wistfully,
+lest that betray you, and said nothing. You held yourself withdrawn.
+You perfected your superficial life. That profound humour.... I could
+not think you shallow--not all your pretence could disguise your
+mystery--but, may I be forgiven, I have thought you shallow in all
+but mischief. I prophesied for you'--he laughed--'a great career as a
+destroyer of men. A great courtesan. But instead I find you a great
+lover. _Une grande amoureuse._'
+
+'If that is mischievous,' she said, 'my love for you goes beyond
+mischief; it would stop short of no crime.'
+
+He put his face between his hands for a second.
+
+'I believe you; I know it.'
+
+'I understand love in no other way,' she said, sitting up and shaking
+her hair out of her eyes; 'I am single-hearted. It is selfish love: I
+would die for you, gladly, without a thought, but I would sacrifice my
+claim on you to no one and to nothing. It is all-exorbitant. I make
+enormous demands. I must have you exclusively for myself.'
+
+He teased her,--
+
+'You refuse to marry me.'
+
+She was serious.
+
+'Freedom, Julian! romance! The world before us, to roam at will; fairs
+to dance at; strange people to consort with, to see the smile in their
+eyes, and the tolerant "Lovers!" forming on their lips. To tweak
+the nose of Propriety, to snatch away the chair on which she would
+sit down! Who in their senses would harness the divine courser to a
+mail-cart?'
+
+She seemed to him lit by an inner radiance, that shone through her eyes
+and glowed richly in her smile.
+
+'Vagabond!' he said. 'Is life to be one long carnival?'
+
+'And one long honesty. I'll own you before the world--and court its
+disapproval. I'll release you--no, I'll leave you--when you tire of
+me. I wouldn't clip love's golden wings. I wouldn't irk you with
+promises, blackmail you into perjury, wring from you an oath we both
+should know was made only to be broken. We'll leave that to middle-age.
+Middle-age--I have been told there is such a thing? Sometimes it is
+fat, sometimes it is wan, surely it is always dreary! It may be wise
+and successful and contented. Sometimes, I'm told, it even loves. We
+are young. Youth!' she said, sinking her voice, 'the winged and the
+divine.'
+
+
+When he talked to her about the Islands, she did not listen, although
+she dared not check him. He talked, striving to interest her, to fire
+her enthusiasm. He talked, with his eyes always upon the sea, since
+some obscure instinct warned him not to keep them bent upon her face;
+sometimes they were amongst the vines, which in the glow of their
+September bronze and amber resembled the wine flowing from their
+fruits, and from here the sea shimmered, crudely and cruelly blue
+between those flaming leaves, undulating into smooth, nacreous folds;
+sometimes they were amongst the rocks on the lower levels, on a windier
+day, when white crests spurted from the waves, and the foam broke with
+a lacy violence against the island at the edge of the green shallows;
+and sometimes, after dusk, they climbed to the olive terraces beneath
+the moon that rose through the trees in a world strangely gray and
+silver, strangely and contrastingly deprived of colour. He talked,
+lying on the ground, with his hands pressed close against the soil
+of Aphros. Its contact gave him the courage he needed.... He talked
+doggedly; in the first week with the fire of inspiration, after that
+with the perseverance of loyalty. These monologues ended always in the
+same way. He would bring his glance from the sea to her face, would
+break off his phrase in the middle, and, coming suddenly to her, would
+cover her hair, her throat, her mouth, with kisses. Then she would turn
+gladly and luxuriously towards him, curving in his arms, and presently
+the grace of her murmured speech would again bewitch him, until upon
+her lips he forgot the plea of Aphros.
+
+There were times when he struggled to escape her, his physical and
+mental activity rebelling against the subjection in which she held
+him. He protested that the affairs of the Islands claimed him; that
+Herakleion had granted but a month for negotiations; precautions must
+be taken, and the scheme of government amplified and consolidated.
+Then the angry look came over her face, and all the bitterness of her
+resentment broke loose. Having captured him, much of her precocious
+wisdom seemed to have abandoned her.
+
+'I have waited for you ten years, yet you want to leave me. Do I mean
+less to you than the Islands? I wish the Islands were at the bottom of
+the sea instead of on the top of it.'
+
+'Be careful, Eve.'
+
+'I resent everything which takes you from me,' she said recklessly.
+
+Another time she cried, murky with passion,--
+
+'Always these councils with Tsigaridis and the rest! always these
+secret messages passing between you and Kato! Give me that letter.'
+
+He refused, shredding Kato's letter and scattering the pieces into the
+sea.
+
+'What secrets have you with Kato, that you must keep from me?'
+
+'They would have no interest for you,' he replied, remembering that she
+was untrustworthy--that canker in his confidence.
+
+The breeze fanned slightly up the creek where they were lying on the
+sand under the shadow of a pine, and out in the dazzling sea a porpoise
+leapt, turning its slow black curve in the water. The heat simmered
+over the rocks.
+
+'We share our love,' he said morosely, 'but no other aspect of life.
+The Islands are nothing to you. An obstacle, not a link.' It was a
+truth that he rarely confronted.
+
+'You are wrong: a background, a setting for you, which I appreciate.'
+
+'You appreciate the picturesque. I know. You are an artist in
+appreciation of the suitable stage-setting. But as for the rest....' he
+made a gesture full of sarcasm and renunciation.
+
+'Give me up, Julian, and all my shortcomings. I have always told you I
+had but one virtue. I am the first to admit the insufficiency of its
+claim. Give yourself wholly to your Islands. Let me go.' She spoke
+sadly, as though conscious of her own irremediable difference and
+perversity.
+
+'Yet you yourself--what were your words?--said you believed in me; you
+even wrote to me, I remember still, "conquer, shatter, demolish!" But I
+must always struggle against you, against your obstructions. What is it
+you want? Liberty and irresponsibility, to an insatiable degree!'
+
+'Because I love you insatiably.'
+
+'You are too unreasonable sometimes' ('Reason!' she interrupted with
+scorn, 'what has reason got to do with love?') 'you are unreasonable to
+grudge me every moment I spend away from you. Won't you realise that I
+am responsible for five thousand lives? You must let me go now; only
+for an hour. I promise to come back to you in an hour.'
+
+'Are you tired of me already?'
+
+'Eve....'
+
+'When we were in Herakleion, you were always saying you must go to
+Kato; now you are always going to some council; am I never to have you
+to myself?'
+
+'I will go only for an hour. I _must_ go, Eve, my darling.'
+
+'Stay with me, Julian. I'll kiss you. I'll tell you a story.' She
+stretched out her hands. He shook his head, laughing, and ran off in
+the direction of the village.
+
+When he returned, she refused to speak to him.
+
+But at other times they grew marvellously close, passing hours and
+days in unbroken union, until the very fact of their two separate
+personalities became an exasperation. Then, silent as two souls
+tortured, before a furnace, they struggled for the expression that ever
+eludes; the complete, the satisfying expression that shall lay bare one
+soul to another soul, but that, ever failing, mockingly preserves the
+unwanted boon of essential mystery.
+
+That dumb frenzy outworn, they attained, nevertheless, to a nearer
+comradeship, the days, perhaps, of their greatest happiness, when with
+her reckless fancy she charmed his mind; he thought of her then as a
+vagrant nymph, straying from land to land, from age to age, decking
+her spirit with any flower she met growing by the way, chastely
+concerned with the quest of beauty, strangely childlike always, pure
+as the fiercest, tallest flame. He could not but bow to that audacity,
+that elemental purity, of spirit. Untainted by worldliness, greed,
+or malice.... The facts of her life became clearer to him, startling
+in their consistency. He could not associate her with possessions,
+or a fixed abode, she who was free and elusive as a swallow, to whom
+the slightest responsibility was an intolerable and inadmissible yoke
+from beneath which, without commotion but also without compunction,
+she slipped. On no material point could she be touched--save her own
+personal luxury, and that seemed to grow with her, as innocent of
+effort as the colour on a flower; she kindled only in response to
+music, poetry, love, or laughter, but then with what a kindling! she
+flamed, she glowed; she ranged over spacious and fabulous realms; her
+feet never touched earth, they were sandal-shod and carried her in
+the clean path of breezes, and towards the sun, exalted and ecstatic,
+breathing as the common air the rarity of the upper spaces. At such
+times she seemed a creature blown from legend, deriving from no
+parentage; single, individual, and lawless.
+
+
+He found that he had come gradually to regard her with a superstitious
+reverence.
+
+He evolved a theory, constructed around her, dim and nebulous, yet
+persistent; perforce nebulous, since he was dealing with a matter too
+fine, too subtle, too unexplored, to lend itself to the gross imperfect
+imprisonment of words. He never spoke of it, even to her, but staring
+at her sometimes with a reeling head he felt himself transported, by
+her medium, beyond the matter-of-fact veils that shroud the limit of
+human vision. He felt illuminated, on the verge of a new truth; as
+though by stretching out his hand he might touch something no hand of
+man had ever touched before, something of unimaginable consistency,
+neither matter nor the negation of matter; as though he might brush the
+wings of truth, handle the very substance of a thought....
+
+He felt at these times like a man who passes through a genuine
+psychical experience. Yes, it was as definite as that; he had the
+glimpse of a possible revelation. He returned from his vision--call
+it what he would, vision would serve as well as any other word--he
+returned with that sense of benefit by which alone such an
+excursion--or was it incursion?--could be justified. He brought back a
+benefit. He had beheld, as in a distant prospect, a novel balance and
+proportion of certain values. That alone would have left him enriched
+for ever.
+
+Practical as he could be, theories and explorations were yet dear
+to him: he was an inquisitive adventurer of the mind no less than
+an active adventurer of the world. He sought eagerly for underlying
+truths. His apparently inactive moods were more accurately his fallow
+moods. His thought was as an ardent plough, turning and shifting the
+loam of his mind. Yet he would not allow his fancy to outrun his
+conviction; if fancy at any moment seemed to lead, he checked it
+until more lumbering conviction could catch up. They must travel ever
+abreast, whip and reins alike in his control.
+
+Youth--were the years of youth the intuitive years of perception? Were
+the most radiant moments the moments in which one stepped farthest
+from the ordered acceptance of the world? Moments of danger, moments
+of inspiration, moments of self-sacrifice, moments of perceiving
+beauty, moments of love, all the drunken moments! Eve moved, he knew,
+permanently upon that plane. She led an exalted, high-keyed inner life.
