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.