Herakleion. The white town. The sun. The precipitate coast, and Mount Mylassa soaring into the sky. The distant slope of Greece. The low islands lying out in the jewelled sea. The diplomatic round, the calculations of gain, the continuous and plaintive music of the Islands, the dream of rescue, the ardent championship of the feebler cause, the strife against wealth and authority. The whole fabric of youth.... These were the things abruptly rediscovered and renewed.

The elections were to take place within four days of Julian's arrival. Father Paul, no doubt, could add to the store of information Kato had already given him. But Father Paul was not to be found in the little tavern he kept in the untidy village close to the gates of the Davenants' country house. Julian reined up before it, reading the familiar name, Xenodochion Olympos, above the door, and calling out to the men who were playing bowls along the little gravelled bowling alley to know where he might find the priest. They could not tell him, nor could the old islander Tsigaridis, who sat near the door, smoking a cigar, and dribbling between his fingers the beads of a bright green rosary.

'The papÁ is often absent from us,' added Tsigaridis, and Julian caught the grave inflection of criticism in his tone.

The somnolent heat of the September afternoon lay over the squalid dusty village; in the whole length of its street no life stirred; the dogs slept; the pale pink and blue houses were closely shuttered, with an effect of flatness and desertion. Against the pink front of the tavern splashed the shadows of a great fig-tree, and upon its threshold, but on one side the tree had been cut back to prevent any shadows from falling across the bowling-alley. Julian rode on, enervated by the too intense heat and the glare, and, giving up his horse at his uncle's stables, wandered in the shade under the pergola of gourds at the bottom of the garden.

He saw Father Paul coming towards him across the grass between the lemon-trees; the priest walked slowly, his head bent, his hands clasped behind his back, a spare black figure among the golden fruit. So lean, so lank he appeared, his natural height accentuated by his square black cap; so sallow his bony face in contrast to his stringy red hair. Julian likened him to a long note of exclamation. He advanced unaware of Julian's presence, walking as though every shuffling step of his flat, broad-toed shoes were an accompaniment to some laborious and completed thought.

'Perhaps,' Julian reflected, watching him, 'by the time he reaches me he'll have arrived at his decision.'

He speculated amusedly as to the priest's difficulties: an insurgent member of the flock? a necessary repair to the church? Nothing, nothing outside Herakleion. A tiny life! A priest, a man who had forsworn man's birthright. The visible in exchange for the invisible world. A life concentrated and intense; tight-handed, a round little ball of a life. No range, no freedom. Village life under a microscope; familiar faces and familiar souls. Julian seemed to focus suddenly the rays of the whole world into a spot of light which was the village, and over which the priest's thin face was bent poring with a close, a strained expression of absorption, so that his benevolent purpose became almost a force of evil, prying and inquisitive, and from which the souls under his charge strove to writhe away in vain. To break the image, he called out aloud,—

'You were very deeply immersed in your thoughts, father?'

'Yes, yes,' Paul muttered. He took out his handkerchief to pass it over his face, which Julian now saw with surprise was touched into high lights by a thin perspiration.

'Is anything wrong?' he asked.

'Nothing wrong. Your father is very generous,' the priest added irrelevantly.

Julian, still under the spell, inquired as to his father's generosity.

'He has promised me a new iconostase,' said Paul, but he spoke from an immense distance, vagueness in his eyes, and with a trained, obedient tongue. 'The old iconostase is in a disgraceful state of dilapidation,' he continued, with a new, uncanny energy; 'when we cleaned out the panels we found them hung with bats at the back, and not only bats, but, do you know, Julian, the mice had nested there; the mice are a terrible plague in the church. I am obliged to keep the consecrated bread in a biscuit tin, and I do not like doing that; I like to keep it covered over with a linen cloth; but no, I cannot, all on account of the mice. I have set traps, and I had got a cat, but since she caught her foot in one of the traps she has gone away. I am having great trouble, great trouble with the mice.'

'I know,' said Julian, 'I used to have mice in my rooms at Oxford.'

