That dumb frenzy outworn, they attained, nevertheless, to a nearer

comradeship, the days, perhaps, of their greatest happiness, when with

her reckless fancy she charmed his mind; he thought of her then as a

vagrant nymph, straying from land to land, from age to age, decking

her spirit with any flower she met growing by the way, chastely

concerned with the quest of beauty, strangely childlike always, pure

as the fiercest, tallest flame. He could not but bow to that audacity,

that elemental purity, of spirit. Untainted by worldliness, greed,

or malice.... The facts of her life became clearer to him, startling

in their consistency. He could not associate her with possessions,

or a fixed abode, she who was free and elusive as a swallow, to whom

the slightest responsibility was an intolerable and inadmissible yoke

from beneath which, without commotion but also without compunction,

she slipped. On no material point could she be touched--save her own

personal luxury, and that seemed to grow with her, as innocent of

effort as the colour on a flower; she kindled only in response to

music, poetry, love, or laughter, but then with what a kindling! she

flamed, she glowed; she ranged over spacious and fabulous realms; her

feet never touched earth, they were sandal-shod and carried her in

the clean path of breezes, and towards the sun, exalted and ecstatic,

breathing as the common air the rarity of the upper spaces. At such

times she seemed a creature blown from legend, deriving from no

parentage; single, individual, and lawless.

He found that he had come gradually to regard her with a superstitious

reverence.

He evolved a theory, constructed around her, dim and nebulous, yet

persistent; perforce nebulous, since he was dealing with a matter too

fine, too subtle, too unexplored, to lend itself to the gross imperfect

imprisonment of words. He never spoke of it, even to her, but staring

at her sometimes with a reeling head he felt himself transported, by

her medium, beyond the matter-of-fact veils that shroud the limit of

human vision. He felt illuminated, on the verge of a new truth; as

though by stretching out his hand he might touch something no hand of

man had ever touched before, something of unimaginable consistency,

neither matter nor the negation of matter; as though he might brush the

wings of truth, handle the very substance of a thought....

He felt at these times like a man who passes through a genuine

psychical experience. Yes, it was as definite as that; he had the

glimpse of a possible revelation. He returned from his vision--call

it what he would, vision would serve as well as any other word--he

returned with that sense of benefit by which alone such an

excursion--or was it incursion?--could be justified. He brought back a

benefit. He had beheld, as in a distant prospect, a novel balance and

proportion of certain values. That alone would have left him enriched

for ever.

Practical as he could be, theories and explorations were yet dear

to him: he was an inquisitive adventurer of the mind no less than

an active adventurer of the world. He sought eagerly for underlying

truths. His apparently inactive moods were more accurately his fallow

moods. His thought was as an ardent plough, turning and shifting the

loam of his mind. Yet he would not allow his fancy to outrun his

conviction; if fancy at any moment seemed to lead, he checked it

until more lumbering conviction could catch up. They must travel ever

abreast, whip and reins alike in his control.

Youth--were the years of youth the intuitive years of perception? Were

the most radiant moments the moments in which one stepped farthest

from the ordered acceptance of the world? Moments of danger, moments

of inspiration, moments of self-sacrifice, moments of perceiving

beauty, moments of love, all the drunken moments! Eve moved, he knew,

permanently upon that plane. She led an exalted, high-keyed inner life.

The normal mood to her was the mood of a sensitive person caught at the

highest pitch of sensibility. Was she unsuited to the world and to the

necessities of the world because she belonged, not here, but to another

sphere apprehended by man only in those rare, keen moments that Julian

called the drunken moments? apprehended by poet or artist--the elect,

the aristocracy, the true path-finders among the race of man!--in

moments when sobriety left them and they passed beyond?

Was she to blame for her cruelty, her selfishness, her disregard for

truth? was she, not evil, but only alien? to be forgiven all for the

sake of the rarer, more distant flame? Was the standard of cardinal

virtues set by the world the true, the ultimate standard? Was it

possible that Eve made part of a limited brotherhood? was indeed a

citizen of some advanced state of such perfection that this world's

measures and ideals were left behind and meaningless? meaningless

because unnecessary in such a realm of serenity?

Aphros, then--the liberty of Aphros--and Aphros meant to him far more

than merely Aphros--that was surely a lovely and desirable thing, a

worthy aim, a high beacon? If Eve cared nothing for the liberty of

Aphros, was it because in _her_ world (he was by now convinced of its

existence) there was no longer any necessity to trouble over such aims,

liberty being as natural and unmeditated as the air in the nostrils?

(Not that this would ever turn him from his devotion; at most he could

look upon Aphros as a stage upon the journey towards that higher

aim--the stage to which he and his like, who were nearly of the elect,

yet not of them, might aspire. And if the day should ever come when

disillusion drove him down; when, far from becoming a citizen of Eve's

far sphere, he should cease to be a citizen even of Aphros and should

become a citizen merely of the world, no longer young, no longer

blinded by ideals, no longer nearly a poet, but merely a grown, sober

man--then he would still keep Aphros as a bright memory of what might

have been, of the best he had grasped, the possibility which in the

days of youth had not seemed too extravagantly unattainable.)

But in order to keep his hold upon this world of Eve's, which in his

inner consciousness he already recognised as the most valuable rift

of insight ever vouchsafed to him, it was necessary that he should

revolutionise every ancient gospel and reputable creed. The worth

of Eve was to him an article of faith. His intimacy with her was a

privilege infinitely beyond the ordinary privilege of love. Whatever

she might do, whatever crime she might commit, whatever baseness she

might perpetrate, her ultimate worth, the core, the kernel, would

remain to him unsullied and inviolate. This he knew blindly, seeing it

as the mystic sees God; and knew it the more profoundly that he could

have defended it with no argument of reason.

What then? the poet, the creator, the woman, the mystic, the man

skirting the fringes of death--were they kin with one another and free

of some realm unknown, towards which all, consciously or unconsciously,

were journeying? Where the extremes of passion (he did not mean

only the passion of love), of exaltation, of danger, of courage and

vision--where all these extremes met--was it there, the great crossways

where the moral ended, and the divine began? Was it for Eve supremely,

and to a certain extent for all women and artists--the visionaries, the

lovely, the graceful, the irresponsible, the useless!--was it reserved

for them to show the beginning of the road?

Youth! youth and illusion! to love Eve and Aphros! when those two

slipped from him he would return sobered to the path designated by the

sign-posts and milestones of man, hoping no more than to keep as a

gleam within him the light glowing in the sky above that unattainable

but remembered city.

He returned to earth; Eve was kneading and tormenting a lump of putty,

and singing to herself meanwhile; he watched her delicate, able hands,

took one of them, and held it up between his eyes and the sun.

'Your fingers are transparent, they're like cornelian against the

light,' he said.

She left her hand within his grasp, and smiled down at him.

'How you play with me, Julian,' she said idly.

'You're such a delicious toy.'

'Only a toy?'

He remembered the intricate, untranslatable thoughts he had been

thinking about her five minutes earlier, and began to laugh to himself.

'A great deal more than a toy. Once I thought of you only as a child, a

helpless, irritating, adorable child, always looking for trouble, and

turning to me for help when the trouble came.'

'And then?'

'Then you made me think of you as a woman,' he replied gravely.

'You seemed to hesitate a good deal before deciding to think of me as

that.'

'Yes, I tried to judge our position by ordinary codes; you must have

thought me ridiculous.'

'I did, darling.' Her mouth twisted drolly as she said it.

'I wonder now how I could have insulted you by applying them to you,'

he said with real wonderment; everything seemed so clear and obvious to

him now.

'Why, how do you think of me now?'

'Oh, God knows!' he replied. 'I've called you changeling sometimes,

haven't I?' He decided to question her. 'Tell me, Eve, how do you

explain your difference? you outrage every accepted code, you see, and

yet one retains one's belief in you. Is one simply deluded by your

charm? or is there a deeper truth? can you explain?' He had spoken in a

bantering tone, but he knew that he was trying an experiment of great

import to him.

'I don't think I'm different, Julian; I think I feel things strongly,

no more.'

'Or else you don't feel them at all.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well--Paul,' he said reluctantly.

'You have never got over that, have you?'

'Exactly!' he exclaimed. 'It seems to you extraordinary that I should

still remember Paul, or that his death should have made any impression

upon me. I ought to hate you for your indifference. Sometimes I have

come very near to hating you. But now--perhaps my mind is getting

broader--I blame you for nothing because I believe you are simply not

capable of understanding. But evidently you can't explain yourself. I

love you!' he said, 'I love you!'

He knew that her own inability to explain herself--her

unself-consciousness--had done much to strengthen his new theories. The

flower does not know why or how it blossoms....

On the day that he told her, with many misgivings, that Kato was coming

to Aphros, she uttered no word of anger, but wept despairingly, at

first without speaking, then with short, reiterated sentences that

wrung his heart for all their unreason,--

'We were alone. I was happy as never in my life. I had you utterly. We

were alone. Alone! Alone!'

