"This man," he continued, "is a Psarian. Is that not sufficient reason why he should find no place in a Hydriot assembly?"
"Surely not, father," said the Capsina, "for you, if I mistake not, are by birth a Spetziot; yet who, on that ground, would seek to exclude you from the assembly?"
"The cases are not similar," said Nikolas. "Thirty years ago my father settled here, while it is but yesterday that this Kanaris—"
"I was waiting for that," remarked the Capsina, absently.
A sound came from the chairman almost exactly as if somebody sitting in his place had giggled, and then tried unsuccessfully to convert the noise into a cough, and Father Nikolas peered at him with wrinkled, puckered eyes.
"I will continue," he said, after a pause in which he had eyed Tombazes, who sat shaking with inward laughter, yet not venturing to meet his eye for fear of an explosion. "For ten years I have sat in the assembly of primates, and any dissatisfaction with my seat there should have been expressed thirty years ago, some years, in fact, before she who is now expressing it was born."
The Capsina smiled.
"I think I said that no one would think of expressing, or even perhaps—well, of expressing dissatisfaction," she replied, "and I must object to your putting into my mouth the exact opposite of what you really heard from me."
"Your words implied what I have said," retorted Nikolas, getting white and angry.
"Such is not the case," said the Capsina. "If I were you, I should be less ready to find malignant meanings in words which bear none."