Julian never knew, nor did he stop to inquire, why Eve had returned to the village without his sanction. He only knew that as he came up the street, escorted by all the population, singing, pressing around him, taking his hands, throwing flowers and even fruit in his path, holding up their children for him to touch, he saw her standing in the doorway of their house, the lighted courtyard yellow behind her. She stood there on the highest of the three steps, her hands held out towards him. He knew, too, although no word was spoken, that the village recognised them as lovers. He felt again the triumphant completeness of life; a fulfilment, beyond the possibility of that staid world that, somewhere, moved upon its confused, mercenary, mistaken, and restricted way. Here, the indignities of hypocrisy were indeed remote. There, men shorn of candour entangled the original impulse of their motives until in a sea of perplexity they abandoned even to the ultimate grace of self-honesty; here, in an island of enchantment, he had fought for his dearest and most constituent beliefs—O honourable privilege! unhindered and rare avowal!—fought, not with secret weapons, but with the manhood of his body; and here, under the eyes of fellow-creatures, their presence no more obtrusive than the presence of the sea or the evening breeze, under their unquestioning eyes he claimed the just reward, the consummation, the right of youth, which in that pharisaical world would have been denied him.

Eve herself was familiar with his mood. Whereas he had noted, marvelled, and rejoiced at the simplicity with which they came together, before that friendly concourse of people, she had stretched out her hands to him with an unthinking gesture of possession. She had kept her counsel during the unpropitious years, with a secrecy beyond the determination of a child; but here, having gained him for her own; having enticed him into the magical country where the standards drew near to her own standards; where she, on the one hand, no less than he upon the other, might fight with the naked weapons of nature for her desires and beliefs—here she walked at home and without surprise in the perfect liberty; that liberty which he accepted with gratitude, but she as a right out of which man elsewhere was cheated. He had always been surprised, on the rare occasions when a hint of her philosophy, a fragment of her creed, had dropped from her lips unawares. From these fragments he had been incapable of reconstructing the whole. He had judged her harshly, too young and too ignorant to query whether the falseness of convention cannot drive those, temperamentally direct and uncontrolled, into the self-defence of a superlative falseness.... He had seen her vanity; he had not seen what he was now, because himself in sympathy, beginning to apprehend, her whole-heartedness that was, in its way, so magnificent. Very, very dimly he apprehended; his apprehension, indeed, limited chiefly to the recognition of a certain correlation in her to the vibrant demands alive in him: he asked from her, weakness to fling his strength into relief; submission to entice his tyranny; yet at the same time, passion to match his passion, and mettle to exalt his conquest in his own eyes; she must be nothing less than the whole grace and rarity of life for his pleasure; flattery, in short, at once subtle and blatant, supreme and meticulous, was what he demanded, and what she was, he knew, so instinctively ready to accord.

As she put her hand into his, he felt the current of her pride as definitely as though he had seen a glance of understanding pass between her and the women of the village. He looked up at her, smiling. She had contrived for herself a garment out of some strip of dark red silk, which she had wound round her body after the fashion of an Indian sari; in the opening of that sombre colour her throat gleamed more than usually white, and above her swathed slenderness her lips were red in the pallor of her face, and her waving hair held glints of burnish as the leaves of autumn. She was not inadequate in her anticipation of his unspoken demands: the exploitation of her sensuous delicacy was all for him—for him!

He had expected, perhaps, that after her proud, frank welcome before the people, she would turn to him when they were alone; but he found her manner full of a deliberate indifference. She abstained even from any allusion to her day's anxiety. He was reminded of all their meetings when, after months, she betrayed no pleasure at his return, but rather avoided him, and coldly disregarded his unthinking friendliness. Many a time, as a boy, he had been hurt and puzzled by this caprice, which, ever meeting him unprepared, was ever renewed by her. To-night he was neither hurt nor puzzled, but with a grim amusement accepted the pattern she set; he could allow her the luxury of a superficial control. With the harmony between them, they could play the game of pretence. He delighted in her unexpectedness. Her reticence stirred him, in its disconcerting contrast with his recollection of her as he had left her that morning. She moved from the court into the drawing-room, and from the drawing-room back into the court, and he followed her, impersonal as she herself, battening down all outward sign of his triumph, granting her the grace of that Epicurean and ironic chivalry. He knew their quietness was ominous. They moved and spoke like people in the near, unescapable neighbourhood of a wild beast, whose attention they must on no account arouse, whose presence they must not mention, while each intensely aware of the peril, and each alive to the other's knowledge of it. She spoke and laughed, and he, in response to her laughter, smiled gravely; silence fell, and she broke it; she thought that he took pleasure in testing her power of reviving their protective talk; the effort increased in difficulty; he seemed to her strangely and paralysingly sinister.

Harmony between them! if such harmony existed, it was surely the harmony of hostility. They were enemies that evening, not friends. If an understanding existed, it was, on her part, the understanding that he was mocking her; on his part, the understanding that she, in her fear, must preserve the veneer of self-assurance, and that some fundamental convention—if the term was not too inherently contradictory—demanded his co-operation. He granted it. On other occasions his manner towards her might be rough, violent, uncontrolled; this evening it was of an irreproachable civility. For the first time in her life she felt herself at a disadvantage. She invented pretext after feverish pretext for prolonging their evening. She knew that if she could once bring a forgetful laugh to Julian's lips, she would fear him less; but he continued to smile gravely at her sallies, and to watch her with that same unbending intent. In the midst of her phrase she would look up, meet his eyes bent upon her, and forget her words in confusion. Once he rose, and stretched his limbs luxuriously against the background of the open roof and the stars; she thought he would speak, but to her relief he sat down again in his place, removed his eyes from her, and fell to the dissection, grain by grain, of a bunch of grapes.

She continued to speak; she talked of Kato, even of Alexander Christopoulos; she scarcely knew he was not listening to her until he broke with her name into the heart of her sentence, unaware that he interrupted. He stood up, came round to her chair, and put his hand upon her shoulder; she could not control her trembling. He said briefly, but with all the repressed triumph ringing in his voice, 'Eve, come'; and without a word she obeyed, her eyes fastened to his, her breath shortened, deceit fallen from her, nothing but naked honesty remaining. She had lost even her fear of him. In their stark desire for each other they were equals. He put out his hand and extinguished the candles; dimness fell over the court.

'Eve,' he said, still in that contained voice, 'you know we are alone in this house.'

She acquiesced, 'I know,' not meaning to speak in a whisper, but involuntarily letting the words glide out with her breath.

As he paused, she felt his hand convulsive upon her shoulder; her lids lay shut upon her eyes like heavy petals. Presently he said wonderingly,—

'I have not kissed you.'

'No,' she replied, faint, yet marvellously strong.

He put his arm round her, and half carried her towards the stairs.

'Let me go,' she whispered, for the sake of his contradiction.

'No,' he answered, holding her more closely to him.

'Where are you taking me, Julian?'

He did not reply, but together they began to mount the stairs, she failing and drooping against his arm, her eyes still closed and her lips apart. They reached her room, bare, full of shadows, whitewashed, with the windows open upon the black moonlit sea.

'Eve!' he murmured exultantly. 'Aphros!...'