'A plague!' cried Paul, still fiercely energetic, but utterly remote. 'One would wonder, if one were permitted to wonder, why He saw fit to create mice. I never caught any in my traps; only the cat's foot. And the boy who cleans the church ate the cheese. I have been very unfortunate—very unfortunate with the mice,' he added.

Would they never succeed in getting away from the topic? The garden was populated with mice, quick little gray objects darting across the path. And Paul, who continued to talk vehemently, with strange, abrupt gestures, was not really there at all.

'Nearly two years since you have been away,' he was saying. 'I expect you have seen a great deal; forgotten all about Paul? How do you find your father? Many people have died in the village; that was to be expected. I have been kept busy, funerals and christenings. I like a full life. And then I have the constant preoccupation of the church; the church, yes. I have been terribly concerned about the iconostase. I have blamed myself bitterly for my negligence. That, of course, was all due to the mice. A man was drowned off these rocks last week; a stranger. They say he had been losing in the casino. I have been into Herakleion once or twice, since you have been away. But it is too noisy. The trams, and the glare.... It would not seem noisy to you. You no doubt welcome the music of the world. You are young, and life for you contains no problems. But I am very happy; I should not like you to think I was not perfectly happy. Your father and your uncle are peculiarly considerate and generous men. Your uncle has promised to pay for the installation of the new iconostase and the removal of the old one. I forgot to tell you that. Completely perished, some of the panels.... And your aunt, a wonderful woman.'

Julian listened in amazement. The priest talked like a wound-up and crazy machine, and all the while Julian was convinced that he did not know a word he was saying. He had once been grave, earnest, scholarly, even wise.... He kept taking off and putting on his cap, to the wild disordering of his long hair.

'He's gone mad,' Julian thought in dismay.

Julian despaired of struggling out of the quicksands that sucked at their feet. He thought desperately that if the priest would come back, would recall his spirit to take control of his wits, all might be well. The tongue was babbling in an empty body while the spirit journeyed in unknown fields, finding there what excruciating torment? Who could tell! For the man was suffering, that was clear; he had been suffering as he walked across the grass, but he had suffered then in controlled silence, spirit and mind close-locked and allied in the taut effort of endurance; now, their alliance shattered by the sound of a human voice, the spirit had fled, sweeping with it the furies of agony, and leaving the mind bereaved, chattering emptily, noisily, in the attempt at concealment. He, Julian, was responsible for this revelation of the existence of an unguessed secret. He must repair the damage he had done.

'Father!' he said, interrupting, and he took the priest strongly by the wrist.

Their eyes met.

'Father!' Julian said again. He held the wrist with the tensest effort of his fingers, and the eyes with the tensest effort of his will. He saw the accentuated cavities of the priest's thin face, and the pinched lines of suffering at the corners of the mouth. Paul had been strong, energetic, masculine. Now his speech was random, and he quavered as a palsied old man. Even his personal cleanliness had, in a measure, deserted him; his soutane was stained, his hair lank and greasy. He confronted Julian with a scared and piteous cowardice, compelled, yet seeking escape, then as he slowly steadied himself under Julian's grip the succeeding emotions were reflected in his eyes: first shame; then a horrified grasping after his self-respect; finally, most touching of all, confidence and gratitude; and Julian, seeing the cycle completed and knowing that Paul was again master of himself, released the wrist and asked, in the most casual voice at his command, 'All right?' He had the sensation of having saved some one from falling.

Paul nodded without speaking. Then he began to ask Julian as to how he had employed the last eighteen months, and they talked for some time without reference to the unaccountable scene that had passed between them. Paul talked with his wonted gentleness and interest, the strangeness of his manner entirely vanished; Julian could have believed it a hallucination, but for the single trace left in the priest's disordered hair. Red strands hung abjectly down his back. Julian found his eyes drawn towards them in a horrible fascination, but, because he knew the scene must be buried unless Paul himself chose to revive it, he kept his glance turned away with conscious deliberation.

He was relieved when the priest left him.

