Thus Poniropoulos learned her true opinion of him, and she went back to the island where Mitsos found her.
"Ignorant folk," she had been saying, "always think that no one is so wise as they. When you came here you knew nothing. You have been taught to fire off a gun without getting in front of it, and you think you know all. Why did you let Hastings go? What did he care about the plunder of Nauplia? If you had asked him to stop, he would have stopped. You know that as well as I. He saw that if you continued to fire the big guns the fort would tumble about your long ears. So what have you done since? Eaten garlic and talked about piasters! Oh, I will teach you!"
To her, shaking her fist, Mitsos appeared in the doorway. She looked up once, dropped her eyes, and looked up again. Then she turned to the gunners.
"Go away, pigs, all of you!" she cried. "He and I will talk things over, and there will soon be orders. The place must be repaired at once."
And she stood there, looking out of the window, till the men had filed out.
Then Mitsos approached.
"Capsina," he said, "I have seen Suleima. She has told me—"
He did not pause in his speech, but as he said those words, the color was already struck from the girl's face, leaving it as white as a lamp-globe when the light is extinguished, for, for the moment, she thought Suleima had told him all. She turned a little more away from him.
"She has told me what you have done for me and mine," he went on, "how you saved her; how you put yourself between her and death. And I—God made me so stupid that I cannot even find words to thank you."
It was a glorified face that turned to him one smile.