+The normal mood to her was the mood of a sensitive person caught at the
+highest pitch of sensibility. Was she unsuited to the world and to the
+necessities of the world because she belonged, not here, but to another
+sphere apprehended by man only in those rare, keen moments that Julian
+called the drunken moments? apprehended by poet or artist--the elect,
+the aristocracy, the true path-finders among the race of man!--in
+moments when sobriety left them and they passed beyond?
+
+Was she to blame for her cruelty, her selfishness, her disregard for
+truth? was she, not evil, but only alien? to be forgiven all for the
+sake of the rarer, more distant flame? Was the standard of cardinal
+virtues set by the world the true, the ultimate standard? Was it
+possible that Eve made part of a limited brotherhood? was indeed a
+citizen of some advanced state of such perfection that this world's
+measures and ideals were left behind and meaningless? meaningless
+because unnecessary in such a realm of serenity?
+
+Aphros, then--the liberty of Aphros--and Aphros meant to him far more
+than merely Aphros--that was surely a lovely and desirable thing, a
+worthy aim, a high beacon? If Eve cared nothing for the liberty of
+Aphros, was it because in _her_ world (he was by now convinced of its
+existence) there was no longer any necessity to trouble over such aims,
+liberty being as natural and unmeditated as the air in the nostrils?
+
+(Not that this would ever turn him from his devotion; at most he could
+look upon Aphros as a stage upon the journey towards that higher
+aim--the stage to which he and his like, who were nearly of the elect,
+yet not of them, might aspire. And if the day should ever come when
+disillusion drove him down; when, far from becoming a citizen of Eve's
+far sphere, he should cease to be a citizen even of Aphros and should
+become a citizen merely of the world, no longer young, no longer
+blinded by ideals, no longer nearly a poet, but merely a grown, sober
+man--then he would still keep Aphros as a bright memory of what might
+have been, of the best he had grasped, the possibility which in the
+days of youth had not seemed too extravagantly unattainable.)
+
+But in order to keep his hold upon this world of Eve's, which in his
+inner consciousness he already recognised as the most valuable rift
+of insight ever vouchsafed to him, it was necessary that he should
+revolutionise every ancient gospel and reputable creed. The worth
+of Eve was to him an article of faith. His intimacy with her was a
+privilege infinitely beyond the ordinary privilege of love. Whatever
+she might do, whatever crime she might commit, whatever baseness she
+might perpetrate, her ultimate worth, the core, the kernel, would
+remain to him unsullied and inviolate. This he knew blindly, seeing it
+as the mystic sees God; and knew it the more profoundly that he could
+have defended it with no argument of reason.
+
+What then? the poet, the creator, the woman, the mystic, the man
+skirting the fringes of death--were they kin with one another and free
+of some realm unknown, towards which all, consciously or unconsciously,
+were journeying? Where the extremes of passion (he did not mean
+only the passion of love), of exaltation, of danger, of courage and
+vision--where all these extremes met--was it there, the great crossways
+where the moral ended, and the divine began? Was it for Eve supremely,
+and to a certain extent for all women and artists--the visionaries, the
+lovely, the graceful, the irresponsible, the useless!--was it reserved
+for them to show the beginning of the road?
+
+Youth! youth and illusion! to love Eve and Aphros! when those two
+slipped from him he would return sobered to the path designated by the
+sign-posts and milestones of man, hoping no more than to keep as a
+gleam within him the light glowing in the sky above that unattainable
+but remembered city.
+
+
+He returned to earth; Eve was kneading and tormenting a lump of putty,
+and singing to herself meanwhile; he watched her delicate, able hands,
+took one of them, and held it up between his eyes and the sun.
+
+'Your fingers are transparent, they're like cornelian against the
+light,' he said.
+
+She left her hand within his grasp, and smiled down at him.
+
+'How you play with me, Julian,' she said idly.
+
+'You're such a delicious toy.'
+
+'Only a toy?'
+
+He remembered the intricate, untranslatable thoughts he had been
+thinking about her five minutes earlier, and began to laugh to himself.
+
+'A great deal more than a toy. Once I thought of you only as a child, a
+helpless, irritating, adorable child, always looking for trouble, and
+turning to me for help when the trouble came.'
+
+'And then?'
+
+'Then you made me think of you as a woman,' he replied gravely.
+
+'You seemed to hesitate a good deal before deciding to think of me as
+that.'
+
+'Yes, I tried to judge our position by ordinary codes; you must have
+thought me ridiculous.'
+
+'I did, darling.' Her mouth twisted drolly as she said it.
+
+'I wonder now how I could have insulted you by applying them to you,'
+he said with real wonderment; everything seemed so clear and obvious to
+him now.
+
+'Why, how do you think of me now?'
+
+'Oh, God knows!' he replied. 'I've called you changeling sometimes,
+haven't I?' He decided to question her. 'Tell me, Eve, how do you
+explain your difference? you outrage every accepted code, you see, and
+yet one retains one's belief in you. Is one simply deluded by your
+charm? or is there a deeper truth? can you explain?' He had spoken in a
+bantering tone, but he knew that he was trying an experiment of great
+import to him.
+
+'I don't think I'm different, Julian; I think I feel things strongly,
+no more.'
+
+'Or else you don't feel them at all.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'Well--Paul,' he said reluctantly.
+
+'You have never got over that, have you?'
+
+'Exactly!' he exclaimed. 'It seems to you extraordinary that I should
+still remember Paul, or that his death should have made any impression
+upon me. I ought to hate you for your indifference. Sometimes I have
+come very near to hating you. But now--perhaps my mind is getting
+broader--I blame you for nothing because I believe you are simply not
+capable of understanding. But evidently you can't explain yourself. I
+love you!' he said, 'I love you!'
+
+He knew that her own inability to explain herself--her
+unself-consciousness--had done much to strengthen his new theories. The
+flower does not know why or how it blossoms....
+
+
+On the day that he told her, with many misgivings, that Kato was coming
+to Aphros, she uttered no word of anger, but wept despairingly, at
+first without speaking, then with short, reiterated sentences that
+wrung his heart for all their unreason,--
+
+'We were alone. I was happy as never in my life. I had you utterly. We
+were alone. Alone! Alone!'
+
+'We will tell Kato the truth,' he soothed her; 'she will leave us alone
+still.'
+
+But it was not in her nature to cling to straws of comfort. For her,
+the sunshine had been unutterably radiant; and for her it was now
+proportionately blackened out.
+
+'We were alone,' she repeated, shaking her head with unspeakable
+mournfulness, the tears running between her fingers.
+
+For the first time he spoke to her with a moved, a tender compassion,
+full of reverence.
+
+'Your joy ... your sorrow ... equally overwhelming and tempestuous. How
+you feel--you tragic child! Yesterday you laughed and made yourself a
+crown of myrtle.'
+
+She refused to accompany him when he went to meet Kato, who, after a
+devious journey from Athens, was to land at the rear of the island
+away from the curiosity of Herakleion. She remained in the cool house,
+sunk in idleness, her pen and pencil alike neglected. She thought
+only of Julian, absorbingly, concentratedly. Her past life appeared to
+her, when she thought of it at all, merely as a period in which Julian
+had not loved her, a period of waiting, of expectancy, of anguish
+sometimes, of incredible reticence supported only by the certainty
+which had been her faith and her inspiration....
+
+To her surprise, he returned, not only with Kato but with Grbits.
+
+Every word and gesture of the giant demonstrated his enormous pleasure.
+His oddly Mongolian face wore a perpetual grin of triumphant truancy.
+His good-humour was not to be withstood. He wrung Eve's hands,
+inarticulate with delight. Kato, her head covered with a spangled
+veil--Julian had never seen her in a hat--stood by, looking on, her
+hands on her hips, as though Grbits were her exhibit. Her little eyes
+sparkled with mischief.
+
+'He is no longer an officer in the Serbian army,' she said at last,
+'only a free-lance, at Julian's disposal. Is it not magnificent?
+He has sent in his resignation. His career is ruined. The military
+representative of Serbia in Herakleion!'
+
+'A free-lance,' Grbits repeated, beaming down at Julian. (It annoyed
+Eve that he should be so much the taller of the two).
+
+'We sent you no word, not to lessen your surprise,' said Kato.
+
+They stood, all four, in the courtyard by the fountain.
+
+'I told you on the day of the elections that when you needed me I
+should come,' Grbits continued, his grin widening.
+
+'Of course, you are a supreme fool, Grbits,' said Kato to him.
+
+'Yes,' he replied, 'thank Heaven for it.'
+
+'In Athens the sympathy is all with the Islands,' said Kato. She
+had taken off her veil, and they could see that she wore the gold
+wheat-ears in her hair. Her arms were, as usual, covered with bangles,
+nor had she indeed made any concessions to the necessities of
+travelling, save that on her feet, instead of her habitual square-toed
+slippers, she wore long, hideous, heelless, elastic-sided boots.
+Eve reflected that she had grown fatter and more stumpy, but she
+was, as ever, eager, kindly, enthusiastic, vital; they brought with
+them a breath of confidence and efficiency, those disproportionately
+assorted travelling companions; Julian felt a slight shame that he had
+neglected the Islands for Eve; and Eve stood by, listening to their
+respective recitals, to Grbits' startling explosions of laughter, and
+Kato's exuberant joy, tempered with wisdom. They both talked at once,
+voluble and excited; the wheat-ears trembled in Kato's hair, Grbits'
+white regular teeth flashed in his broad face, and Julian, a little
+bewildered, turned from one to the other with his unsmiling gravity.
+
+'I mistrust the forbearance of Herakleion,' Kato said, a great
+weight of meditated action pressing on behind her words; 'a month's
+forbearance! In Athens innumerable rumours were current: of armed ships
+purchased from the Turks, even of a gun mounted on Mylassa--but that I
+do not believe. They have given you, you say, a month in which to come
+to your senses. But they are giving themselves also a month in which to
+prepare their attack,' and she plied him with practical questions that
+demonstrated her clear familiarity with detail and tactic, while Grbits
+contributed nothing but the cavernous laugh and ejaculations of his own
+unquestioning optimism.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+The second attack on Aphros was delivered within a week of their
+arrival.
+
+Eve and Kato, refusing the retreat in the heart of the island, spent
+the morning together in the Davenant house. In the distance the
+noise of the fighting alternately increased and waned; now crackling
+sharply, as it seemed, from all parts of the sea, now dropping into a
+disquieting silence. At such times Eve looked mutely at the singer.