'Gone to do his hair'—the phrase came to his mind as he saw the priest walk briskly away, tripping with the old familiar stumble over his soutane, and saw the long wisps faintly red on the black garment. 'Like a woman—exactly!' he uttered in revolt, clenching his hand at man's degradation. 'Like a woman, long hair, long skirt; ready to listen to other people's troubles. Unnatural existence; unnatural? it's unnatural to the point of viciousness. No wonder the man's mind is unhinged.'

He was really troubled about his friend, the more so that loyalty would keep him silent and allow him to ask no questions. He thought, however, that if Eve volunteered any remarks about Paul it would not be disloyal to listen. The afternoon was hot and still; Eve would be indoors. The traditions of his English life still clung to him sufficiently to make him chafe vaguely against the idleness of the days; he resented the concession to the climate. A demoralising place. A place where priests let their hair grow long, and went temporarily mad....

He walked in the patchy shade of the lemon-trees towards the house in a distressed and irascible frame of mind. He longed for action; his mind was never content to dwell long unoccupied. He longed for the strife the elections would bring. The house glared very white, and all the green shutters were closed; behind them, he knew, the windows would be closed too. Another contradiction. In England, when one wanted to keep a house cool, one opened the windows wide.

He crossed the veranda; the drawing-room was dim and empty. How absurd to paint sham flames on the ceiling in a climate where the last thing one wanted to remember was fire. He called,—

'Eve!'

Silence answered him. A book lying on the floor by the writing-table showed him that she had been in the room; no one else in that house would read Albert Samain. He picked it up and read disgustedly,—

'Nauseating!' he cried, flinging the book from him.

Certainly the book was Eve's. Certainly she had been in the room, for no one else would or could have drawn that mask of a faun on the blotting paper. He looked at it carelessly, then with admiration; what malicious humour she had put into those squinting eyes, that slanting mouth! He turned the blotting paper idly—how like Eve to draw on the blotting paper!—and came on other drawings: a demon, a fantastic castle, a half-obliterated sketch of himself. Once he found his name, in elaborate architectural lettering, repeated all over the page. Then he found a letter of which the three

first words: 'Eternal, exasperating Eve!' and the last sentence, ' ... votre rÉveil qui doit Être charmant dans le dÉsordre fantaisiste de votre chambre,' made him shut the blotter in a scurry of discretion.

Here were all the vivid traces of her passage, but where was she? Loneliness and the lack of occupation oppressed him. He lounged away from the writing-table, out into the wide passage which ran all round the central court. He paused there, his hands in his pockets, and called again,—

'Eve!'

'Eve!' the echoing passage answered startlingly.

Presently another more tangible voice came to him as he stood staring disconsolately through the windows into the court.

'Were you calling Mith Eve, Mathter Julian? The'th rethting. Thall I tell her?'

He was pleased to see Nana, fat, stayless, slipshod, slovenly, benevolent. He kissed her, and told her she was fatter than ever.

'Glad I've come back, Nannie?'

'Why, yeth, thurely, Mathter Julian.'

Nana's demonstrations were always restrained, respectful. She habitually boasted that although life in the easy South might have induced her to relax her severity towards her figure, she had never allowed it to impair her manners.

'Can I go up to Eve's room, Nannie?'

'I thuppoth tho, my dear.'

'Nannie, you know, you ought to be an old negress.'

'Why, dear Lord! me black?'

'Yes; you'd be ever so much more suitable.'

He ran off to Eve's room upstairs, laughing, boyish again after his boredom and irritability. He had been in Eve's room many times before, but with his fingers on the door handle he paused. Again that strange vexation at her years had seized him.

He knocked.

Inside, the room was very dim; the furniture bulked large in the shadows. Scent, dusk, luxury lapped round him like warm water. He had an impression of soft, scattered garments, deep mirrors, chosen books, and many little bottles. Suddenly he was appalled by the insolence of his own intrusion—an unbeliever bursting into a shrine. He stood silent by the door. He heard a drowsy voice singing in a murmur an absurd childish rhyme,—

He discerned the bed, the filmy veils of the muslin mosquito curtains, falling apart from a baldaquin. The lazy voice, after a moment of silence, queried,—

'Nana?'

It was with an effort that he brought himself to utter,—

'No; Julian.'