'We will tell Kato the truth,' he soothed her; 'she will leave us alone

still.'

But it was not in her nature to cling to straws of comfort. For her,

the sunshine had been unutterably radiant; and for her it was now

proportionately blackened out.

'We were alone,' she repeated, shaking her head with unspeakable

mournfulness, the tears running between her fingers.

For the first time he spoke to her with a moved, a tender compassion,

full of reverence.

'Your joy ... your sorrow ... equally overwhelming and tempestuous. How

you feel--you tragic child! Yesterday you laughed and made yourself a

crown of myrtle.'

She refused to accompany him when he went to meet Kato, who, after a

devious journey from Athens, was to land at the rear of the island

away from the curiosity of Herakleion. She remained in the cool house,

sunk in idleness, her pen and pencil alike neglected. She thought

only of Julian, absorbingly, concentratedly. Her past life appeared to

her, when she thought of it at all, merely as a period in which Julian

had not loved her, a period of waiting, of expectancy, of anguish

sometimes, of incredible reticence supported only by the certainty

which had been her faith and her inspiration....

To her surprise, he returned, not only with Kato but with Grbits.

Every word and gesture of the giant demonstrated his enormous pleasure.

His oddly Mongolian face wore a perpetual grin of triumphant truancy.

His good-humour was not to be withstood. He wrung Eve's hands,

inarticulate with delight. Kato, her head covered with a spangled

veil--Julian had never seen her in a hat--stood by, looking on, her

hands on her hips, as though Grbits were her exhibit. Her little eyes

sparkled with mischief.

'He is no longer an officer in the Serbian army,' she said at last,

'only a free-lance, at Julian's disposal. Is it not magnificent?

He has sent in his resignation. His career is ruined. The military

representative of Serbia in Herakleion!'

'A free-lance,' Grbits repeated, beaming down at Julian. (It annoyed

Eve that he should be so much the taller of the two).

'We sent you no word, not to lessen your surprise,' said Kato.

They stood, all four, in the courtyard by the fountain.

'I told you on the day of the elections that when you needed me I

should come,' Grbits continued, his grin widening.

'Of course, you are a supreme fool, Grbits,' said Kato to him.

'Yes,' he replied, 'thank Heaven for it.'

'In Athens the sympathy is all with the Islands,' said Kato. She

had taken off her veil, and they could see that she wore the gold

wheat-ears in her hair. Her arms were, as usual, covered with bangles,

nor had she indeed made any concessions to the necessities of

travelling, save that on her feet, instead of her habitual square-toed

slippers, she wore long, hideous, heelless, elastic-sided boots.

Eve reflected that she had grown fatter and more stumpy, but she

was, as ever, eager, kindly, enthusiastic, vital; they brought with

them a breath of confidence and efficiency, those disproportionately

assorted travelling companions; Julian felt a slight shame that he had

neglected the Islands for Eve; and Eve stood by, listening to their

respective recitals, to Grbits' startling explosions of laughter, and

Kato's exuberant joy, tempered with wisdom. They both talked at once,

voluble and excited; the wheat-ears trembled in Kato's hair, Grbits'

white regular teeth flashed in his broad face, and Julian, a little

bewildered, turned from one to the other with his unsmiling gravity.

'I mistrust the forbearance of Herakleion,' Kato said, a great

weight of meditated action pressing on behind her words; 'a month's

forbearance! In Athens innumerable rumours were current: of armed ships

purchased from the Turks, even of a gun mounted on Mylassa--but that I

do not believe. They have given you, you say, a month in which to come

to your senses. But they are giving themselves also a month in which to

prepare their attack,' and she plied him with practical questions that

demonstrated her clear familiarity with detail and tactic, while Grbits

contributed nothing but the cavernous laugh and ejaculations of his own

unquestioning optimism.

V

The second attack on Aphros was delivered within a week of their

arrival.

Eve and Kato, refusing the retreat in the heart of the island, spent

the morning together in the Davenant house. In the distance the

noise of the fighting alternately increased and waned; now crackling

sharply, as it seemed, from all parts of the sea, now dropping into a

disquieting silence. At such times Eve looked mutely at the singer.

Kato gave her no comfort, but, shaking her head and shrugging her

shoulders, expressed only her ignorance. She found that she could speak

to Julian sympathetically of Eve, but not to Eve sympathetically of

Julian. She had made the attempt, but after the pang of its effort,

had renounced it. Their hostility smouldered dully under the shelter

of their former friendship. Now, alone in the house, they might indeed

have remained for the most time apart in separate rooms, but the

common anxiety which linked them drew them together, so that when Kato

moved Eve followed her, unwillingly, querulously; and expressions of

affection were even forced from them, of which they instantly repented,

and by some phrase of veiled cruelty sought to counteract.

No news reached them from outside. Every man was at his post, and

Julian had forbidden all movement about the village. By his orders also

the heavy shutters had been closed over the windows of the Davenant

drawing-room, where Eve and Kato sat, with the door open on to the

courtyard for the sake of light, talking spasmodically, and listening

to the sounds of the firing. At the first quick rattle Kato had said,

'Machine-guns,' and Eve had replied, 'Yes; the first time--when we were

here alone--he told me they had a machine-gun on the police-launch;'

then Kato said, after a pause of firing, 'This time they have more than

one.'

Eve raised tormented eyes.

'Anastasia, he said he would be in shelter.'

'Would he remain in shelter for long?' Kato replied scornfully.

Eve said,--

'He has Grbits with him.'

Kato, crushing down the personal preoccupation, dwelt ardently on

the fate of her country. She must abandon to Eve the thought of

Julian, but of the Islands at least she might think possessively,

diverting to their dear though inanimate claim all the need of passion

and protection humanly denied her. From a woman of always intense

patriotism, she had become a fanatic. Starved in one direction, she

had doubled her energy in the other, realising, moreover, the power

of that bond between herself and Julian. She could have said with

thorough truthfulness that her principal cause of resentment against

Eve was Eve's indifference towards the Islands--a loftier motive

than the more human jealousy. She had noticed Julian's reluctance

to mention the Islands in Eve's presence. Alone with herself and

Grbits, he had never ceased to pour forth the flood of his scheme,

both practical and utopian, so that Kato could not be mistaken as to

the direction of his true preoccupations. She had seen the vigour he

brought to his governing. She had observed with a delighted grin to

Grbits that, despite his Socialistic theories, Julian had in point of

fact instituted a complete and very thinly-veiled autocracy in Hagios

Zacharie. She had seen him in the village assembly, when, in spite

of his deferential appeals to the superior experience of the older

men, he steered blankly past any piece of advice that ran contrary

to the course of his own ideas. She knew that, ahead of him, when he

should have freed himself finally of Herakleion (and that he would

free himself he did not for a moment doubt), he kept always the dream

of his tiny, ideal state. She revered his faith, his energy, and his

youth, as the essence in him most worthy of reverence. And she knew

that Eve, if she loved these things in him, loved them only in theory,

but in practice regarded them with impatient indifference. They stole

him away, came between him and her.... Kato knew well Eve's own ideals.

Courage she exacted. Talents she esteemed. Genius, freedom, and beauty

she passionately worshipped as her gods upon earth. But she could

tolerate nothing material, nor any occupation that removed her or the

other from the blind absorption of love.

Kato sighed. Far otherwise would she have cared for Julian! She

caught sight of herself in a mirror, thick, squat, black, with little

sparkling eyes; she glanced at Eve, glowing with warmth, sleek and

graceful as a little animal, idle and seductive. Outside a crash of

firing shook the solid house, and bullets rattled upon the roofs of the

village.

It was intolerable to sit unoccupied, working out bitter speculations,

while such activity raged around the island. To know the present peril

neither of Julian nor of Aphros! To wait indefinitely, probably all

day, possibly all night!

'Anastasia, sing.'

Kato complied, as much for her own sake as for Eve's. She sang some

of her own native songs, then, breaking off, she played, and Eve drew

near to her, lost and transfigured by the music; she clasped and

unclasped her hands, beautified by her ecstasy, and Kato's harsh

thoughts vanished; Eve was, after all, a child, an all too loving and

passionate child, and not, as Kato sometimes thought her, a pernicious

force of idleness and waste. Wrong-headed, tragically bringing sorrow

upon herself in the train of her too intense emotions.... Continuing to

play, Kato observed her, and felt the light eager fingers upon her arm.

'Ah, Kato, you make me forget. Like some drug of forgetfulness that

admits me to caves of treasure. Underground caves heaped with jewels.

Caves of the winds; zephyrs that come and go. I'm carried away into

oblivion.'

'Tell me,' Kato said.