+Kato gave her no comfort, but, shaking her head and shrugging her
+shoulders, expressed only her ignorance. She found that she could speak
+to Julian sympathetically of Eve, but not to Eve sympathetically of
+Julian. She had made the attempt, but after the pang of its effort,
+had renounced it. Their hostility smouldered dully under the shelter
+of their former friendship. Now, alone in the house, they might indeed
+have remained for the most time apart in separate rooms, but the
+common anxiety which linked them drew them together, so that when Kato
+moved Eve followed her, unwillingly, querulously; and expressions of
+affection were even forced from them, of which they instantly repented,
+and by some phrase of veiled cruelty sought to counteract.
+
+No news reached them from outside. Every man was at his post, and
+Julian had forbidden all movement about the village. By his orders also
+the heavy shutters had been closed over the windows of the Davenant
+drawing-room, where Eve and Kato sat, with the door open on to the
+courtyard for the sake of light, talking spasmodically, and listening
+to the sounds of the firing. At the first quick rattle Kato had said,
+'Machine-guns,' and Eve had replied, 'Yes; the first time--when we were
+here alone--he told me they had a machine-gun on the police-launch;'
+then Kato said, after a pause of firing, 'This time they have more than
+one.'
+
+Eve raised tormented eyes.
+
+'Anastasia, he said he would be in shelter.'
+
+'Would he remain in shelter for long?' Kato replied scornfully.
+
+Eve said,--
+
+'He has Grbits with him.'
+
+Kato, crushing down the personal preoccupation, dwelt ardently on
+the fate of her country. She must abandon to Eve the thought of
+Julian, but of the Islands at least she might think possessively,
+diverting to their dear though inanimate claim all the need of passion
+and protection humanly denied her. From a woman of always intense
+patriotism, she had become a fanatic. Starved in one direction, she
+had doubled her energy in the other, realising, moreover, the power
+of that bond between herself and Julian. She could have said with
+thorough truthfulness that her principal cause of resentment against
+Eve was Eve's indifference towards the Islands--a loftier motive
+than the more human jealousy. She had noticed Julian's reluctance
+to mention the Islands in Eve's presence. Alone with herself and
+Grbits, he had never ceased to pour forth the flood of his scheme,
+both practical and utopian, so that Kato could not be mistaken as to
+the direction of his true preoccupations. She had seen the vigour he
+brought to his governing. She had observed with a delighted grin to
+Grbits that, despite his Socialistic theories, Julian had in point of
+fact instituted a complete and very thinly-veiled autocracy in Hagios
+Zacharie. She had seen him in the village assembly, when, in spite
+of his deferential appeals to the superior experience of the older
+men, he steered blankly past any piece of advice that ran contrary
+to the course of his own ideas. She knew that, ahead of him, when he
+should have freed himself finally of Herakleion (and that he would
+free himself he did not for a moment doubt), he kept always the dream
+of his tiny, ideal state. She revered his faith, his energy, and his
+youth, as the essence in him most worthy of reverence. And she knew
+that Eve, if she loved these things in him, loved them only in theory,
+but in practice regarded them with impatient indifference. They stole
+him away, came between him and her.... Kato knew well Eve's own ideals.
+Courage she exacted. Talents she esteemed. Genius, freedom, and beauty
+she passionately worshipped as her gods upon earth. But she could
+tolerate nothing material, nor any occupation that removed her or the
+other from the blind absorption of love.
+
+Kato sighed. Far otherwise would she have cared for Julian! She
+caught sight of herself in a mirror, thick, squat, black, with little
+sparkling eyes; she glanced at Eve, glowing with warmth, sleek and
+graceful as a little animal, idle and seductive. Outside a crash of
+firing shook the solid house, and bullets rattled upon the roofs of the
+village.
+
+It was intolerable to sit unoccupied, working out bitter speculations,
+while such activity raged around the island. To know the present peril
+neither of Julian nor of Aphros! To wait indefinitely, probably all
+day, possibly all night!
+
+'Anastasia, sing.'
+
+Kato complied, as much for her own sake as for Eve's. She sang some
+of her own native songs, then, breaking off, she played, and Eve drew
+near to her, lost and transfigured by the music; she clasped and
+unclasped her hands, beautified by her ecstasy, and Kato's harsh
+thoughts vanished; Eve was, after all, a child, an all too loving and
+passionate child, and not, as Kato sometimes thought her, a pernicious
+force of idleness and waste. Wrong-headed, tragically bringing sorrow
+upon herself in the train of her too intense emotions.... Continuing to
+play, Kato observed her, and felt the light eager fingers upon her arm.
+
+'Ah, Kato, you make me forget. Like some drug of forgetfulness that
+admits me to caves of treasure. Underground caves heaped with jewels.
+Caves of the winds; zephyrs that come and go. I'm carried away into
+oblivion.'
+
+'Tell me,' Kato said.
+
+Obedient to the lead of the music, Eve wandered into a story,--
+
+'Riding on a winged horse, he swept from east to west; he looked down
+upon the sea, crossed by the wake of ships, splashed here and there
+with islands, washing on narrow brown stretches of sand, or dashing
+against the foot of cliffs--you hear the waves breaking?--and he saw
+how the moon drew the tides, and how ships came to rest for a little
+while in harbours, but were homeless and restless and free; he passed
+over the land, swooping low, and he saw the straight streets of cities,
+and the gleam of fires, the neat fields and guarded frontiers, the
+wider plains; he saw the gods throned on Ida, wearing the clouds like
+mantles and like crowns, divinely strong or divinely beautiful; he
+saw things mean and magnificent; he saw the triumphal procession of a
+conqueror, with prisoners walking chained to the back of his chariot,
+and before him white bulls with gilded horns driven to the sacrifice,
+and children running with garlands of flowers; he saw giants hammering
+red iron in northern mountains; he saw all the wanderers of the earth;
+Io the tormented, and all gipsies, vagabonds, and wastrels: all
+jongleurs, poets, and mountebanks; he saw these wandering, but all
+the staid and solemn people lived in the cities and counted the neat
+fields, saying, "This shall be mine and this shall be yours." And
+sometimes, as he passed above a forest, he heard a scurry of startled
+feet among crisp leaves, and sometimes he heard, which made him sad,
+the cry of stricken trees beneath the axe.'
+
+She broke off, as Kato ceased playing.
+
+'They are still firing,' she said.
+
+'Things mean and magnificent,' quoted Kato slowly. 'Why, then, withhold
+Julian from the Islands?'
+
+She had spoken inadvertently. Consciousness of the present had jerked
+her back from remembrance of the past, when Eve had come almost daily
+to her flat in Herakleion, bathing herself in the music, wrapped up
+in beauty; when their friendship had hovered on the boundaries of the
+emotional, in spite of--or perhaps because of?--the thirty years that
+lay between them.
+
+'I heard the voice of my fantastic Eve, of whom I once thought,' she
+added, fixing her eyes on Eve, 'as the purest of beings, utterly
+removed from the sordid and the ugly.'
+
+Eve suddenly flung herself on her knees beside her.
+
+'Ah, Kato,' she said, 'you throw me off my guard when you play to me.
+I'm not always hard and calculating, and your music melts me. It hurts
+me to be, as I constantly am, on the defensive. I'm too suspicious by
+nature to be very happy, Kato. There are always shadows, and ... and
+tragedy. Please don't judge me too harshly. Tell me what you mean by
+sordid and ugly--what is there sordid or ugly in love?'
+
+Kato dared much; she replied in a level voice,--
+
+'Jealousy. Waste. Exorbitance. Suspicion. I am sometimes afraid of
+your turning Julian into another of those men who hoped to find their
+inspiration in a woman, but found only a hindrance.'
+
+She nodded sagely at Eve, and the gold wheat-ears trembled in her hair.
+
+Eve darkened at Julian's name; she got up and stood by the door looking
+into the court. Kato went on,--
+
+'You are so much of a woman, Eve, that it becomes a responsibility.
+It is a gift, like genius. And a great gift without a great soul is
+a curse, because such a gift is too strong to be disregarded. It's a
+force, a danger. You think I am preaching to you'--Eve would never
+know what the words were costing her--'but I preach only because of my
+belief in Julian--and in you,' she hastened to add, and caught Eve's
+hand; 'don't frown, you child. Look at me; I have no illusions and no
+sensitiveness on the score of my own appearance; look at me hard, and
+let me speak to you as a sexless creature.'
+
+Eve was touched in spite of her hostility. She was also shocked and
+distressed. There was to her, so young herself, so insolently vivid in
+her sex-pride, something wrong and painful in Kato's renouncement of
+her right. She had a sense of betrayal.
+
+'Hush, Anastasia,' she whispered. They were both extremely moved, and
+the constant volleys of firing played upon their nerves and stripped
+reserve from them.
+
+'You don't realise,' said Kato, who had, upon impulse, sacrificed her
+pride, and beaten down the feminine weakness she branded as unworthy,
+'how finely the balance, in love, falters between good and ill. You,
+Eve, are created for love; any one who saw you, even without speaking
+to you, across a room, could tell you that.' She smiled affectionately;
+she had, at that moment, risen so far above all personal vanity that
+she could bring herself to smile affectionately at Eve. 'You said, just
+now, with truth I am sure, that shadows and tragedy were never very far
+away from you; you're too _rare_ to be philosophical. I wish there were
+a word to express the antithesis of a philosopher; if I could call you
+by it, I should have said all that I could wish to say about you, Eve.
+I'm so much afraid of sorrow for you and Julian....'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Eve, forgetting to be resentful, 'I am afraid, too;
+it overcomes me sometimes; it's a presentiment.' She looked really
+haunted, and Kato was filled with an immense pity for her.
+
+'You mustn't be weak,' she said gently. 'Presentiment is only a
+high-sounding word for a weak thought.'
+
+'You are so strong and sane, Kato; it is easy for you to be--strong and
+sane.'
+
+They broke off, and listened in silence to an outburst of firing and
+shouts that rose from the village.
+
+
+Grbits burst into the room early in the afternoon, his flat sallow
+face tinged with colour, his clothes torn, and his limbs swinging like
+the sails of a windmill. In one enormous hand he still brandished a
+revolver. He was triumphantly out of breath.
+
+'Driven off!' he cried. 'They ran up a white flag. Not one succeeded in
+landing. Not one.' He panted between every phrase. 'Julian--here in a
+moment. I ran. Negotiations now, we hope. Sea bobbing with dead.'