With an upheaval of sheets he heard her sit upright in bed, and her exclamation,—

'Who said you might come in here?'

At that he laughed, quite naturally.

'Why not? I was bored. May I come and talk to you?'

He came round the corner of the screen and saw her sitting up, her hair tumbled and dark, her face indistinct, her shoulders emerging white from a foam of lace.

He sat down on the edge of her bed, the details of the room emerging slowly from the darkness; and she herself becoming more distinct as she watched him, her shadowy eyes half sarcastic, half resentful.

'Sybarite!' he said.

She only smiled in answer, and put out one hand towards him. It fell listlessly on to the sheets as though she had no energy to hold it up.

'You child,' he said, 'you make me feel coarse and vulgar beside you. Here am I, burning for battle, and there you lie, wasting time, wasting youth, half-asleep, luxurious, and quite unrepentant.'

'Surely even you must find it too hot for battle?'

'I don't find it too hot to wish that it weren't too hot. You, on the other hand, abandon yourself contentedly; you are pleased that it is too hot for you to do anything but glide voluptuously into a siesta in the middle of the day.'

'You haven't been here long, remember, Julian; you're still brisk from England. Only wait; Herakleion will overcome you.'

'Don't!' he cried out startlingly. 'Don't say it! It's prophetic. I shall struggle against it; I shall be the stronger.'

She only laughed murmurously into her pillows, but he was really stirred; he stood up and walked about the room, launching spasmodic phrases.

'You and Herakleion, you are all of a piece.—You shan't drag me down.—Not if I am to live here.—I know one loses one's sense of values here. I learnt that when I last went away to England. I've come back on my guard.—I'm determined to remain level-headed.—I refuse to be impressed by fantastic happenings....

'Why do you stop so abruptly?' Did her voice mock him?

He had stopped, remembering Paul. Already he had blundered against something he did not understand. An impulse came to him to confide in Eve; Eve lying there, quietly smiling with unexpressed but unmistakable irony; Eve so certain that, sooner or later, Herakleion would conquer him. He would confide in her. And then, as he hesitated, he knew suddenly that Eve was not trustworthy.

He began again walking about the room, betraying by no word that a moment of revelation, important and dramatic, had come and passed on the tick of a clock. Yet he knew he had crossed a line over which he could now never retrace his steps. He would never again regard Eve in quite the same light. He absorbed the alteration with remarkable rapidity into his conception of her. He supposed that the knowledge of her untrustworthiness had always lain dormant in him waiting for the test which should some day call it out; that was why he was so little impressed by what he had mistaken for new knowledge.

'Julian, sit down; how restless you are. And you look so enormous in this room, you frighten me.'

He sat down, closer to her than he had sat before, and began playing with her fingers.

'How soft your hand is. It is quite boneless,' he said, crushing it together; 'it's like a little pigeon. So you think Herakleion will beat me? I dare say you are right. Shall I tell you something? When I was on my way here, from England, I determined that I would allow myself to be beaten. I don't know why I had that moment of revolt just now. Because I am quite determined to let myself drift with the current, whether it carry me towards adventures or towards lotus-land.'

'Perhaps towards both.'

'Isn't that too much to hope?'

'Why? They are compatible. C'est le sort de la jeunesse.'

'Prophesy adventures for me!'

'My dear Julian! I'm far too lazy.'

'Lotus-land, then?'

'This room isn't a bad substitute,' she proffered.

He wondered then at the exact extent of her meaning. He was accustomed to the amazing emotional scenes she had periodically created between them in childhood—scenes which he never afterwards could rehearse to himself; scenes whose fabric he never could dissect, because it was more fantastic, more unreal, than gossamer; scenes in which storm, anger, and heroics had figured; scenes from which he had emerged worried, shattered, usually with the ardent impress of her lips on his, and brimming with self-reproach. A calm existence was not for her; she would neither understand nor tolerate it.

The door opened, and old Nana came shuffling in.

'Mith Eve, pleath, there'th a gentleman downstairth to thee you. Here'th hith card.'

Julian took it.

'Eve, it's Malteios.'

That drowsy voice, indifferent and melodious,—

'Tell him to go away, Nana; tell him I am resting.'