Obedient to the lead of the music, Eve wandered into a story,--

'Riding on a winged horse, he swept from east to west; he looked down

upon the sea, crossed by the wake of ships, splashed here and there

with islands, washing on narrow brown stretches of sand, or dashing

against the foot of cliffs--you hear the waves breaking?--and he saw

how the moon drew the tides, and how ships came to rest for a little

while in harbours, but were homeless and restless and free; he passed

over the land, swooping low, and he saw the straight streets of cities,

and the gleam of fires, the neat fields and guarded frontiers, the

wider plains; he saw the gods throned on Ida, wearing the clouds like

mantles and like crowns, divinely strong or divinely beautiful; he

saw things mean and magnificent; he saw the triumphal procession of a

conqueror, with prisoners walking chained to the back of his chariot,

and before him white bulls with gilded horns driven to the sacrifice,

and children running with garlands of flowers; he saw giants hammering

red iron in northern mountains; he saw all the wanderers of the earth;

Io the tormented, and all gipsies, vagabonds, and wastrels: all

jongleurs, poets, and mountebanks; he saw these wandering, but all

the staid and solemn people lived in the cities and counted the neat

fields, saying, "This shall be mine and this shall be yours." And

sometimes, as he passed above a forest, he heard a scurry of startled

feet among crisp leaves, and sometimes he heard, which made him sad,

the cry of stricken trees beneath the axe.'

She broke off, as Kato ceased playing.

'They are still firing,' she said.

'Things mean and magnificent,' quoted Kato slowly. 'Why, then, withhold

Julian from the Islands?'

She had spoken inadvertently. Consciousness of the present had jerked

her back from remembrance of the past, when Eve had come almost daily

to her flat in Herakleion, bathing herself in the music, wrapped up

in beauty; when their friendship had hovered on the boundaries of the

emotional, in spite of--or perhaps because of?--the thirty years that

lay between them.

'I heard the voice of my fantastic Eve, of whom I once thought,' she

added, fixing her eyes on Eve, 'as the purest of beings, utterly

removed from the sordid and the ugly.'

Eve suddenly flung herself on her knees beside her.

'Ah, Kato,' she said, 'you throw me off my guard when you play to me.

I'm not always hard and calculating, and your music melts me. It hurts

me to be, as I constantly am, on the defensive. I'm too suspicious by

nature to be very happy, Kato. There are always shadows, and ... and

tragedy. Please don't judge me too harshly. Tell me what you mean by

sordid and ugly--what is there sordid or ugly in love?'

Kato dared much; she replied in a level voice,--

'Jealousy. Waste. Exorbitance. Suspicion. I am sometimes afraid of

your turning Julian into another of those men who hoped to find their

inspiration in a woman, but found only a hindrance.'

She nodded sagely at Eve, and the gold wheat-ears trembled in her hair.

Eve darkened at Julian's name; she got up and stood by the door looking

into the court. Kato went on,--

'You are so much of a woman, Eve, that it becomes a responsibility.

It is a gift, like genius. And a great gift without a great soul is

a curse, because such a gift is too strong to be disregarded. It's a

force, a danger. You think I am preaching to you'--Eve would never

know what the words were costing her--'but I preach only because of my

belief in Julian--and in you,' she hastened to add, and caught Eve's

hand; 'don't frown, you child. Look at me; I have no illusions and no

sensitiveness on the score of my own appearance; look at me hard, and

let me speak to you as a sexless creature.'

Eve was touched in spite of her hostility. She was also shocked and

distressed. There was to her, so young herself, so insolently vivid in

her sex-pride, something wrong and painful in Kato's renouncement of

her right. She had a sense of betrayal.

'Hush, Anastasia,' she whispered. They were both extremely moved, and

the constant volleys of firing played upon their nerves and stripped

reserve from them.

'You don't realise,' said Kato, who had, upon impulse, sacrificed her

pride, and beaten down the feminine weakness she branded as unworthy,

'how finely the balance, in love, falters between good and ill. You,

Eve, are created for love; any one who saw you, even without speaking

to you, across a room, could tell you that.' She smiled affectionately;

she had, at that moment, risen so far above all personal vanity that

she could bring herself to smile affectionately at Eve. 'You said, just

now, with truth I am sure, that shadows and tragedy were never very far

away from you; you're too _rare_ to be philosophical. I wish there were

a word to express the antithesis of a philosopher; if I could call you

by it, I should have said all that I could wish to say about you, Eve.

I'm so much afraid of sorrow for you and Julian....'

'Yes, yes,' said Eve, forgetting to be resentful, 'I am afraid, too;

it overcomes me sometimes; it's a presentiment.' She looked really

haunted, and Kato was filled with an immense pity for her.

'You mustn't be weak,' she said gently. 'Presentiment is only a

high-sounding word for a weak thought.'

'You are so strong and sane, Kato; it is easy for you to be--strong and

sane.'

They broke off, and listened in silence to an outburst of firing and

shouts that rose from the village.

Grbits burst into the room early in the afternoon, his flat sallow

face tinged with colour, his clothes torn, and his limbs swinging like

the sails of a windmill. In one enormous hand he still brandished a

revolver. He was triumphantly out of breath.

'Driven off!' he cried. 'They ran up a white flag. Not one succeeded in

landing. Not one.' He panted between every phrase. 'Julian--here in a

moment. I ran. Negotiations now, we hope. Sea bobbing with dead.'

'Our losses?' said Kato sharply.

'Few. All under cover,' Grbits replied. He sat down, swinging his

revolver loosely between his knees, and ran his fingers through his

oily black hair, so that it separated into straight wisps across his

forehead. He was hugely pleased and good-humoured, and grinned widely

upon Eve and Kato. 'Good fighting--though too much at a distance.

Julian was grazed on the temple--told me to tell you,' he added, with

the tardy haste of a child who has forgotten to deliver a message.

'We tied up his head, and it will be nothing of a scratch.--Driven

off! They have tried and failed. The defence was excellent. They will

scarcely try force again. I am sorry I missed the first fight. I could

have thrown those little fat soldiers into the sea with one hand, two

at a time.'

Kato rushed up to Grbits and kissed him; they were like children in

their large, clumsy excitement.

Julian came in, his head bandaged; his unconcern deserted him as he saw

Kato hanging over the giant's chair. He laughed out loud.

'A miscellaneous fleet!' he cried. 'Coastal steamers, fort tugs, old

chirkets from the Bosphorus--who was the admiral, I wonder?'

'Panaïoannou,' cried Grbits, 'his uniform military down one side, and

naval down the other.'

'Their white flag!' said Julian.

'Sterghiou's handkerchief!' said Grbits.

'Coaling steamers, mounting machine-guns,' Julian continued.

'Stavridis must have imagined that,' said Kato.

'Play us a triumphal march, Anastasia!' said Grbits.

Kato crashed some chords on the piano; they all laughed and sang, but

Eve, who had taken no part at all, remained in the window-seat staring

at the ground and her lips trembling. She heard Julian's voice calling

her, but she obstinately shook her head. He was lost to her between

Kato and Grbits. She heard them eagerly talking now, all three, of the

negotiations likely to follow. She heard the occasional shout with

which Grbits recalled some incident in the fighting, and Julian's

response. She felt that her ardent hatred of the Islands rose in

proportion to their ardent love. 'He cares nothing for me,' she kept

repeating to herself, 'he cares for me as a toy, a pastime, nothing

more; he forgets me for Kato and the Islands. The Islands hold his true

heart. I am the ornament to his life, not life itself. And he is all my

life. He forgets me....' Pride alone conquered her tears.

Later, under cover of a white flag, the ex-Premier Malteios was landed

at the port of Aphros, and was conducted--since he insisted that his

visit was unofficial--to the Davenant house.

Peace and silence reigned. Grbits and Kato had gone together to look

at the wreckage, and Eve, having watched their extraordinary progress

down the street until they turned into the market-place, was alone in

the drawing-room. Julian slept heavily, his arms flung wide, on his bed

upstairs. Zapantiotis, who had expected to find him in the court or in

the drawing-room, paused perplexed. He spoke to Eve in a low voice.

'No,' she said, 'do not wake Mr Davenant,' and, raising her voice, she

added, 'His Excellency can remain with me.'

She was alone in the room with Malteios, as she had desired.

'But why remain thus, as it were, at bay?' he said pleasantly,

observing her attitude, shrunk against the wall, her hand pressed to

her heart. 'You and I were friends once, mademoiselle. Madame?' he

substituted.

'Mademoiselle,' she replied levelly.

'Ah? Other rumours, perhaps--no matter. Here upon your island, no

doubt, different codes obtain. Far be it from me to suggest.... An

agreeable room,' he said, looking round, linking his fingers behind

his back, and humming a little tune; 'you have a piano, I see; have

you played much during your leisure? But, of course, I was forgetting:

Madame Kato is your companion here, is she not? and to her skill a

piano is a grateful ornament. Ah, I could envy you your evenings, with

Kato to make your music. Paris cries for her; but no, she is upon a

revolutionary island in the heart of the Ægean! Paris cries the more.

Her portrait appears in every paper. Madame Kato, when she emerges,

will find her fame carried to its summit. And you, Mademoiselle Eve,

likewise something of a heroine.'

'I am here in the place of my cousin,' Eve said, looking across at the

ex-Premier.