+
+'Our losses?' said Kato sharply.
+
+'Few. All under cover,' Grbits replied. He sat down, swinging his
+revolver loosely between his knees, and ran his fingers through his
+oily black hair, so that it separated into straight wisps across his
+forehead. He was hugely pleased and good-humoured, and grinned widely
+upon Eve and Kato. 'Good fighting--though too much at a distance.
+Julian was grazed on the temple--told me to tell you,' he added, with
+the tardy haste of a child who has forgotten to deliver a message.
+'We tied up his head, and it will be nothing of a scratch.--Driven
+off! They have tried and failed. The defence was excellent. They will
+scarcely try force again. I am sorry I missed the first fight. I could
+have thrown those little fat soldiers into the sea with one hand, two
+at a time.'
+
+Kato rushed up to Grbits and kissed him; they were like children in
+their large, clumsy excitement.
+
+Julian came in, his head bandaged; his unconcern deserted him as he saw
+Kato hanging over the giant's chair. He laughed out loud.
+
+'A miscellaneous fleet!' he cried. 'Coastal steamers, fort tugs, old
+chirkets from the Bosphorus--who was the admiral, I wonder?'
+
+'Panaïoannou,' cried Grbits, 'his uniform military down one side, and
+naval down the other.'
+
+'Their white flag!' said Julian.
+
+'Sterghiou's handkerchief!' said Grbits.
+
+'Coaling steamers, mounting machine-guns,' Julian continued.
+
+'Stavridis must have imagined that,' said Kato.
+
+'Play us a triumphal march, Anastasia!' said Grbits.
+
+Kato crashed some chords on the piano; they all laughed and sang, but
+Eve, who had taken no part at all, remained in the window-seat staring
+at the ground and her lips trembling. She heard Julian's voice calling
+her, but she obstinately shook her head. He was lost to her between
+Kato and Grbits. She heard them eagerly talking now, all three, of the
+negotiations likely to follow. She heard the occasional shout with
+which Grbits recalled some incident in the fighting, and Julian's
+response. She felt that her ardent hatred of the Islands rose in
+proportion to their ardent love. 'He cares nothing for me,' she kept
+repeating to herself, 'he cares for me as a toy, a pastime, nothing
+more; he forgets me for Kato and the Islands. The Islands hold his true
+heart. I am the ornament to his life, not life itself. And he is all my
+life. He forgets me....' Pride alone conquered her tears.
+
+
+Later, under cover of a white flag, the ex-Premier Malteios was landed
+at the port of Aphros, and was conducted--since he insisted that his
+visit was unofficial--to the Davenant house.
+
+Peace and silence reigned. Grbits and Kato had gone together to look
+at the wreckage, and Eve, having watched their extraordinary progress
+down the street until they turned into the market-place, was alone in
+the drawing-room. Julian slept heavily, his arms flung wide, on his bed
+upstairs. Zapantiotis, who had expected to find him in the court or in
+the drawing-room, paused perplexed. He spoke to Eve in a low voice.
+
+'No,' she said, 'do not wake Mr Davenant,' and, raising her voice, she
+added, 'His Excellency can remain with me.'
+
+She was alone in the room with Malteios, as she had desired.
+
+'But why remain thus, as it were, at bay?' he said pleasantly,
+observing her attitude, shrunk against the wall, her hand pressed to
+her heart. 'You and I were friends once, mademoiselle. Madame?' he
+substituted.
+
+'Mademoiselle,' she replied levelly.
+
+'Ah? Other rumours, perhaps--no matter. Here upon your island, no
+doubt, different codes obtain. Far be it from me to suggest.... An
+agreeable room,' he said, looking round, linking his fingers behind
+his back, and humming a little tune; 'you have a piano, I see; have
+you played much during your leisure? But, of course, I was forgetting:
+Madame Kato is your companion here, is she not? and to her skill a
+piano is a grateful ornament. Ah, I could envy you your evenings, with
+Kato to make your music. Paris cries for her; but no, she is upon a
+revolutionary island in the heart of the Ægean! Paris cries the more.
+Her portrait appears in every paper. Madame Kato, when she emerges,
+will find her fame carried to its summit. And you, Mademoiselle Eve,
+likewise something of a heroine.'
+
+'I am here in the place of my cousin,' Eve said, looking across at the
+ex-Premier.
+
+He raised his eyebrows, and, in a familiar gesture, smoothed away his
+beard from his rosy lips with the tips of his fingers.
+
+'Is that indeed so? A surprising race, you English. Very surprising.
+You assume or bequeath very lightly the mantle of government, do you
+not? Am I to understand that you have permanently replaced your cousin
+in the--ah!--presidency of Hagios Zacharie?'
+
+'My cousin is asleep; there is no reason why you should not speak to me
+in his absence.'
+
+'Asleep? but I must see him, mademoiselle.'
+
+'If you will wait until he wakes.'
+
+'Hours, possibly!'
+
+'We will send to wake him in an hour's time. Can I not entertain you
+until then?' she suggested, her natural coquetry returning.
+
+She left the wall against which she had been leaning, and, coming
+across to Malteios, gave him her fingers with a smile. The ex-Premier
+had always figured picturesquely in her world.
+
+'Mademoiselle,' he said, kissing the fingers she gave him, 'you are as
+delightful as ever, I am assured.'
+
+They sat, Malteios impatient and ill at ease, unwilling to forego
+his urbanity, yet tenacious of his purpose. In the midst of the
+compliments he perfunctorily proffered, he broke out,--
+
+'Children! _Ces gosses.... Mais il est fou, voyons, votre cousin_. What
+is he thinking about? He has created a ridiculous disturbance; well,
+let that pass; we overlook it, but this persistence.... Where is it all
+to end? Obstinacy feeds and grows fat upon obstinacy; submission grows
+daily more impossible, more remote. His pride is at stake. A threat,
+well and good; let him make his threat; he might then have arrived
+at some compromise. I, possibly, might myself have acted as mediator
+between him and my friend and rival, Gregori Stavridis. In fact, I am
+here to-day in the hope that my effort will not come too late. But
+after so much fighting! Tempers run high no doubt in the Islands, and I
+can testify that they run high in Herakleion. Anastasia--probably you
+know this already--Madame Kato's flat is wrecked. Yes, the mob. We are
+obliged to keep a cordon of police always before your uncle's house.
+Neither he nor your father and mother dare to show themselves at the
+windows. It is a truly terrible state of affairs.'
+
+He reverted to the deeper cause of his resentment,--
+
+'I could have mediated, in the early days, so well between your cousin
+and Gregori Stavridis. Pity, pity, pity!' he said, shaking his head
+and smiling his benign, regretful smile that to-day was tinged with a
+barely concealed bitterness, 'a thousand pities, mademoiselle.'
+
+He began again, his mind on Herakleion,--
+
+'I have seen your father and mother, also your uncle. They are very
+angry and impotent. Because the people threw stones at their windows
+and even, I regret to say, fired shots into the house from the
+_platia_, the windows are all boarded over and they live by artificial
+light. I have seen them breakfasting by candles. Yes. Your, father,
+your mother, and your uncle, breakfasting together in the drawing-room
+with lighted candles on the table. I entered the house from the back.
+Your father said to me apprehensively, "I am told Madame Kato's flat
+was wrecked last night?" and your mother said, "Outrageous! She is
+infatuated, either with those Islands or with that boy. She will not
+care. All her possessions, littering the quays! An outrage." Your uncle
+said to me, "See the boy, Malteios! Talk to him. We are hopeless."
+Indeed they appeared hopeless, although not resigned, and sat with
+their hands hanging by their sides instead of eating their eggs; your
+mother, even, had lost her determination.
+
+'I tried to reassure them, but a rattle of stones on the boarded
+windows interrupted me. Your uncle got up and flung away his napkin.
+"One cannot breakfast in peace," he said petulantly, as though that
+constituted his most serious grievance. He went out of the room, but
+the door had scarcely closed behind him before it reopened and he came
+back. He was quite altered, very irritable, and all his courteous
+gravity gone from him. "See the inconvenience," he said to me, jerking
+his hands, "all the servants have gone with my son, all damned
+islanders." I found nothing to say.'
+
+'Kato may return to Herakleion with you?' Eve suggested after a pause
+during which Malteios recollected himself, and tried to indicate by
+shrugs and rueful smiles that he considered the bewilderment of the
+Davenants a deplorable but nevertheless entertaining joke. At the name
+of Kato a change came over his face.
+
+'A fanatic, that woman,' he replied; 'a martyr who will rejoice in her
+martyrdom. She will never leave Aphros while the cause remains.--A
+heroic woman,' he said, with unexpected reverence.
+
+He looked at Eve, his manner veering again to the insinuating and the
+crafty; his worse and his better natures were perpetually betraying
+themselves.
+
+'Would she leave Aphros? no! Would your cousin leave Aphros? no! They
+have between them the bond of a common cause. I know your cousin. He is
+young enough to be an idealist. I know Madame Kato. She is old enough
+to applaud skilfully. Hou!' He spread his hands. 'I have said enough.'
+
+Eve revealed but little interest, though for the first time during
+their interview her interest was passionately aroused. Malteios
+watched her, new schemes germinating in his brain; they played against
+one another, their hands undeclared, a blind, tentative game. This
+conversation, which had begun as it were accidentally, fortuitously,
+turned to a grave significance along a road whose end lay hidden far
+behind the hills of the future. It led, perhaps, nowhere. It led,
+perhaps....
+
+Eve said lightly,--
+
+'I am outdistanced by Kato and my cousin; I don't understand politics,
+or those impersonal friendships.'
+
+'Mademoiselle,' Malteios replied, choosing his words and infusing into
+them an air of confidence, 'I tell you an open secret, but one to which
+I would never refer save with a sympathetic listener like yourself,
+when I tell you that for many years a friendship existed between myself
+and Madame Kato, political indeed, but not impersonal. Madame Kato,' he
+said, drawing his chair a little nearer and lowering his voice, 'is not
+of the impersonal type.'
+
+Eve violently rebelled from his nearness; fastidious, she loathed his
+goatish smile, his beard, his rosy lips, but she continued to smile to
+him, a man who held, perhaps, one of Julian's secrets. She was aware
+of the necessity of obtaining that secret. Of the dishonour towards
+Julian, sleeping away his hurts and his fatigue in the room above,
+she was blindly unaware. Love to her was a battle, not a fellowship.