'But, dearie, what'll your mother thay?'

'Tell him to go away, Nana.'

'He'th the Prime Minithter,' Nana began doubtfully.

'Eve!' Julian said in indignation.

'But, Mith Eve, you know he came latht week and you forgot he wath coming and you wath out.'

'Is that so, Eve? Is he here by appointment with you to-day?'

'No.'

'I shall go down to him and find out whether you are speaking the truth.'

He went downstairs, ignoring Eve's voice that called him back. The Premier was in the drawing-room, examining the insignificant ornaments on the table. Their last meeting had been a memorable one, in the painted room overlooking the platia.

When their greetings were over, Julian said,—

'I believe you were asking for my cousin, sir?'

'That is so. She promised me,' said the Premier, a sly look coming over his face, 'that she would give me tea to-day. Shall I have the pleasure of seeing her?'

'What,' thought Julian, 'does this old scapegrace politician, who must have his mind and his days full of the coming elections, want with Eve? and want so badly that he can perform the feat of coming out here from Herakleion in the heat of the afternoon?'

Aloud he said, grimly because of the lie she had told him,—

'She will be with you in a few moments, sir.'

In Eve's dark room, where Nana still stood fatly and hopelessly expostulating, and Eve pretended to sleep, he spoke roughly,—

'You lied to me as usual. He is here by appointment. He is waiting. I told him you would not keep him waiting long. You must get up.'

'I shall do nothing of the sort. What right have you to dictate to me?'

'You're making Mathter Julian croth—and he tho thweet-tempered alwayth,' said Nana's warning voice.

'Does she usually behave like this, Nana?'

'Oh, Mathter Julian, it'th dreadful—and me alwayth thaving her from her mother, too. And loothing all her thingth, too, all the time. I can't keep anything in it'th plathe. Only three dayth ago the lotht a diamond ring, but the never cared. The Thpanith gentleman thent it to her, and the never thanked him, and then lotht the ring. And the never notithed or cared. And the getth dretheth and dretheth, and won't put them on twith. And flowerth and chocolathes thent her—they all thpoil her tho—and the biteth all the chocolathes in two to thee what'th inthide, and throwth them away and thayth the dothn't like them. That exathperating, the ith.'

'Leave her to me, Nannie.'

'Mith Naughtineth,' said Nana, as she left the room.

They were alone.

'Eve, I am really angry. That old man!'

She turned luxuriously on to her back, her arms flung wide, and lay looking at him.

'You are very anxious that I should go to him. You are not very jealous of me, are you, Julian?'

'Why does he come?' he asked curiously. 'You never told me....'

'There are a great many things I never tell you, my dear.'

'It is not my business and I am not interested,' he answered, 'but he has come a long way in the heat to see you, and I dislike your callousness. I insist upon your getting up.'

She smiled provokingly. He dropped on his knees near her.

'Darling, to please me?'

She gave a laugh of sudden disdain.

'Fool! I might have obeyed you; now you have thrown away your advantage.'

'Have I?' he said, and, slipping his arm beneath her, he lifted her up bodily. 'Where shall I put you down?' he asked, standing in the middle of the room and holding her. 'At your dressing-table?'

'Why don't you steal me, Julian?' she murmured, settling herself more comfortably in his grasp.

'Steal you? what on earth do you mean? explain!' he said.

'Oh, I don't know; if you don't understand, it doesn't matter,' she replied with some impatience, but beneath her impatience he saw that she was shaken, and, flinging one arm round his neck, she pulled herself up and kissed him on the mouth. He struggled away, displeased, brotherly, and feeling the indecency of that kiss in that darkened room, given by one whose thinly-clad, supple body he had been holding as he might hold a child's.

'You have a genius for making me angry, Eve.'

He stopped: she had relaxed suddenly, limp and white in his arms; with a long sigh she let her head fall back, her eyes closed. The warmth of her limbs reached him through the diaphanous garment she wore. He thought he had never before seen such abandonment of expression and attitude; his displeasure deepened, and an uncomplimentary word rose to his lips.

'I don't wonder....' flashed through his mind.