He raised his eyebrows, and, in a familiar gesture, smoothed away his

beard from his rosy lips with the tips of his fingers.

'Is that indeed so? A surprising race, you English. Very surprising.

You assume or bequeath very lightly the mantle of government, do you

not? Am I to understand that you have permanently replaced your cousin

in the--ah!--presidency of Hagios Zacharie?'

'My cousin is asleep; there is no reason why you should not speak to me

in his absence.'

'Asleep? but I must see him, mademoiselle.'

'If you will wait until he wakes.'

'Hours, possibly!'

'We will send to wake him in an hour's time. Can I not entertain you

until then?' she suggested, her natural coquetry returning.

She left the wall against which she had been leaning, and, coming

across to Malteios, gave him her fingers with a smile. The ex-Premier

had always figured picturesquely in her world.

'Mademoiselle,' he said, kissing the fingers she gave him, 'you are as

delightful as ever, I am assured.'

They sat, Malteios impatient and ill at ease, unwilling to forego

his urbanity, yet tenacious of his purpose. In the midst of the

compliments he perfunctorily proffered, he broke out,--

'Children! _Ces gosses.... Mais il est fou, voyons, votre cousin_. What

is he thinking about? He has created a ridiculous disturbance; well,

let that pass; we overlook it, but this persistence.... Where is it all

to end? Obstinacy feeds and grows fat upon obstinacy; submission grows

daily more impossible, more remote. His pride is at stake. A threat,

well and good; let him make his threat; he might then have arrived

at some compromise. I, possibly, might myself have acted as mediator

between him and my friend and rival, Gregori Stavridis. In fact, I am

here to-day in the hope that my effort will not come too late. But

after so much fighting! Tempers run high no doubt in the Islands, and I

can testify that they run high in Herakleion. Anastasia--probably you

know this already--Madame Kato's flat is wrecked. Yes, the mob. We are

obliged to keep a cordon of police always before your uncle's house.

Neither he nor your father and mother dare to show themselves at the

windows. It is a truly terrible state of affairs.'

He reverted to the deeper cause of his resentment,--

'I could have mediated, in the early days, so well between your cousin

and Gregori Stavridis. Pity, pity, pity!' he said, shaking his head

and smiling his benign, regretful smile that to-day was tinged with a

barely concealed bitterness, 'a thousand pities, mademoiselle.'

He began again, his mind on Herakleion,--

'I have seen your father and mother, also your uncle. They are very

angry and impotent. Because the people threw stones at their windows

and even, I regret to say, fired shots into the house from the

_platia_, the windows are all boarded over and they live by artificial

light. I have seen them breakfasting by candles. Yes. Your, father,

your mother, and your uncle, breakfasting together in the drawing-room

with lighted candles on the table. I entered the house from the back.

Your father said to me apprehensively, "I am told Madame Kato's flat

was wrecked last night?" and your mother said, "Outrageous! She is

infatuated, either with those Islands or with that boy. She will not

care. All her possessions, littering the quays! An outrage." Your uncle

said to me, "See the boy, Malteios! Talk to him. We are hopeless."

Indeed they appeared hopeless, although not resigned, and sat with

their hands hanging by their sides instead of eating their eggs; your

mother, even, had lost her determination.

'I tried to reassure them, but a rattle of stones on the boarded

windows interrupted me. Your uncle got up and flung away his napkin.

"One cannot breakfast in peace," he said petulantly, as though that

constituted his most serious grievance. He went out of the room, but

the door had scarcely closed behind him before it reopened and he came

back. He was quite altered, very irritable, and all his courteous

gravity gone from him. "See the inconvenience," he said to me, jerking

his hands, "all the servants have gone with my son, all damned

islanders." I found nothing to say.'

'Kato may return to Herakleion with you?' Eve suggested after a pause

during which Malteios recollected himself, and tried to indicate by

shrugs and rueful smiles that he considered the bewilderment of the

Davenants a deplorable but nevertheless entertaining joke. At the name

of Kato a change came over his face.

'A fanatic, that woman,' he replied; 'a martyr who will rejoice in her

martyrdom. She will never leave Aphros while the cause remains.--A

heroic woman,' he said, with unexpected reverence.

He looked at Eve, his manner veering again to the insinuating and the

crafty; his worse and his better natures were perpetually betraying

themselves.

'Would she leave Aphros? no! Would your cousin leave Aphros? no! They

have between them the bond of a common cause. I know your cousin. He is

young enough to be an idealist. I know Madame Kato. She is old enough

to applaud skilfully. Hou!' He spread his hands. 'I have said enough.'

Eve revealed but little interest, though for the first time during

their interview her interest was passionately aroused. Malteios

watched her, new schemes germinating in his brain; they played against

one another, their hands undeclared, a blind, tentative game. This

conversation, which had begun as it were accidentally, fortuitously,

turned to a grave significance along a road whose end lay hidden far

behind the hills of the future. It led, perhaps, nowhere. It led,

perhaps....

Eve said lightly,--

'I am outdistanced by Kato and my cousin; I don't understand politics,

or those impersonal friendships.'

'Mademoiselle,' Malteios replied, choosing his words and infusing into

them an air of confidence, 'I tell you an open secret, but one to which

I would never refer save with a sympathetic listener like yourself,

when I tell you that for many years a friendship existed between myself

and Madame Kato, political indeed, but not impersonal. Madame Kato,' he

said, drawing his chair a little nearer and lowering his voice, 'is not

of the impersonal type.'

Eve violently rebelled from his nearness; fastidious, she loathed his

goatish smile, his beard, his rosy lips, but she continued to smile to

him, a man who held, perhaps, one of Julian's secrets. She was aware

of the necessity of obtaining that secret. Of the dishonour towards

Julian, sleeping away his hurts and his fatigue in the room above,

she was blindly unaware. Love to her was a battle, not a fellowship.

She must know! Already her soul, eagerly receptive and bared to the

dreaded blow, had adopted the theory of betrayal. In the chaos of

her resentments and suspicions, she remembered how Kato had spoken

to her in the morning, and without further reflection branded that

conversation as a blind. She even felt a passing admiration for the

other woman's superior cleverness. She, Eve, had been completely taken

in.... So she must contend, not only against the Islands, but against

Kato also? Anguish and terror rushed over her. She scarcely knew what

she believed or did not believe, only that her mind was one seething

and surging tumult of mistrust and all-devouring jealousy. She was

on the point of abandoning her temperamentally indirect methods,

of stretching out her hands to Malteios, and crying to him for the

agonising, the fiercely welcome truth, when he said,--

'Impersonal? Do you, mademoiselle, know anything of your sex? Ah,

charming! disturbing, precious, indispensable, even heroic, tant que

vous voudrez, but impersonal, no! Man, yes, sometimes. Woman, never.

Never.' He took her hand, patted it, kissed the wrist, and murmured,

'Chère enfant, these are not ideas for your pretty head.'

She knew from experience that his preoccupation with such theories, if

no more sinister motive, would urge him towards a resumption of the

subject, and after a pause full of cogitation he continued,--

'Follow my advice, mademoiselle: never give your heart to a man

concerned in other affairs. You may love, both of you, but you will

strive in opposite directions. Your cousin, for example.... And yet,'

he mused, 'you are a woman to charm the leisure of a man of action.

The toy of a conqueror.' He laughed. 'Fortunately, conquerors are

rare.' But she knew he hovered round the image of Julian. 'Believe me,

leave such men to such women as Kato; they are more truly kin. You--I

discover you--are too exorbitant; love would play too absorbing a rôle.

You would tolerate no rival, neither a person nor a fact. Your eyes

smoulder; I am near the truth?'

'One could steal the man from his affairs,' she said almost inaudibly.

'The only hope,' he replied.

A long silence fell, and his evil benevolence gained on her; on her

aroused sensitiveness his unspoken suggestions fell one by one as

definitely as the formulated word. He watched her; she trembled, half

compelled by his gaze. At length, under the necessity of breaking the

silence, she said,--

'Kato is not such a woman; she would resent no obstacle.'

'Wiser,' he added, 'she would identify herself with it.'

He began to banter horribly,--

'Ah, child, Eve, child made for love, daily bless your cousinship!

Bless its contemptuous security. Smile over the confabulations of

Kato and your cousin. Smile to think that he, she, and the Islands

are bound in an indissoluble triology. If there be jealousy to

suffer, rejoice in that it falls, not to your share, but to mine, who

am old and sufficiently philosophical. Age and experience harden,

you know. Else, I could not see Anastasia Kato pass to another with

so negligible a pang. Yet the imagination makes its own trouble. A

jealous imagination.... Very vivid. Pictures of Anastasia Kato in

your cousin's arms--ah, crude, crude, I know, but the crudity of the

jealous imagination is unequalled. Not a detail escapes. That is why I

say, bless your cousinship and its security.' He glanced up and met

her tortured eyes. 'As I bless my philosophy of the inevitable,' he

finished softly, caressing her hand which he had retained all the while.