+She must know! Already her soul, eagerly receptive and bared to the
+dreaded blow, had adopted the theory of betrayal. In the chaos of
+her resentments and suspicions, she remembered how Kato had spoken
+to her in the morning, and without further reflection branded that
+conversation as a blind. She even felt a passing admiration for the
+other woman's superior cleverness. She, Eve, had been completely taken
+in.... So she must contend, not only against the Islands, but against
+Kato also? Anguish and terror rushed over her. She scarcely knew what
+she believed or did not believe, only that her mind was one seething
+and surging tumult of mistrust and all-devouring jealousy. She was
+on the point of abandoning her temperamentally indirect methods,
+of stretching out her hands to Malteios, and crying to him for the
+agonising, the fiercely welcome truth, when he said,--
+
+'Impersonal? Do you, mademoiselle, know anything of your sex? Ah,
+charming! disturbing, precious, indispensable, even heroic, tant que
+vous voudrez, but impersonal, no! Man, yes, sometimes. Woman, never.
+Never.' He took her hand, patted it, kissed the wrist, and murmured,
+'Chère enfant, these are not ideas for your pretty head.'
+
+She knew from experience that his preoccupation with such theories, if
+no more sinister motive, would urge him towards a resumption of the
+subject, and after a pause full of cogitation he continued,--
+
+'Follow my advice, mademoiselle: never give your heart to a man
+concerned in other affairs. You may love, both of you, but you will
+strive in opposite directions. Your cousin, for example.... And yet,'
+he mused, 'you are a woman to charm the leisure of a man of action.
+The toy of a conqueror.' He laughed. 'Fortunately, conquerors are
+rare.' But she knew he hovered round the image of Julian. 'Believe me,
+leave such men to such women as Kato; they are more truly kin. You--I
+discover you--are too exorbitant; love would play too absorbing a rôle.
+You would tolerate no rival, neither a person nor a fact. Your eyes
+smoulder; I am near the truth?'
+
+'One could steal the man from his affairs,' she said almost inaudibly.
+
+'The only hope,' he replied.
+
+A long silence fell, and his evil benevolence gained on her; on her
+aroused sensitiveness his unspoken suggestions fell one by one as
+definitely as the formulated word. He watched her; she trembled, half
+compelled by his gaze. At length, under the necessity of breaking the
+silence, she said,--
+
+'Kato is not such a woman; she would resent no obstacle.'
+
+'Wiser,' he added, 'she would identify herself with it.'
+
+He began to banter horribly,--
+
+'Ah, child, Eve, child made for love, daily bless your cousinship!
+Bless its contemptuous security. Smile over the confabulations of
+Kato and your cousin. Smile to think that he, she, and the Islands
+are bound in an indissoluble triology. If there be jealousy to
+suffer, rejoice in that it falls, not to your share, but to mine, who
+am old and sufficiently philosophical. Age and experience harden,
+you know. Else, I could not see Anastasia Kato pass to another with
+so negligible a pang. Yet the imagination makes its own trouble. A
+jealous imagination.... Very vivid. Pictures of Anastasia Kato in
+your cousin's arms--ah, crude, crude, I know, but the crudity of the
+jealous imagination is unequalled. Not a detail escapes. That is why I
+say, bless your cousinship and its security.' He glanced up and met
+her tortured eyes. 'As I bless my philosophy of the inevitable,' he
+finished softly, caressing her hand which he had retained all the while.
+
+No effort at 'Impossible!' escaped her; almost from the first she had
+blindly adopted his insinuations. She even felt a perverse gratitude
+towards him, and a certain fellowship. They were allies. Her mind was
+now set solely upon one object. That self-destruction might be involved
+did not occur to her, nor would she have been deterred thereby. Like
+Samson, she had her hands upon the columns....
+
+'Madame Kato lives in this house?' asked Malteios, as one who has been
+following a train of thought.
+
+She shook her head, and he noticed that her eyes were turned slightly
+inwards, as with the effort of an immense concentration.
+
+'You have power,' he said with admiration.
+
+Bending towards her, he began to speak in a very low, rapid voice; she
+sat listening to him, by no word betraying her passionate attention,
+nodding only from time to time, and keeping her hands very still,
+linked in her lap. Only once she spoke, to ask a question, 'He would
+leave Herakleion?' and Malteios replied, 'Inevitably; the question of
+the Islands would be for ever closed for him;' then she said, producing
+the words from afar off, 'He would be free,' and Malteios, working
+in the dark, following only one of the two processes of her thought,
+reverted to Kato; his skill could have been greater in playing upon the
+instrument, but even so it sufficed, so taut was the stringing of the
+cords. When he had finished speaking, she asked him another question,
+'He could never trace the thing to me?' and he reassured her with a
+laugh so natural and contemptuous that she, in her ingenuity, was
+convinced. All the while she had kept her eyes fastened on his face, on
+his rosy lips moving amongst his beard, that she might lose no detail
+of his meaning or his instructions, and at one moment he had thought,
+'There is something terrible in this child,' but immediately he had
+crushed the qualm, thinking, 'By this recovery, if indeed it is to be,
+I am a made man,' and thanking the fate that had cast this unforeseen
+chance across his path. Finally she heard his voice change from its
+earnest undertone to its customary platitudinous flattery, and turning
+round she saw that Julian had come into the room, his eyes already bent
+with brooding scorn upon the emissary.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+She was silent that evening, so silent that Grbits, the unobservant,
+commented to Kato; but after they had dined, all four, by the fountain
+in the court, she flung aside her preoccupation, laughed and sang,
+forced Kato to the piano, and danced with reckless inspiration to
+the accompaniment of Kato's songs. Julian, leaning against a column,
+watched her bewildering gaiety. She had galvanised Grbits into
+movement--he who was usually bashful with women, especially with Eve,
+reserving his enthusiasm for Julian--and as she passed and re-passed
+before Julian in the grasp of the giant she flung at him provocative
+glances charged with a special meaning he could not interpret; in the
+turn of her dance he caught her smile and the flash of her eyes, and
+smiled in response, but his smile was grave, for his mind ran now upon
+the crisis with Herakleion, and, moreover, he suffered to see Eve so
+held by Grbits, her turbulent head below the giant's shoulder, and
+regretted that her gaiety should not be reserved for him alone. Across
+the court, through the open door of the drawing-room, he could see Kato
+at the piano, full of delight, her broad little fat hands and wrists
+racing above the keyboard, her short torso swaying to the rhythm, her
+rich voice humming, and the gold wheat ears shaking in her hair. She
+called to him, and, drawing a chair close to the piano, he sat beside
+her, but through the door he continued to stare at Eve dancing in
+the court. Kato said as she played, her perception sharpened by the
+tormented watch she kept on him,--
+
+'Eve celebrates your victory of yesterday,' to which he replied,
+deceived by the kindly sympathy in her eyes,--
+
+'Eve celebrates her own high spirits and the enjoyment of a new
+partner; my doings are of the last indifference to her.'
+
+Kato played louder; she bent towards him,--
+
+'You love her so much, Julian?'
+
+He made an unexpected answer,--
+
+'I believe in her.'
+
+Kato, a shrewd woman, observed him, thinking,--'He does not; he wants
+to convince himself.'
+
+She said aloud, conscientiously wrenching out the truth as she saw it,--
+
+'She loves you; she is capable of love such as is granted to few; that
+is the sublime in her.'
+
+He seized upon this, hungrily, missing meanwhile the sublime in the
+honesty of the singer,--
+
+'Since I am given so much, I should not exact more. The Islands.... She
+gives all to me. I ought not to force the Islands upon her.'
+
+'Grapes of thistles,' Kato said softly.
+
+'You understand,' he murmured with gratitude. 'But why should she
+hamper me, Anastasia? Are all women so irrational? What am I to
+believe?'
+
+'We are not so irrational as we appear,' Kato said, 'because our
+wildest sophistry has always its roots in the truth of instinct.'
+
+Eve was near them, crying out,--
+
+'A tarantella, Anastasia!'
+
+Julian sprang up; he caught her by the wrist,--
+
+'Gipsy!'
+
+'Come with the gipsy?' she whispered.
+
+Her scented hair blew near him, and her face was upturned, with its
+soft, sweet mouth.
+
+'Away from Aphros?' he said, losing his head.
+
+'All over the world!'
+
+He was suddenly swept away by the full force of her wild, irresponsible
+seduction.
+
+'Anywhere you choose, Eve.'
+
+She triumphed, close to him, and wanton.
+
+'You'd sacrifice Aphros to me?'
+
+'Anything you asked for,' he said desperately.
+
+She laughed, and danced away, stretching out her hands towards him,--
+
+'Join in the saraband, Julian?'
+
+
+She was alone in her room. Her emotion and excitement were so intense
+that they drained her of physical strength, leaving her faint and
+cold; her eyes closed now and then as under the pressure of pain; she
+yawned, and her breath came shortly between her lips; she sat by the
+open window, rose to move about the room, sat again, rose again, passed
+her hand constantly over her forehead, or pressed it against the base
+of her throat. The room was in darkness; there was no moon, only the
+stars hung over the black gulf of the sea. She could see the long, low
+lights of Herakleion, and the bright red light of the pier. She could
+hear distant shouting, and an occasional shot. In the room behind her,
+her bed was disordered. She wore only her Spanish shawl thrown over her
+long nightgown; her hair hung in its thick plait. Sometimes she formed,
+in a whisper, the single word, 'Julian!'
+
+She thought of Julian. Julian's rough head and angry eyes. Julian when
+he said, 'I shall break you,' like a man speaking to a wild young
+supple tree. (Her laugh of derision, and her rejoicing in her secret
+fear!) Julian in his lazy ownership of her beauty. Julian when he
+allowed her to coax him from his moroseness. Julian when she was afraid
+of him and of the storm she had herself aroused: Julian passionate....
+
+Julian whom she blindly wanted for herself alone.
+
+That desire had risen to its climax. The light of no other
+consideration filtered through into her closely shuttered heart. She
+had waited for Julian, schemed for Julian, battled for Julian; this
+was the final battle. She had not foreseen it. She had tolerated and
+even welcomed the existence of the Islands until she began to realise
+that they took part of Julian from her. Then she hated them insanely,
+implacably; including Kato, whom Julian had called their tutelary
+deity, in that hatred. Had Julian possessed a dog, she would have hated
+that too.