He was shocked, as a brother might be at the betrayal of his sister's sexuality.

'Eve!' he said sharply.

She opened her eyes, met his, and came to herself.

'Put me down!' she cried, and as he set her on her feet, she snatched at her Spanish shawl and wrapped it round her. 'Oh!' she said, an altered being, shamed and outraged, burying her face, 'go now, Julian—go, go, go.'

He went, shaking his head in perplexity: there were too many things in Herakleion he failed to understand. Paul, Eve, Malteios. This afternoon with Eve, which should have been natural, had been difficult. Moments of illumination were also moments of a profounder obscurity. And why should Malteios return to-day, when in the preceding week, according to Nana, he had been so casually forgotten? Why so patient, so long-suffering, with Eve? Was it possible that he should be attracted by Eve? It seemed to Julian, accustomed still to regard her as a child, very improbable. Malteios! The Premier! And the elections beginning within four days—that he should spare the time! Rumour said that the elections would go badly for him; that the Stavridists would be returned. A bad look-out for the Islands if they were. Rumour said that Stavridis was neglecting no means, no means whatsoever, by which he might strengthen his cause. He was more unscrupulous, younger, more vigorous, than Malteios. The years of dispossession had added to his determination and energy. Malteios had seriously prejudiced his popularity by his liaison with Kato, a woman, as the people of Herakleion never forgot, of the Islands, and an avowed champion of their cause. Was it possible that Eve was mixed up in Malteios' political schemes? Julian laughed aloud at the idea of Eve interesting herself in politics. But perhaps Kato herself, for whom Eve entertained one of her strongest and most enduring enthusiasms, had taken advantage of their friendship to interest Eve in Malteios' affairs? Anything was possible in that preposterous state. Eve, he knew, would mischievously and ignorantly espouse any form of intrigue. If Malteios came with any other motive he was an old satyr—nothing more.

Julian's mind strayed again to the elections. The return of the Stavridis party would mean certain disturbances in the Islands. Disturbances would mean an instant appeal for leadership. He would be reminded of the day he had spent, the only day of his life, he thought, on which he had truly lived, on Aphros. Tsigaridis would come, grave, insistent, to hold him to his undertakings, a figure of comedy in his absurdly picturesque clothes, but also a figure full of dignity with his unanswerable claim. He would bring forward a species of moral blackmail, to which Julian, ripe for adventure and sensitive to his obligations, would surely surrender. After that there would be no drawing back....

'I have little hope of victory,' said Malteios, to whom Julian, in search of information, had recourse; and hinted with infinite suavity and euphemism, that the question of election in Herakleion depended largely, if not entirely, on the condition and judicious distribution of the party funds. Stavridis, it appeared, had controlled larger subscriptions, more trustworthy guarantees. The Christopoulos, the largest bankers, were unreliable. Alexander had political ambitions. An under-secretaryship.... Christopoulos pÈre had subscribed, it was true, to the Malteios party, but while his right hand produced the miserable sum from his right pocket, who could tell with what generosity his left hand ladled out the drachmÆ into the gaping Stavridis coffers? Safe in either eventuality. Malteios knew his game.

The Premier enlarged blandly upon the situation, regretful, but without indignation. As a man of the world, he accepted its ways as Herakleion knew them. Julian noted his gentle shrugs, his unfinished sentences and innuendoes. It occurred to him that the Premier's frankness and readiness to enlarge upon political technique were not without motive. Buttoned into his high frock-coat, which the climate of Herakleion was unable to abolish, he walked softly up and down the parquet floor between the lapis columns, his fingers loosely interlaced behind his back, talking to Julian. In another four days he might no longer be Premier, might be merely a private individual, unostentatiously working a dozen strands of intrigue. The boy was not to be neglected as a tool. He tried him on what he conceived to be his tenderest point.

'I have not been unfavourable to your islanders during my administration,'—then, thinking the method perhaps a trifle crude, he added, 'I have even exposed myself to the attack of my opponents on that score; they have made capital out of my clemency. Had I been a less disinterested man, I should have had greater foresight. I should have sacrificed my sense of justice to the demands of my future.'