No effort at 'Impossible!' escaped her; almost from the first she had

blindly adopted his insinuations. She even felt a perverse gratitude

towards him, and a certain fellowship. They were allies. Her mind was

now set solely upon one object. That self-destruction might be involved

did not occur to her, nor would she have been deterred thereby. Like

Samson, she had her hands upon the columns....

'Madame Kato lives in this house?' asked Malteios, as one who has been

following a train of thought.

She shook her head, and he noticed that her eyes were turned slightly

inwards, as with the effort of an immense concentration.

'You have power,' he said with admiration.

Bending towards her, he began to speak in a very low, rapid voice; she

sat listening to him, by no word betraying her passionate attention,

nodding only from time to time, and keeping her hands very still,

linked in her lap. Only once she spoke, to ask a question, 'He would

leave Herakleion?' and Malteios replied, 'Inevitably; the question of

the Islands would be for ever closed for him;' then she said, producing

the words from afar off, 'He would be free,' and Malteios, working

in the dark, following only one of the two processes of her thought,

reverted to Kato; his skill could have been greater in playing upon the

instrument, but even so it sufficed, so taut was the stringing of the

cords. When he had finished speaking, she asked him another question,

'He could never trace the thing to me?' and he reassured her with a

laugh so natural and contemptuous that she, in her ingenuity, was

convinced. All the while she had kept her eyes fastened on his face, on

his rosy lips moving amongst his beard, that she might lose no detail

of his meaning or his instructions, and at one moment he had thought,

'There is something terrible in this child,' but immediately he had

crushed the qualm, thinking, 'By this recovery, if indeed it is to be,

I am a made man,' and thanking the fate that had cast this unforeseen

chance across his path. Finally she heard his voice change from its

earnest undertone to its customary platitudinous flattery, and turning

round she saw that Julian had come into the room, his eyes already bent

with brooding scorn upon the emissary.

VI

She was silent that evening, so silent that Grbits, the unobservant,

commented to Kato; but after they had dined, all four, by the fountain

in the court, she flung aside her preoccupation, laughed and sang,

forced Kato to the piano, and danced with reckless inspiration to

the accompaniment of Kato's songs. Julian, leaning against a column,

watched her bewildering gaiety. She had galvanised Grbits into

movement--he who was usually bashful with women, especially with Eve,

reserving his enthusiasm for Julian--and as she passed and re-passed

before Julian in the grasp of the giant she flung at him provocative

glances charged with a special meaning he could not interpret; in the

turn of her dance he caught her smile and the flash of her eyes, and

smiled in response, but his smile was grave, for his mind ran now upon

the crisis with Herakleion, and, moreover, he suffered to see Eve so

held by Grbits, her turbulent head below the giant's shoulder, and

regretted that her gaiety should not be reserved for him alone. Across

the court, through the open door of the drawing-room, he could see Kato

at the piano, full of delight, her broad little fat hands and wrists

racing above the keyboard, her short torso swaying to the rhythm, her

rich voice humming, and the gold wheat ears shaking in her hair. She

called to him, and, drawing a chair close to the piano, he sat beside

her, but through the door he continued to stare at Eve dancing in

the court. Kato said as she played, her perception sharpened by the

tormented watch she kept on him,--

'Eve celebrates your victory of yesterday,' to which he replied,

deceived by the kindly sympathy in her eyes,--

'Eve celebrates her own high spirits and the enjoyment of a new

partner; my doings are of the last indifference to her.'

Kato played louder; she bent towards him,--

'You love her so much, Julian?'

He made an unexpected answer,--

'I believe in her.'

Kato, a shrewd woman, observed him, thinking,--'He does not; he wants

to convince himself.'

She said aloud, conscientiously wrenching out the truth as she saw it,--

'She loves you; she is capable of love such as is granted to few; that

is the sublime in her.'

He seized upon this, hungrily, missing meanwhile the sublime in the

honesty of the singer,--

'Since I am given so much, I should not exact more. The Islands.... She

gives all to me. I ought not to force the Islands upon her.'

'Grapes of thistles,' Kato said softly.

'You understand,' he murmured with gratitude. 'But why should she

hamper me, Anastasia? Are all women so irrational? What am I to

believe?'

'We are not so irrational as we appear,' Kato said, 'because our

wildest sophistry has always its roots in the truth of instinct.'

Eve was near them, crying out,--

'A tarantella, Anastasia!'

Julian sprang up; he caught her by the wrist,--

'Gipsy!'

'Come with the gipsy?' she whispered.

Her scented hair blew near him, and her face was upturned, with its

soft, sweet mouth.

'Away from Aphros?' he said, losing his head.

'All over the world!'

He was suddenly swept away by the full force of her wild, irresponsible

seduction.

'Anywhere you choose, Eve.'

She triumphed, close to him, and wanton.

'You'd sacrifice Aphros to me?'

'Anything you asked for,' he said desperately.

She laughed, and danced away, stretching out her hands towards him,--

'Join in the saraband, Julian?'

She was alone in her room. Her emotion and excitement were so intense

that they drained her of physical strength, leaving her faint and

cold; her eyes closed now and then as under the pressure of pain; she

yawned, and her breath came shortly between her lips; she sat by the

open window, rose to move about the room, sat again, rose again, passed

her hand constantly over her forehead, or pressed it against the base

of her throat. The room was in darkness; there was no moon, only the

stars hung over the black gulf of the sea. She could see the long, low

lights of Herakleion, and the bright red light of the pier. She could

hear distant shouting, and an occasional shot. In the room behind her,

her bed was disordered. She wore only her Spanish shawl thrown over her

long nightgown; her hair hung in its thick plait. Sometimes she formed,

in a whisper, the single word, 'Julian!'

She thought of Julian. Julian's rough head and angry eyes. Julian when

he said, 'I shall break you,' like a man speaking to a wild young

supple tree. (Her laugh of derision, and her rejoicing in her secret

fear!) Julian in his lazy ownership of her beauty. Julian when he

allowed her to coax him from his moroseness. Julian when she was afraid

of him and of the storm she had herself aroused: Julian passionate....

Julian whom she blindly wanted for herself alone.

That desire had risen to its climax. The light of no other

consideration filtered through into her closely shuttered heart. She

had waited for Julian, schemed for Julian, battled for Julian; this

was the final battle. She had not foreseen it. She had tolerated and

even welcomed the existence of the Islands until she began to realise

that they took part of Julian from her. Then she hated them insanely,

implacably; including Kato, whom Julian had called their tutelary

deity, in that hatred. Had Julian possessed a dog, she would have hated

that too.

The ambitions she had vaguely cherished for him had not survived the

test of surrendering a portion of her own inordinate claim.

She had joined battle with the Islands as with a malignant personality.

She was fighting them for the possession of Julian as she might have

fought a woman she thought more beautiful, more unscrupulous, more

appealing than herself, but with very little doubt of ultimate victory.

Julian would be hers, at last; more completely hers than he had been

even in those ideal, uninterrupted days before Grbits and Kato came,

the days when he forgot his obligations, almost his life's dream for

her. Love all-eclipsing.... She stood at the window, oppressed and

tense, but in the soft silken swaying of her loose garments against her

limbs she still found a delicately luxurious comfort.

Julian had been called away, called by the violent hammering on the

house-door; it had then been after midnight. Two hours had passed since

then. No one had come to her, but she had heard the tumult of many

voices in the streets, and by leaning far out of the window she could

see a great flare burning up from the market-place. She had thought a

house might be on fire. She could not look back over her dispositions;

they had been completed in a dream, as though under direct dictation.

It did not occur to her to be concerned as to their possible

miscarriage; she was too ignorant of such matters, too unpractical,

to be troubled by any such anxiety. She had carried out Malteios'

instructions with intense concentration; there her part had ended. The

fuse which she had fired was burning.... If Julian would return, to put

an end to her impatience!

(Down in the market-place the wooden school-buildings flamed and

crackled, redly lighting up the night, and fountains of sparks flew

upward against the sky. The lurid market-place was thronged with sullen

groups of islanders, under the guard of the soldiers of Herakleion. In

the centre, on the cobbles, lay the body of Tsigaridis, on his back,

arms flung open, still, in the enormous pool of blood that crept and

stained the edges of his spread white fustanelle. Many of the islanders

were not fully dressed, but had run out half-naked from their houses,

only to be captured and disarmed by the troops; the weapons which had

been taken from them lay heaped near the body of Tsigaridis, the light

of the flames gleaming along the blades of knives and the barrels of

rifles, and on the bare bronzed chests of men, and limbs streaked with

trickles of bright red blood. They stood proudly, contemptuous of

their wounds, arms folded, some with rough bandages about their heads.

Panaïoannou, leaning both hands on the hilt of his sword, and grinning

sardonically beneath his fierce moustaches, surveyed the place from the

steps of the assembly-room).