+
+The ambitions she had vaguely cherished for him had not survived the
+test of surrendering a portion of her own inordinate claim.
+
+She had joined battle with the Islands as with a malignant personality.
+She was fighting them for the possession of Julian as she might have
+fought a woman she thought more beautiful, more unscrupulous, more
+appealing than herself, but with very little doubt of ultimate victory.
+Julian would be hers, at last; more completely hers than he had been
+even in those ideal, uninterrupted days before Grbits and Kato came,
+the days when he forgot his obligations, almost his life's dream for
+her. Love all-eclipsing.... She stood at the window, oppressed and
+tense, but in the soft silken swaying of her loose garments against her
+limbs she still found a delicately luxurious comfort.
+
+Julian had been called away, called by the violent hammering on the
+house-door; it had then been after midnight. Two hours had passed since
+then. No one had come to her, but she had heard the tumult of many
+voices in the streets, and by leaning far out of the window she could
+see a great flare burning up from the market-place. She had thought a
+house might be on fire. She could not look back over her dispositions;
+they had been completed in a dream, as though under direct dictation.
+It did not occur to her to be concerned as to their possible
+miscarriage; she was too ignorant of such matters, too unpractical,
+to be troubled by any such anxiety. She had carried out Malteios'
+instructions with intense concentration; there her part had ended. The
+fuse which she had fired was burning.... If Julian would return, to put
+an end to her impatience!
+
+(Down in the market-place the wooden school-buildings flamed and
+crackled, redly lighting up the night, and fountains of sparks flew
+upward against the sky. The lurid market-place was thronged with sullen
+groups of islanders, under the guard of the soldiers of Herakleion. In
+the centre, on the cobbles, lay the body of Tsigaridis, on his back,
+arms flung open, still, in the enormous pool of blood that crept and
+stained the edges of his spread white fustanelle. Many of the islanders
+were not fully dressed, but had run out half-naked from their houses,
+only to be captured and disarmed by the troops; the weapons which had
+been taken from them lay heaped near the body of Tsigaridis, the light
+of the flames gleaming along the blades of knives and the barrels of
+rifles, and on the bare bronzed chests of men, and limbs streaked with
+trickles of bright red blood. They stood proudly, contemptuous of
+their wounds, arms folded, some with rough bandages about their heads.
+Panaïoannou, leaning both hands on the hilt of his sword, and grinning
+sardonically beneath his fierce moustaches, surveyed the place from the
+steps of the assembly-room).
+
+Eve in her now silent room realised that all sounds of tumult had
+died away. A shivering came over her, and, impelled by a suddenly
+understood necessity, she lit the candles on her dressing-table and,
+as the room sprang into light, began flinging the clothes out of the
+drawers into a heap in the middle of the floor. They fluttered softly
+from her hands, falling together in all their diverse loveliness of
+colour and fragility of texture. She paused to smile to them, friends
+and allies. She remembered now, with the fidelity of a child over a
+well-learnt lesson, the final words of Malteios, 'A boat ready for you
+both to-night, secret and without delay,' as earlier in the evening she
+had remembered his other words, 'Midnight, at the creek at the back of
+the islands ...'; she had acted upon her lesson mechanically, and in
+its due sequence, conscientious, trustful.
+
+She stood amongst her clothes, the long red sari which she had worn
+on the evening of Julian's first triumph drooping from her hand. They
+foamed about her feet as she stood doubtfully above them, strangely
+brilliant herself in her Spanish shawl. They lay in a pool of rich
+delicacy upon the floor. They hung over the backs of chairs, and across
+the tumbled bed. They pleased her; she thought them pretty. Stooping,
+she raised them one by one, and allowed them to drop back on to the
+heap, aware that she must pack them and must also dress herself. But
+she liked their butterfly colours and gentle rustle, and, remembering
+that Julian liked them too, smiled to them again. He found her standing
+there amongst them when after a knock at her door he came slowly into
+her room.
+
+He remained by the door for a long while looking at her in silence. She
+had made a sudden, happy movement towards him, but inexplicably had
+stopped, and with the sari still in her hand gazed back at him, waiting
+for him to speak. He looked above all, mortally tired. She discovered
+no anger in his face, not even sorrow; only that mortal weariness. She
+was touched; she to whom those gentler emotions were usually foreign.
+
+'Julian?' she said, seized with doubt.
+
+'It is all over,' he began, quite quietly, and he put his hand against
+his forehead, which was still bandaged, raising his arm with the same
+lassitude; 'they landed where young Zapantiotis was on guard, and he
+let them through; they were almost at the village before they were
+discovered. There was very little fighting. They have allowed me to
+come here. They are waiting for me downstairs. I am to leave.'
+
+'Yes,' she said, and looked down at her heap of clothes.
+
+He did not speak again, and gradually she realised the implication of
+his words.
+
+'Zapantiotis....' she said.
+
+'Yes,' he said, raising his eyes again to her face, 'yes, you see,
+Zapantiotis confessed it all to me when he saw me. He was standing
+amongst a group of prisoners, in the market-place, but when I came
+by he broke away from the guards and screamed out to me that he had
+betrayed us. Betrayed us. He said he was tempted, bribed. He said he
+would cut his own throat. But I told him not to do that.'
+
+She began to tremble, wondering how much he knew. He added, in the
+saddest voice she had ever heard,--
+
+'Zapantiotis, an islander, could not be faithful.'
+
+Then she was terrified; she did not know what was coming next, what
+would be the outcome of this quietness. She wanted to go towards him,
+but she could only remain motionless, holding the sari up to her breast
+as a means of protection.
+
+'At least,' he said, 'old Zapantiotis is dead, and will never know
+about his son. Where can one look for fidelity? Tsigaridis is dead too,
+and Grbits. I am ashamed of being alive.'
+
+She noticed then that he was disarmed.
+
+'Why do you stand over there, Julian?' she said timidly.
+
+'I wonder how much you promised Zapantiotis?' he said in a speculative
+voice; and next, stating a fact, 'You were, of course, acting on
+Malteios' suggestion.'
+
+'You know?' she breathed. She was quite sure now that he was going to
+kill her.
+
+'Zapantiotis tried to tell me that too--in a strange jumble of
+confessions. But they dragged him away before he could say more than
+your bare name. That was enough for me. So I know, Eve.'
+
+'Is that all you were going to say?'
+
+He raised his arms and let them fall.
+
+'What is there to say?'
+
+Knowing him very well, she saw that his quietness was dropping from
+him; she was aware of it perhaps before he was aware of it himself.
+His eyes were losing their dead apathy, and were travelling round the
+room; they rested on the heap of clothes, on her own drawing of himself
+hanging on the wall, on the disordered bed. They flamed suddenly, and
+he made a step towards her.
+
+'Why? why? why?' he cried out with the utmost anguish and vehemence,
+but stopped himself, and stood with clenched fists. She shrank away.
+'All gone--in an hour!' he said, and striding towards her he stood
+over her, shaken with a tempest of passion. She shrank farther from
+him, retreating against the wall, but first she stooped and gathered
+her clothes around her again, pressing her back against the wall and
+cowering with the clothes as a rampart round her feet. But as yet full
+realisation was denied her; she knew that he was angry, she thought
+indeed that he might kill her, but to other thoughts of finality she
+was, in all innocence, a stranger.
+
+He spoke incoherently, saying, 'All gone! All gone!' in accents of
+blind pain, and once he said, 'I thought you loved me,' putting his
+hands to his head as though walls were crumbling. He made no further
+reproach, save to repeat, 'I thought the men were faithful, and that
+you loved me,' and all the while he trembled with the effort of his
+self-control, and his twitching hands reached out towards her once
+or twice, but he forced them back. She thought, 'How angry he is! but
+he will forget, and I shall make up to him for what he has lost.' So,
+between them, they remained almost silent, breathing hard, and staring
+at one another.
+
+'Come, put up your clothes quickly,' he said at last, pointing; 'they
+want us off the island, and if we do not go of our own accord they will
+tie our hands and feet and carry us to the boat. Let us spare ourselves
+that ludicrous scene. We can marry in Athens to-morrow.'
+
+'Marry?' she repeated.
+
+'Naturally. What else did you suppose? That I should leave you? now?
+Put up your clothes. Shall I help you? Come!'
+
+'But--marry, Julian?'
+
+'Clearly: marry,' he replied in a harsh voice, and added, 'Let us go.
+For God's sake, let us go now! I feel stunned, I mustn't begin to
+think. Let us go.' He urged her towards the door.
+
+'But we had nothing to do with marriage,' she whispered.
+
+He cried, so loudly and so bitterly that she was startled,--
+
+'No, we had to do only with love--love and rebellion! And both have
+failed me. Now, instead of love, we must have marriage; and instead of
+rebellion, law. I shall help on authority, instead of opposing it.' He
+broke down and buried his face in his hands.
+
+'You no longer love me,' she said slowly, and her eyes narrowed and
+turned slightly inwards in the way Malteios had noticed. 'Then the
+Islands....'
+
+He pressed both hands against his temples and screamed like one
+possessed, 'But they were all in all in all! It isn't the thing, it's
+the soul behind the thing. In robbing me of them you've robbed me of
+more than them--you've robbed me of all the meaning that lay behind
+them.' He retained just sufficient self-possession to realise this. 'I
+knew you were hostile, how could I fail to know it? but I persuaded
+myself that you were part of Aphros, part of all my beliefs, even
+something beyond all my beliefs. I loved you, so you and they had to
+be reconciled. I reconciled you in secret. I gave up mentioning the
+Islands to you because it stabbed me to see your indifference. It
+destroyed the illusion I was cherishing. So I built up fresh, separate
+illusions about you. I have been living on illusions, now I have
+nothing left but facts. I owe this to you, to you, to you!'
+
+'You no longer love me,' she said again. She could think of nothing
+else. She had not listened to his bitter and broken phrases. 'You no
+longer love me, Julian.'
+
+'I was so determined that I would be deceived by no woman, and like
+every one else I have fallen into the trap. Because you were you, I
+ceased to be on my guard. Oh, you never pretended to care for Aphros;
+I grant you that honesty; but I wanted to delude myself and so I was
+deluded. I told myself marvellous tales of your rarity; I thought you
+were above even Aphros. I am punished for my weakness in bringing you
+here. Why hadn't I the strength to remain solitary? I reproach myself;
+I had not the right to expose my Islands to such a danger. But how
+could I have known? how could I have known?'
+
+'Clearly you no longer love me,' she said for the third time.
