'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.