Eve in her now silent room realised that all sounds of tumult had

died away. A shivering came over her, and, impelled by a suddenly

understood necessity, she lit the candles on her dressing-table and,

as the room sprang into light, began flinging the clothes out of the

drawers into a heap in the middle of the floor. They fluttered softly

from her hands, falling together in all their diverse loveliness of

colour and fragility of texture. She paused to smile to them, friends

and allies. She remembered now, with the fidelity of a child over a

well-learnt lesson, the final words of Malteios, 'A boat ready for you

both to-night, secret and without delay,' as earlier in the evening she

had remembered his other words, 'Midnight, at the creek at the back of

the islands ...'; she had acted upon her lesson mechanically, and in

its due sequence, conscientious, trustful.

She stood amongst her clothes, the long red sari which she had worn

on the evening of Julian's first triumph drooping from her hand. They

foamed about her feet as she stood doubtfully above them, strangely

brilliant herself in her Spanish shawl. They lay in a pool of rich

delicacy upon the floor. They hung over the backs of chairs, and across

the tumbled bed. They pleased her; she thought them pretty. Stooping,

she raised them one by one, and allowed them to drop back on to the

heap, aware that she must pack them and must also dress herself. But

she liked their butterfly colours and gentle rustle, and, remembering

that Julian liked them too, smiled to them again. He found her standing

there amongst them when after a knock at her door he came slowly into

her room.

He remained by the door for a long while looking at her in silence. She

had made a sudden, happy movement towards him, but inexplicably had

stopped, and with the sari still in her hand gazed back at him, waiting

for him to speak. He looked above all, mortally tired. She discovered

no anger in his face, not even sorrow; only that mortal weariness. She

was touched; she to whom those gentler emotions were usually foreign.

'Julian?' she said, seized with doubt.

'It is all over,' he began, quite quietly, and he put his hand against

his forehead, which was still bandaged, raising his arm with the same

lassitude; 'they landed where young Zapantiotis was on guard, and he

let them through; they were almost at the village before they were

discovered. There was very little fighting. They have allowed me to

come here. They are waiting for me downstairs. I am to leave.'

'Yes,' she said, and looked down at her heap of clothes.

He did not speak again, and gradually she realised the implication of

his words.

'Zapantiotis....' she said.

'Yes,' he said, raising his eyes again to her face, 'yes, you see,

Zapantiotis confessed it all to me when he saw me. He was standing

amongst a group of prisoners, in the market-place, but when I came

by he broke away from the guards and screamed out to me that he had

betrayed us. Betrayed us. He said he was tempted, bribed. He said he

would cut his own throat. But I told him not to do that.'

She began to tremble, wondering how much he knew. He added, in the

saddest voice she had ever heard,--

'Zapantiotis, an islander, could not be faithful.'

Then she was terrified; she did not know what was coming next, what

would be the outcome of this quietness. She wanted to go towards him,

but she could only remain motionless, holding the sari up to her breast

as a means of protection.

'At least,' he said, 'old Zapantiotis is dead, and will never know

about his son. Where can one look for fidelity? Tsigaridis is dead too,

and Grbits. I am ashamed of being alive.'

She noticed then that he was disarmed.

'Why do you stand over there, Julian?' she said timidly.

'I wonder how much you promised Zapantiotis?' he said in a speculative

voice; and next, stating a fact, 'You were, of course, acting on

Malteios' suggestion.'

'You know?' she breathed. She was quite sure now that he was going to

kill her.

'Zapantiotis tried to tell me that too--in a strange jumble of

confessions. But they dragged him away before he could say more than

your bare name. That was enough for me. So I know, Eve.'

'Is that all you were going to say?'

He raised his arms and let them fall.

'What is there to say?'

Knowing him very well, she saw that his quietness was dropping from

him; she was aware of it perhaps before he was aware of it himself.

His eyes were losing their dead apathy, and were travelling round the

room; they rested on the heap of clothes, on her own drawing of himself

hanging on the wall, on the disordered bed. They flamed suddenly, and

he made a step towards her.

'Why? why? why?' he cried out with the utmost anguish and vehemence,

but stopped himself, and stood with clenched fists. She shrank away.

'All gone--in an hour!' he said, and striding towards her he stood

over her, shaken with a tempest of passion. She shrank farther from

him, retreating against the wall, but first she stooped and gathered

her clothes around her again, pressing her back against the wall and

cowering with the clothes as a rampart round her feet. But as yet full

realisation was denied her; she knew that he was angry, she thought

indeed that he might kill her, but to other thoughts of finality she

was, in all innocence, a stranger.

He spoke incoherently, saying, 'All gone! All gone!' in accents of

blind pain, and once he said, 'I thought you loved me,' putting his

hands to his head as though walls were crumbling. He made no further

reproach, save to repeat, 'I thought the men were faithful, and that

you loved me,' and all the while he trembled with the effort of his

self-control, and his twitching hands reached out towards her once

or twice, but he forced them back. She thought, 'How angry he is! but

he will forget, and I shall make up to him for what he has lost.' So,

between them, they remained almost silent, breathing hard, and staring

at one another.

'Come, put up your clothes quickly,' he said at last, pointing; 'they

want us off the island, and if we do not go of our own accord they will

tie our hands and feet and carry us to the boat. Let us spare ourselves

that ludicrous scene. We can marry in Athens to-morrow.'

'Marry?' she repeated.

'Naturally. What else did you suppose? That I should leave you? now?

Put up your clothes. Shall I help you? Come!'

'But--marry, Julian?'

'Clearly: marry,' he replied in a harsh voice, and added, 'Let us go.

For God's sake, let us go now! I feel stunned, I mustn't begin to

think. Let us go.' He urged her towards the door.

'But we had nothing to do with marriage,' she whispered.

He cried, so loudly and so bitterly that she was startled,--

'No, we had to do only with love--love and rebellion! And both have

failed me. Now, instead of love, we must have marriage; and instead of

rebellion, law. I shall help on authority, instead of opposing it.' He

broke down and buried his face in his hands.

'You no longer love me,' she said slowly, and her eyes narrowed and

turned slightly inwards in the way Malteios had noticed. 'Then the

Islands....'

He pressed both hands against his temples and screamed like one

possessed, 'But they were all in all in all! It isn't the thing, it's

the soul behind the thing. In robbing me of them you've robbed me of

more than them--you've robbed me of all the meaning that lay behind

them.' He retained just sufficient self-possession to realise this. 'I

knew you were hostile, how could I fail to know it? but I persuaded

myself that you were part of Aphros, part of all my beliefs, even

something beyond all my beliefs. I loved you, so you and they had to

be reconciled. I reconciled you in secret. I gave up mentioning the

Islands to you because it stabbed me to see your indifference. It

destroyed the illusion I was cherishing. So I built up fresh, separate

illusions about you. I have been living on illusions, now I have

nothing left but facts. I owe this to you, to you, to you!'

'You no longer love me,' she said again. She could think of nothing

else. She had not listened to his bitter and broken phrases. 'You no

longer love me, Julian.'

'I was so determined that I would be deceived by no woman, and like

every one else I have fallen into the trap. Because you were you, I

ceased to be on my guard. Oh, you never pretended to care for Aphros;

I grant you that honesty; but I wanted to delude myself and so I was

deluded. I told myself marvellous tales of your rarity; I thought you

were above even Aphros. I am punished for my weakness in bringing you

here. Why hadn't I the strength to remain solitary? I reproach myself;

I had not the right to expose my Islands to such a danger. But how

could I have known? how could I have known?'

'Clearly you no longer love me,' she said for the third time.

'Zapantiotis sold his soul for money--was it money you promised him?'

he went on. 'So easily--just for a little money! His soul, and all of

us, for money. Money, father's god; he's a wise man, father, to serve

the only remunerative god. Was it money you promised Zapantiotis?' he

shouted at her, seizing her by the arm, 'or was he, perhaps, like

Paul, in love with you? Did you perhaps promise him yourself? How am

I to know? There may still be depths in you--you woman--that I know

nothing about. Did you give yourself to Zapantiotis? Or is he coming

to-night for his reward? Did you mean to ship me off to Athens, you and

your accomplices, while you waited here in this room--_our_ room--for

your lover?'

'Julian!' she cried--he had forced her on to her knees--'you are saying

monstrous things.'

'You drive me to them,' he replied; 'when I think that while the troops

were landing you lay in my arms, here, knowing all the while that you

had betrayed me--I could believe anything of you. Monstrous things!

Do you know what monstrous things I am thinking? That you shall not

belong to Zapantiotis, but to me. Yes, to me. You destroy love, but

desire revives, without love; horrible, but sufficient. That's what I

am thinking. I dare say I could kiss you still, and forget. Come!'

He was beside himself.

'Your accusations are so outrageous,' she said, half-fainting, 'your

suggestions are obscene, Julian; I would rather you killed me at once.'

'Then answer me about Zapantiotis. How am I to know?' he repeated,

already slightly ashamed of his outburst, 'I'm readjusting my ideas.

Tell me the truth; I scarcely care.'