+
+'Zapantiotis sold his soul for money--was it money you promised him?'
+he went on. 'So easily--just for a little money! His soul, and all of
+us, for money. Money, father's god; he's a wise man, father, to serve
+the only remunerative god. Was it money you promised Zapantiotis?' he
+shouted at her, seizing her by the arm, 'or was he, perhaps, like
+Paul, in love with you? Did you perhaps promise him yourself? How am
+I to know? There may still be depths in you--you woman--that I know
+nothing about. Did you give yourself to Zapantiotis? Or is he coming
+to-night for his reward? Did you mean to ship me off to Athens, you and
+your accomplices, while you waited here in this room--_our_ room--for
+your lover?'
+
+'Julian!' she cried--he had forced her on to her knees--'you are saying
+monstrous things.'
+
+'You drive me to them,' he replied; 'when I think that while the troops
+were landing you lay in my arms, here, knowing all the while that you
+had betrayed me--I could believe anything of you. Monstrous things!
+Do you know what monstrous things I am thinking? That you shall not
+belong to Zapantiotis, but to me. Yes, to me. You destroy love, but
+desire revives, without love; horrible, but sufficient. That's what I
+am thinking. I dare say I could kiss you still, and forget. Come!'
+
+He was beside himself.
+
+'Your accusations are so outrageous,' she said, half-fainting, 'your
+suggestions are obscene, Julian; I would rather you killed me at once.'
+
+'Then answer me about Zapantiotis. How am I to know?' he repeated,
+already slightly ashamed of his outburst, 'I'm readjusting my ideas.
+Tell me the truth; I scarcely care.'
+
+'Believe what you choose,' she replied, although he still held her,
+terrified, on the ground at his feet, 'I have more pride than you
+credit me with--too much to answer you.'
+
+'It was money,' he said after a pause, releasing her. She stood up;
+reaction overcame her, and she wept.
+
+'Julian, that you should believe that of me! You cut me to the
+quick--and I gave myself to you with such pride and gladness' she
+added almost inaudibly.
+
+'Forgive me; I suppose you, also, have your own moral code; I have
+speculated sufficiently about it, Heaven knows, but that means very
+little to me now,' he said, more quietly, and with even a spark of
+detached interest and curiosity. But he did not pursue the subject.
+'What do you want done with your clothes? We have wasted quite enough
+time.'
+
+'You want me to come with you?'
+
+'You sound incredulous; why?'
+
+'I know you have ceased to love me. You spoke of marrying me. Your
+love must have been a poor flimsy thing, to topple over as it has
+toppled! Mine is more tenacious, alas. It would not depend on outside
+happenings.'
+
+'How dare you accuse me?' he said,' You destroy and take from me all
+that I care for' ('Yes,' she interpolated, as much bitterness in her
+voice as in his own--but all the time they were talking against one
+another--'you cared for everything but me'), 'then you brand my love
+for you as a poor flimsy thing. If you have killed it, you have done so
+by taking away the one thing....'
+
+'That you cared for more than for me,' she completed.
+
+'With which I would have associated you. You yourself made that
+association impossible. You hated the things I loved. Now you've killed
+those things, and my love for you with them. You've killed everything I
+cherished and possessed.'
+
+'Dead? Irretrievably?' she whispered.
+
+'Dead.'
+
+He saw her widened and swimming eyes, and added, too much stunned for
+personal malice, yet angry because of the pain he was suffering,--
+
+'You shall never be jealous of me again. I think I've loved all women,
+loving you--gone through the whole of love, and now washed my hands
+of it; I've tested and plumbed your vanity, your hideous egotism'--she
+was crying like a child, unreservedly, her face hidden against her
+arm--'your lack of breadth in everything that was not love.'
+
+As he spoke, she raised her face and he saw light breaking on
+her--although it was not, and never would be, precisely the light he
+desired. It was illumination and horror; agonised horror, incredulous
+dismay. Her eyes were streaming with tears, but they searched him
+imploringly, despairingly, as in a new voice she said,--
+
+'I've hurt you, Julian ... how I've hurt you! Hurt you! I would have
+died for you. Can't I put it right? oh, tell me! Will you kill me?' and
+she put her hand up to her throat, offering it. 'Julian, I've hurt you
+... my own, my Julian. What have I done? What madness made me do it?
+Oh, what is there now for me to do? only tell me; I do beseech you only
+to tell me. Shall I go--to whom?--to Malteios? I understand nothing;
+you must tell me. I wanted you so greedily; you must believe that.
+Anything, anything you want me to do.... It wasn't sufficient, to love
+you, to want you; I gave you all I had, but it wasn't sufficient. I
+loved you wrongly, I suppose; but I loved you, I loved you!'
+
+He had been angry, but now he was seized with a strange pity; pity of
+her childish bewilderment: the thing that she had perpetrated was a
+thing she could not understand. She would never fully understand.... He
+looked at her as she stood crying, and remembered her other aspects, in
+the flood-time of her joy, careless, radiant, irresponsible; they had
+shared hours of illimitable happiness.
+
+'Eve! Eve!' he cried, and through the wrenching despair of his cry he
+heard the funeral note, the tear of cleavage like the downfall of a
+tree.
+
+He took her in his arms and made her sit upon the bed; she continued
+to weep, and he sat beside her, stroking her hair. He used terms of
+endearment towards her, such as he had never used in the whole course
+of their passionate union, 'Eve, my little Eve'; and he kept on
+repeating, 'my little Eve,' and pressing her head against his shoulder.
+
+They sat together like two children. Presently she looked up, pushing
+back her hair with a gesture he knew well.
+
+'We both lose the thing we cared most for upon earth, Julian: you lose
+the Islands, and I lose you.'
+
+She stood up, and gazed out of the window towards Herakleion. She stood
+there for some time without speaking, and a fatal clearness spread over
+her mind, leaving her quite strong, quite resolute, and coldly armoured
+against every shaft of hope.
+
+'You want me to marry you,' she said at length.
+
+'You must marry me in Athens to-morrow, if possible, and as soon as we
+are married we can go to England.'
+
+'I utterly refuse,' she said, turning round towards him.
+
+He stared at her; she looked frail and tired, and with one small white
+hand held together the edges of her Spanish shawl. She was no longer
+crying.
+
+'Do you suppose,' she went on, 'that not content with having ruined
+the beginning of your life for you--I realise it now, you see--I shall
+ruin the rest of it as well? You may believe me or not, I speak the
+truth like a dying person when I tell you I love you to the point of
+sin; yes, it's a sin to love as I love you. It's blind, it's criminal.
+It's my curse, the curse of Eve, to love so well that one loves badly.
+I didn't see. I wanted you too blindly. Even now I scarcely understand
+how you can have ceased to love me.--No, don't speak. I do understand
+it--in a way; and yet I don't understand it. I don't understand that
+an idea can be dearer to one than the person one loves.... I don't
+understand responsibilities; when you've talked about responsibilities
+I've sometimes felt that I was made of other elements than you.... But
+you're a man, and I'm a woman; that's the rift. Perhaps it's a rift
+that can never be bridged. Never mind that. Julian, you must find some
+more civilised woman than myself; find a woman who will be a friend,
+not an enemy. Love makes me into an enemy, you see. Find somebody more
+tolerant, more unselfish. More maternal. Yes, that's it,' she said,
+illuminated, 'more maternal; I'm only a lover, not a mother. You told
+me once that I was of the sort that sapped and destroyed. I'll admit
+that, and let you go. You mustn't waste yourself on me. But, oh,
+Julian,' she said, coming close to him, 'if I give you up--because
+in giving you up I utterly break myself--grant me one justice: never
+doubt that I loved you. Promise me, Julian. I shan't love again. But
+don't doubt that I loved you; don't argue to yourself, "She broke my
+illusions, therefore she never loved me," let me make amends for what I
+did, by sending you away now without me.'
+
+'I was angry; I was lying; I wanted to hurt you as you had hurt me,' he
+said desperately. 'How can I tell what I have been saying to you? I've
+been dazed, struck.... It's untrue that I no longer love you. I love
+you, in spite, in spite.... Love can't die in an hour.'
+
+'Bless you,' she said, putting her hand for a moment on his head, 'but
+you can't deceive me. Oh,' she hurried on, 'you might deceive yourself;
+you might persuade yourself that you still loved me and wanted me to
+go with you; but I know better. I'm not for you. I'm not for your
+happiness, or for any man's happiness. You've said it yourself: I am
+different. I let you go because you are strong and useful--oh, yes,
+useful! so disinterested and strong, all that I am not--too good for
+me to spoil. You have nothing in common with me. Who has? I think I
+haven't any kindred. I love you! I love you better than myself!'
+
+He stood up; he stammered in his terror and earnestness, but she only
+shook her head.
+
+'No, Julian.'
+
+'You're too strong,' he cried, 'you little weak thing; stronger than I.'
+
+She smiled; he was unaware of the very small reserve of her strength.
+
+'Stronger than you,' she repeated; 'yes.'
+
+Again he implored her to go with him; he even threatened her, but she
+continued to shake her head and to say in a faint and tortured voice,--
+
+'Go now, Julian; go, my darling; go now, Julian.'
+
+'With you, or not at all.' He was at last seriously afraid that she
+meant what she said,
+
+'Without me.'
+
+'Eve, we were so happy. Remember! Only come; we shall be as happy
+again.'
+
+'You mustn't tempt me; it's cruel,' she said, shivering. 'I'm human.'
+
+'But I love you!' he said. He seized her hands, and tried to drag her
+towards the door.
+
+'No,' she answered, putting him gently away from her. 'Don't tempt me,
+Julian, don't; let me make amends in my own way.'
+
+Her gentleness and dignity were such that he now felt reproved, and,
+dimly, that the wrong done was by him towards her, not by her towards
+him.
+
+'You are too strong--magnificent, and heartbreaking,' he said in
+despair.
+
+'As strong as a rock,' she replied, looking straight at him and
+thinking that at any moment she must fall. But still she forced her
+lips to a smile of finality.
+
+'Think better of it,' he was beginning, when they heard a stir of
+commotion in the court below.
+
+'They are coming for you!' she cried out in sudden panic. 'Go; I can't
+face any one just now....'
+
+He opened the door on to the landing.
+
+'Kato!' he said, falling back. Eve heard the note of fresh anguish in
+his voice.