He gave a deprecatory and melancholy smile.

'Do I regret the course I chose? Not for an instant. The responsibility of a statesman is not solely towards himself or his adherents. He must set it sternly aside in favour of the poor, ignorant destinies committed to his care. I lay down my office with an unburdened conscience.'

He stopped in his walk and stood before Julian, who, with his hands thrust in his pockets, had listened to the discourse from the depths of his habitual arm-chair.

'But you, young man, are not in my position. The door I seek is marked Exit; the door you seek, Entrance. I think I may, without presumption, as an old and finished man, offer you a word of prophecy.' He unlaced his fingers and pointed one of them at Julian. 'You may live to be the saviour of an oppressed people, a not unworthy mission. Remember that my present opponents, should they come to power, will not sympathise with your efforts, as I myself—who knows?—might have sympathised.'

Julian, acknowledging the warning, thought he recognised the style of the Senate Chamber, but failed to recognise the sentiments he had heard expressed by the Premier on a former occasion, on this same subject of his interference in the affairs of the Islands. He ventured to suggest as much. The Premier's smile broadened, his deprecatory manner deepened.

'Ah, you were younger then; hot-headed; I did not know how far I could trust you. Your intentions, excellent; but your judgment perhaps a little precipitate? Since then, you have seen the world; you are a man. You have returned, no doubt, ready to pick up the weapon you tentatively fingered as a boy. You will no longer be blinded by sentiment, you will weigh your actions nicely in the balance. And you will remember the goodwill of Platon Malteios?'

He resumed his soft walk up and down the room.

'Within a few weeks you may find yourself in the heart of strife. I see you as a young athlete on the threshold, doubtless as generous as most young men, as ambitious, as eager. Discard the divine foolishness of allowing ideas, not facts, to govern your heart. We live in Herakleion, not in Utopia. We have all shed, little by little, our illusions....'

After a sigh, the depth of whose genuineness neither he nor Julian could accurately diagnose, he continued, brightening as he returned to the practical,—

'Stavridis—a harsher man than I. He and your islanders would come to grips within a month. I should scarcely deplore it. A question based on the struggle of nationality—for, it cannot be denied, the Italian blood of your islanders severs them irremediably from the true Greek of Herakleion—such questions cry for decisive settlement even at the cost of a little bloodletting. Submission or liberty, once and for all. That is preferable to the present irritable shilly-shally.'

'I know the alternative I should choose,' said Julian.

'Liberty?—the lure of the young,' said Malteios, not unkindly. 'I said that I should scarcely deplore such an attempt, for it would fail; Herakleion could never tolerate for long the independence of the Islands. Yes, it would surely fail. But from it good might emerge. A friendlier settlement, a better understanding, a more cheerful submission. Believe me,' he added, seeing the cloud of obstinate disagreement upon Julian's face, 'never break your heart over the failure. Your Islands would have learnt the lesson of the inevitable; and the great inevitable is perhaps the least intolerable of all human sorrows. There is, after all, a certain kindliness in the fate which lays the obligation of sheer necessity upon our courage.'

For a moment his usual manner had left him; he recalled it with a short laugh.

'Perhaps the thought that my long years of office may be nearly at an end betrays me into this undue melancholy,' he said flippantly; 'pay no attention, young man. Indeed, whatever I may say, I know that you will cling to your idea of revolt. Am I not right?'

Once more the keen, sly look was in his eyes, and Julian knew that only the Malteios who desired the rupture of the Islands with his own political adversary, remained. He felt, in a way, comforted to be again upon the familiar ground; his conception of the man had been momentarily disarranged.

'Your Excellency is very shrewd,' he replied, politely and evasively.

Malteios shrugged and smiled the smile that had such real charm; and as he shrugged and smiled the discussion away into the region of such things dismissed, his glance travelled beyond Julian to the door, his mouth curved into a more goatish smile amidst his beard, and his eyes narrowed into two slits till his whole face resembled the mask of the old faun that Eve had drawn on the blotting paper.

'Mademoiselle!' he murmured, advancing towards Eve, who, dressed in white, appeared between the lapis-lazuli columns.