'Believe what you choose,' she replied, although he still held her,

terrified, on the ground at his feet, 'I have more pride than you

credit me with--too much to answer you.'

'It was money,' he said after a pause, releasing her. She stood up;

reaction overcame her, and she wept.

'Julian, that you should believe that of me! You cut me to the

quick--and I gave myself to you with such pride and gladness' she

added almost inaudibly.

'Forgive me; I suppose you, also, have your own moral code; I have

speculated sufficiently about it, Heaven knows, but that means very

little to me now,' he said, more quietly, and with even a spark of

detached interest and curiosity. But he did not pursue the subject.

'What do you want done with your clothes? We have wasted quite enough

time.'

'You want me to come with you?'

'You sound incredulous; why?'

'I know you have ceased to love me. You spoke of marrying me. Your

love must have been a poor flimsy thing, to topple over as it has

toppled! Mine is more tenacious, alas. It would not depend on outside

happenings.'

'How dare you accuse me?' he said,' You destroy and take from me all

that I care for' ('Yes,' she interpolated, as much bitterness in her

voice as in his own--but all the time they were talking against one

another--'you cared for everything but me'), 'then you brand my love

for you as a poor flimsy thing. If you have killed it, you have done so

by taking away the one thing....'

'That you cared for more than for me,' she completed.

'With which I would have associated you. You yourself made that

association impossible. You hated the things I loved. Now you've killed

those things, and my love for you with them. You've killed everything I

cherished and possessed.'

'Dead? Irretrievably?' she whispered.

'Dead.'

He saw her widened and swimming eyes, and added, too much stunned for

personal malice, yet angry because of the pain he was suffering,--

'You shall never be jealous of me again. I think I've loved all women,

loving you--gone through the whole of love, and now washed my hands

of it; I've tested and plumbed your vanity, your hideous egotism'--she

was crying like a child, unreservedly, her face hidden against her

arm--'your lack of breadth in everything that was not love.'

As he spoke, she raised her face and he saw light breaking on

her--although it was not, and never would be, precisely the light he

desired. It was illumination and horror; agonised horror, incredulous

dismay. Her eyes were streaming with tears, but they searched him

imploringly, despairingly, as in a new voice she said,--

'I've hurt you, Julian ... how I've hurt you! Hurt you! I would have

died for you. Can't I put it right? oh, tell me! Will you kill me?' and

she put her hand up to her throat, offering it. 'Julian, I've hurt you

... my own, my Julian. What have I done? What madness made me do it?

Oh, what is there now for me to do? only tell me; I do beseech you only

to tell me. Shall I go--to whom?--to Malteios? I understand nothing;

you must tell me. I wanted you so greedily; you must believe that.

Anything, anything you want me to do.... It wasn't sufficient, to love

you, to want you; I gave you all I had, but it wasn't sufficient. I

loved you wrongly, I suppose; but I loved you, I loved you!'

He had been angry, but now he was seized with a strange pity; pity of

her childish bewilderment: the thing that she had perpetrated was a

thing she could not understand. She would never fully understand.... He

looked at her as she stood crying, and remembered her other aspects, in

the flood-time of her joy, careless, radiant, irresponsible; they had

shared hours of illimitable happiness.

'Eve! Eve!' he cried, and through the wrenching despair of his cry he

heard the funeral note, the tear of cleavage like the downfall of a

tree.

He took her in his arms and made her sit upon the bed; she continued

to weep, and he sat beside her, stroking her hair. He used terms of

endearment towards her, such as he had never used in the whole course

of their passionate union, 'Eve, my little Eve'; and he kept on

repeating, 'my little Eve,' and pressing her head against his shoulder.

They sat together like two children. Presently she looked up, pushing

back her hair with a gesture he knew well.

'We both lose the thing we cared most for upon earth, Julian: you lose

the Islands, and I lose you.'

She stood up, and gazed out of the window towards Herakleion. She stood

there for some time without speaking, and a fatal clearness spread over

her mind, leaving her quite strong, quite resolute, and coldly armoured

against every shaft of hope.

'You want me to marry you,' she said at length.

'You must marry me in Athens to-morrow, if possible, and as soon as we

are married we can go to England.'

'I utterly refuse,' she said, turning round towards him.

He stared at her; she looked frail and tired, and with one small white

hand held together the edges of her Spanish shawl. She was no longer

crying.

'Do you suppose,' she went on, 'that not content with having ruined

the beginning of your life for you--I realise it now, you see--I shall

ruin the rest of it as well? You may believe me or not, I speak the

truth like a dying person when I tell you I love you to the point of

sin; yes, it's a sin to love as I love you. It's blind, it's criminal.

It's my curse, the curse of Eve, to love so well that one loves badly.

I didn't see. I wanted you too blindly. Even now I scarcely understand

how you can have ceased to love me.--No, don't speak. I do understand

it--in a way; and yet I don't understand it. I don't understand that

an idea can be dearer to one than the person one loves.... I don't

understand responsibilities; when you've talked about responsibilities

I've sometimes felt that I was made of other elements than you.... But

you're a man, and I'm a woman; that's the rift. Perhaps it's a rift

that can never be bridged. Never mind that. Julian, you must find some

more civilised woman than myself; find a woman who will be a friend,

not an enemy. Love makes me into an enemy, you see. Find somebody more

tolerant, more unselfish. More maternal. Yes, that's it,' she said,

illuminated, 'more maternal; I'm only a lover, not a mother. You told

me once that I was of the sort that sapped and destroyed. I'll admit

that, and let you go. You mustn't waste yourself on me. But, oh,

Julian,' she said, coming close to him, 'if I give you up--because

in giving you up I utterly break myself--grant me one justice: never

doubt that I loved you. Promise me, Julian. I shan't love again. But

don't doubt that I loved you; don't argue to yourself, "She broke my

illusions, therefore she never loved me," let me make amends for what I

did, by sending you away now without me.'

'I was angry; I was lying; I wanted to hurt you as you had hurt me,' he

said desperately. 'How can I tell what I have been saying to you? I've

been dazed, struck.... It's untrue that I no longer love you. I love

you, in spite, in spite.... Love can't die in an hour.'

'Bless you,' she said, putting her hand for a moment on his head, 'but

you can't deceive me. Oh,' she hurried on, 'you might deceive yourself;

you might persuade yourself that you still loved me and wanted me to

go with you; but I know better. I'm not for you. I'm not for your

happiness, or for any man's happiness. You've said it yourself: I am

different. I let you go because you are strong and useful--oh, yes,

useful! so disinterested and strong, all that I am not--too good for

me to spoil. You have nothing in common with me. Who has? I think I

haven't any kindred. I love you! I love you better than myself!'

He stood up; he stammered in his terror and earnestness, but she only

shook her head.

'No, Julian.'

'You're too strong,' he cried, 'you little weak thing; stronger than I.'

She smiled; he was unaware of the very small reserve of her strength.

'Stronger than you,' she repeated; 'yes.'

Again he implored her to go with him; he even threatened her, but she

continued to shake her head and to say in a faint and tortured voice,--

'Go now, Julian; go, my darling; go now, Julian.'

'With you, or not at all.' He was at last seriously afraid that she

meant what she said,

'Without me.'

'Eve, we were so happy. Remember! Only come; we shall be as happy

again.'

'You mustn't tempt me; it's cruel,' she said, shivering. 'I'm human.'

'But I love you!' he said. He seized her hands, and tried to drag her

towards the door.

'No,' she answered, putting him gently away from her. 'Don't tempt me,

Julian, don't; let me make amends in my own way.'

Her gentleness and dignity were such that he now felt reproved, and,

dimly, that the wrong done was by him towards her, not by her towards

him.

'You are too strong--magnificent, and heartbreaking,' he said in

despair.

'As strong as a rock,' she replied, looking straight at him and

thinking that at any moment she must fall. But still she forced her

lips to a smile of finality.

'Think better of it,' he was beginning, when they heard a stir of

commotion in the court below.

'They are coming for you!' she cried out in sudden panic. 'Go; I can't

face any one just now....'

He opened the door on to the landing.

'Kato!' he said, falling back. Eve heard the note of fresh anguish in

his voice.

Kato came in; even in that hour of horror they saw that she had merely

dragged a quilt round her shoulders, and that her hair was down her

back. In this guise her appearance was indescribably grotesque.

'Defeated, defeated,' she said in lost tones to Julian. She did not see

that they had both involuntarily recoiled before her; she was beyond

such considerations.

'Anastasia,' he said, taking her by the arm and shaking her slightly to

recall her from her bemusement, 'here is something more urgent--thank

God, you will be my ally--Eve must leave Aphros with me; tell her

so, tell her so; she refuses.' He shook her more violently with the

emphasis of his words.

'If he wants you....' Kato said, looking at Eve, who had retreated into

the shadows and stood there, half fainting, supporting herself against

the back of a chair. 'If he wants you....' she repeated, in a stupid

voice, but her mind was far away.

'You don't understand, Anastasia,' Eve answered; 'it was I that

betrayed him.' Again she thought she must fall.