+
+Kato came in; even in that hour of horror they saw that she had merely
+dragged a quilt round her shoulders, and that her hair was down her
+back. In this guise her appearance was indescribably grotesque.
+
+'Defeated, defeated,' she said in lost tones to Julian. She did not see
+that they had both involuntarily recoiled before her; she was beyond
+such considerations.
+
+'Anastasia,' he said, taking her by the arm and shaking her slightly to
+recall her from her bemusement, 'here is something more urgent--thank
+God, you will be my ally--Eve must leave Aphros with me; tell her
+so, tell her so; she refuses.' He shook her more violently with the
+emphasis of his words.
+
+'If he wants you....' Kato said, looking at Eve, who had retreated into
+the shadows and stood there, half fainting, supporting herself against
+the back of a chair. 'If he wants you....' she repeated, in a stupid
+voice, but her mind was far away.
+
+'You don't understand, Anastasia,' Eve answered; 'it was I that
+betrayed him.' Again she thought she must fall.
+
+'She is lying!' cried Julian.
+
+'No,' said Eve. She and Kato stared at one another, so preposterously
+different, yet with currents of truth rushing between them.
+
+'You!' Kato said at last, awaking.
+
+'I am sending him away,' said Eve, speaking as before to the other
+woman.
+
+'You!' said Kato again. She turned wildly to Julian. 'Why didn't you
+trust yourself to me, Julian, my beloved?' she cried; 'I wouldn't have
+treated you so, Julian; why didn't you trust yourself to me?' She
+pointed at Eve, silent and brilliant in her coloured shawl; then, her
+glance falling upon her own person, so sordid, so unkempt, she gave a
+dreadful cry and looked around as though seeking for escape. The other
+two both turned their heads away; to look at Kato in that moment was
+more than they could bear.
+
+Presently they heard her speaking again; her self-abandonment had been
+brief; she had mastered herself, and was making it a point of honour to
+speak with calmness.
+
+'Julian, the officers have orders that you must leave the island before
+dawn; if you do not go to them, they will fetch you here. They are
+waiting below in the courtyard now. Eve,'--her face altered,--'Eve is
+right: if she has indeed done as she says, she cannot go with you. She
+is right; she is more right, probably, than she has ever been in her
+life before or ever will be again. Come, now; I will go with you.'
+
+'Stay with Eve, if I go,' he said.
+
+'Impossible!' replied Kato, instantly hardening, and casting upon Eve a
+look of hatred and scorn.
+
+'How cruel you are, Anastasia!' said Julian, making a movement of pity
+towards Eve.
+
+'Take him away, Anastasia,' Eve murmured, shrinking from him.
+
+'See, she understands me better than you do, and understands herself
+better too,' said Kato, in a tone of cruel triumph; 'if you do not
+come, Julian, I shall send up the officers.' As she spoke she went out
+of the room, her quilt trailing, and her heel-less slippers clacking
+on the boards.
+
+'Eve, for the last time....'
+
+A cry was wrenched from her,--
+
+'Go! if you pity me!'
+
+'I shall come back.'
+
+'Oh, no, no!' she replied, 'you'll never come back. One doesn't live
+through such things twice.' She shook her head like a tortured animal
+that seeks to escape from pain. He gave an exclamation of despair, and,
+after one wild gesture towards her, which she weakly repudiated, he
+followed Kato. Eve heard their steps upon the stairs, then crossing the
+courtyard, and the tramp of soldiers; the house-door crashed massively.
+She stooped very slowly and mechanically, and began to pick up the gay
+and fragile tissue of her clothes.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+She laid them all in orderly fashion across the bed, smoothing out the
+folds with a care that was strangely opposed to her usual impatience.
+Then she stood for some time drawing the thin silk of the sari through
+her fingers and listening for sounds in the house; there were none. The
+silence impressed her with the fact that she was alone.
+
+'Gone!' she thought, but she made no movement.
+
+Her eyes narrowed and her mouth became contracted with pain.
+
+'Julian ...' she murmured, and, finding some slippers, she thrust her
+bare feet into them with sudden haste and threw the corner of her shawl
+over her shoulder.
+
+She moved now with feverish speed; any one seeing her face would have
+exclaimed that she was not in conscious possession of her will, but
+would have shrunk before the force of her determination. She opened the
+door upon the dark staircase and went rapidly down; the courtyard was
+lit by a torch the soldiers had left stuck and flaring in a bracket.
+She had some trouble with the door, tearing her hands and breaking her
+nails upon the great latch, but she felt nothing, dragged it open, and
+found herself in the street. At the end of the street she could see the
+glare from the burning buildings of the market-place, and could hear
+the shout of military orders.
+
+She knew she must take the opposite road; Malteios had told her that.
+'Go by the mule-path over the hill; it will lead you straight to the
+creek where the boat will be waiting,' he had said. 'The boat for
+Julian and me,' she kept muttering to herself as she speeded up the
+path stumbling over the shallow steps and bruising her feet upon the
+cobbles. It was very dark. Once or twice as she put out her hand to
+save herself from falling she encountered only a prickly bush of aloe
+or gorse, and the pain stung her, causing a momentary relief.
+
+'I mustn't hurry too much,' she said to herself, 'I mustn't arrive at
+the creek before they have pushed off the boat. I mustn't call out....'
+
+She tried to compare her pace with that of Julian, Kato, and the
+officers, and ended by sitting down for a few minutes at the highest
+point of the path, where it had climbed over the shoulder of the
+island, and was about to curve down upon the other side. From this
+small height, under the magnificent vault studded with stars, she could
+hear the sigh of the sea and feel the slight breeze ruffling her hair.
+'Without Julian, without Julian--no, never,' she said to herself, and
+that one thought revolved in her brain. 'I'm alone,' she thought,
+'I've always been alone.... I'm an outcast, I don't belong here....'
+She did not really know what she meant by this, but she repeated it
+with a blind conviction, and a terrible loneliness overcame her.
+'Oh, stars!' she said aloud, putting up her hands to them, and again
+she did not know what she meant, either by the words or the gesture.
+Then she realised that it was dark, and standing up she thought, 'I'm
+frightened,' but there was no reply to the appeal for Julian that
+followed immediately upon the thought. She clasped her shawl round
+her, and tried to stare through the night; then she thought 'People on
+the edge of death have no need to be frightened,' but for all that she
+continued to look fearfully about her, to listen for sounds, and to
+wish that Julian would come to take care of her.
+
+She went down the opposite side of the hill less rapidly than she had
+come up. She knew she must not overtake Julian and his escort. She
+did not really know why she had chosen to follow them, when any other
+part of the coast would have been equally suitable for what she had
+determined to do. But she kept thinking, as though it brought some
+consolation, 'He passed along this path five--ten--minutes ago; he is
+there somewhere, not far in front of me.' And she remembered how he had
+begged her to go with him. ' ... But I couldn't have gone!' she cried,
+half in apology to the dazzling happiness she had renounced, 'I was a
+curse to him--to everything I touch. I could never have controlled my
+jealousy, my exorbitance.... He asked me to go, to be with him always,'
+she thought, sobbing and hurrying on; and she sobbed his name, like a
+child, 'Julian! Julian! Julian!'
+
+Presently the path ceased to lead downhill and became flat, running
+along the top of the rocky cliff about twenty feet above the sea. She
+moved more cautiously, knowing that it would bring her to the little
+creek where the boat was to be waiting; as she moved she blundered
+constantly against boulders, for the path was winding and in the
+starlight very difficult to follow. She was still fighting with
+herself, 'No, I could not go with him; I am not fit.... I don't belong
+here....' that reiterated cry. 'But without him--no, no, no! This is
+quite simple. Will he think me bad? I hope not; I shall have done what
+I could....' Her complexity had entirely deserted her, and she thought
+in broad, childish lines. 'Poor Eve!' she thought suddenly, viewing
+herself as a separate person, 'she was very young' (in her eyes youth
+amounted to a moral virtue), 'Julian, Julian, be a little sorry for
+her,--I was cursed, I was surely cursed,' she added, and at that moment
+she found herself just above the creek.
+
+The path descended to it in rough steps, and with a beating heart
+she crept down, helping herself by her hands, until she stood upon
+the sand, hidden in the shadow of a boulder. The shadows were very
+black and hunched, like the shadows of great beasts. She listened,
+the softness of her limbs pressed against the harshness of the rocks.
+She heard faint voices, and, creeping forward, still keeping in the
+shadows, she made out the shape of a rowing-boat filled with men about
+twenty yards from the shore.
+
+'Kato has gone with him!' was her first idea, and at that all her
+jealousy flamed again--the jealousy that, at the bottom of her heart,
+she knew was groundless, but could not keep in check. Anger revived
+her--'Am I to waste myself on him?' she thought, but immediately she
+remembered the blank that that one word 'Never!' could conjure up, and
+her purpose became fixed again. 'Not life without him,' she thought
+firmly and unchangeably, and moved forward until her feet were covered
+by the thin waves lapping the sandy edge of the creek. She had thrown
+off her shoes, standing barefoot on the soft wet sand.
+
+Here she paused to allow the boat to draw farther away. She knew that
+she would cry out, however strong her will, and she must guard against
+all chance of rescue. She waited at the edge of the creek, shivering,
+and drawing her silk garments about her, and forcing herself to endure
+the cold horror of the water washing round her ankles. How immense was
+the night, how immense the sea!--The oars in the boat dipped regularly;
+by now it was almost undistinguishable in the darkness.
+
+'What must I do?' she thought wildly, knowing the moment had come.
+'I must run out as far as I can....' She sent an unuttered cry of
+'Julian!' after the boat, and plunged forward; the coldness of the
+water stopped her as it reached her waist, and the long silk folds
+became entangled around her limbs, but she recovered herself and fought
+her way forward. Instinctively she kept her hands pressed against her
+mouth and nostrils, and her staring eyes tried to fathom this cruelly
+deliberate death. Then the shelving coast failed her beneath her feet;
+she had lost the shallows and was taken by the swell and rhythm of the
+deep. A thought flashed through her brain, 'This is where the water
+ceases to be green and becomes blue'; then in her terror she lost all
+self-control and tried to scream; it was incredible that Julian, who
+was so near at hand, should not hear and come to save her; she felt
+herself tiny and helpless in that great surge of water; even as she
+tried to scream she was carried forward and under, in spite of her wild
+terrified battle against the sea, beneath the profound serenity of the
+night that witnessed and received her expiation.
+
+
+GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Challenge, by Vita Sackville-West
+
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