'She is lying!' cried Julian.

'No,' said Eve. She and Kato stared at one another, so preposterously

different, yet with currents of truth rushing between them.

'You!' Kato said at last, awaking.

'I am sending him away,' said Eve, speaking as before to the other

woman.

'You!' said Kato again. She turned wildly to Julian. 'Why didn't you

trust yourself to me, Julian, my beloved?' she cried; 'I wouldn't have

treated you so, Julian; why didn't you trust yourself to me?' She

pointed at Eve, silent and brilliant in her coloured shawl; then, her

glance falling upon her own person, so sordid, so unkempt, she gave a

dreadful cry and looked around as though seeking for escape. The other

two both turned their heads away; to look at Kato in that moment was

more than they could bear.

Presently they heard her speaking again; her self-abandonment had been

brief; she had mastered herself, and was making it a point of honour to

speak with calmness.

'Julian, the officers have orders that you must leave the island before

dawn; if you do not go to them, they will fetch you here. They are

waiting below in the courtyard now. Eve,'--her face altered,--'Eve is

right: if she has indeed done as she says, she cannot go with you. She

is right; she is more right, probably, than she has ever been in her

life before or ever will be again. Come, now; I will go with you.'

'Stay with Eve, if I go,' he said.

'Impossible!' replied Kato, instantly hardening, and casting upon Eve a

look of hatred and scorn.

'How cruel you are, Anastasia!' said Julian, making a movement of pity

towards Eve.

'Take him away, Anastasia,' Eve murmured, shrinking from him.

'See, she understands me better than you do, and understands herself

better too,' said Kato, in a tone of cruel triumph; 'if you do not

come, Julian, I shall send up the officers.' As she spoke she went out

of the room, her quilt trailing, and her heel-less slippers clacking

on the boards.

'Eve, for the last time....'

A cry was wrenched from her,--

'Go! if you pity me!'

'I shall come back.'

'Oh, no, no!' she replied, 'you'll never come back. One doesn't live

through such things twice.' She shook her head like a tortured animal

that seeks to escape from pain. He gave an exclamation of despair, and,

after one wild gesture towards her, which she weakly repudiated, he

followed Kato. Eve heard their steps upon the stairs, then crossing the

courtyard, and the tramp of soldiers; the house-door crashed massively.

She stooped very slowly and mechanically, and began to pick up the gay

and fragile tissue of her clothes.

VII

She laid them all in orderly fashion across the bed, smoothing out the

folds with a care that was strangely opposed to her usual impatience.

Then she stood for some time drawing the thin silk of the sari through

her fingers and listening for sounds in the house; there were none. The

silence impressed her with the fact that she was alone.

'Gone!' she thought, but she made no movement.

Her eyes narrowed and her mouth became contracted with pain.

'Julian ...' she murmured, and, finding some slippers, she thrust her

bare feet into them with sudden haste and threw the corner of her shawl

over her shoulder.

She moved now with feverish speed; any one seeing her face would have

exclaimed that she was not in conscious possession of her will, but

would have shrunk before the force of her determination. She opened the

door upon the dark staircase and went rapidly down; the courtyard was

lit by a torch the soldiers had left stuck and flaring in a bracket.

She had some trouble with the door, tearing her hands and breaking her

nails upon the great latch, but she felt nothing, dragged it open, and

found herself in the street. At the end of the street she could see the

glare from the burning buildings of the market-place, and could hear

the shout of military orders.

She knew she must take the opposite road; Malteios had told her that.

'Go by the mule-path over the hill; it will lead you straight to the

creek where the boat will be waiting,' he had said. 'The boat for

Julian and me,' she kept muttering to herself as she speeded up the

path stumbling over the shallow steps and bruising her feet upon the

cobbles. It was very dark. Once or twice as she put out her hand to

save herself from falling she encountered only a prickly bush of aloe

or gorse, and the pain stung her, causing a momentary relief.

'I mustn't hurry too much,' she said to herself, 'I mustn't arrive at

the creek before they have pushed off the boat. I mustn't call out....'

She tried to compare her pace with that of Julian, Kato, and the

officers, and ended by sitting down for a few minutes at the highest

point of the path, where it had climbed over the shoulder of the

island, and was about to curve down upon the other side. From this

small height, under the magnificent vault studded with stars, she could

hear the sigh of the sea and feel the slight breeze ruffling her hair.

'Without Julian, without Julian--no, never,' she said to herself, and

that one thought revolved in her brain. 'I'm alone,' she thought,

'I've always been alone.... I'm an outcast, I don't belong here....'

She did not really know what she meant by this, but she repeated it

with a blind conviction, and a terrible loneliness overcame her.

'Oh, stars!' she said aloud, putting up her hands to them, and again

she did not know what she meant, either by the words or the gesture.

Then she realised that it was dark, and standing up she thought, 'I'm

frightened,' but there was no reply to the appeal for Julian that

followed immediately upon the thought. She clasped her shawl round

her, and tried to stare through the night; then she thought 'People on

the edge of death have no need to be frightened,' but for all that she

continued to look fearfully about her, to listen for sounds, and to

wish that Julian would come to take care of her.

She went down the opposite side of the hill less rapidly than she had

come up. She knew she must not overtake Julian and his escort. She

did not really know why she had chosen to follow them, when any other

part of the coast would have been equally suitable for what she had

determined to do. But she kept thinking, as though it brought some

consolation, 'He passed along this path five--ten--minutes ago; he is

there somewhere, not far in front of me.' And she remembered how he had

begged her to go with him. ' ... But I couldn't have gone!' she cried,

half in apology to the dazzling happiness she had renounced, 'I was a

curse to him--to everything I touch. I could never have controlled my

jealousy, my exorbitance.... He asked me to go, to be with him always,'

she thought, sobbing and hurrying on; and she sobbed his name, like a

child, 'Julian! Julian! Julian!'

Presently the path ceased to lead downhill and became flat, running

along the top of the rocky cliff about twenty feet above the sea. She

moved more cautiously, knowing that it would bring her to the little

creek where the boat was to be waiting; as she moved she blundered

constantly against boulders, for the path was winding and in the

starlight very difficult to follow. She was still fighting with

herself, 'No, I could not go with him; I am not fit.... I don't belong

here....' that reiterated cry. 'But without him--no, no, no! This is

quite simple. Will he think me bad? I hope not; I shall have done what

I could....' Her complexity had entirely deserted her, and she thought

in broad, childish lines. 'Poor Eve!' she thought suddenly, viewing

herself as a separate person, 'she was very young' (in her eyes youth

amounted to a moral virtue), 'Julian, Julian, be a little sorry for

her,--I was cursed, I was surely cursed,' she added, and at that moment

she found herself just above the creek.

The path descended to it in rough steps, and with a beating heart

she crept down, helping herself by her hands, until she stood upon

the sand, hidden in the shadow of a boulder. The shadows were very

black and hunched, like the shadows of great beasts. She listened,

the softness of her limbs pressed against the harshness of the rocks.

She heard faint voices, and, creeping forward, still keeping in the

shadows, she made out the shape of a rowing-boat filled with men about

twenty yards from the shore.

'Kato has gone with him!' was her first idea, and at that all her

jealousy flamed again--the jealousy that, at the bottom of her heart,

she knew was groundless, but could not keep in check. Anger revived

her--'Am I to waste myself on him?' she thought, but immediately she

remembered the blank that that one word 'Never!' could conjure up, and

her purpose became fixed again. 'Not life without him,' she thought

firmly and unchangeably, and moved forward until her feet were covered

by the thin waves lapping the sandy edge of the creek. She had thrown

off her shoes, standing barefoot on the soft wet sand.

Here she paused to allow the boat to draw farther away. She knew that

she would cry out, however strong her will, and she must guard against

all chance of rescue. She waited at the edge of the creek, shivering,

and drawing her silk garments about her, and forcing herself to endure

the cold horror of the water washing round her ankles. How immense was

the night, how immense the sea!--The oars in the boat dipped regularly;

by now it was almost undistinguishable in the darkness.

'What must I do?' she thought wildly, knowing the moment had come.

'I must run out as far as I can....' She sent an unuttered cry of

'Julian!' after the boat, and plunged forward; the coldness of the

water stopped her as it reached her waist, and the long silk folds

became entangled around her limbs, but she recovered herself and fought

her way forward. Instinctively she kept her hands pressed against her

mouth and nostrils, and her staring eyes tried to fathom this cruelly

deliberate death. Then the shelving coast failed her beneath her feet;

she had lost the shallows and was taken by the swell and rhythm of the

deep. A thought flashed through her brain, 'This is where the water

ceases to be green and becomes blue'; then in her terror she lost all

self-control and tried to scream; it was incredible that Julian, who

was so near at hand, should not hear and come to save her; she felt

herself tiny and helpless in that great surge of water; even as she

tried to scream she was carried forward and under, in spite of her wild

terrified battle against the sea, beneath the profound serenity of the

night that witnessed and received her expiation.

GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.