"'SULEIMA!' CRIED MITSOS"
The moon had risen before he reached the top of the pass, and, following a strange but overwhelming desire, he pushed on quickly, for he longed to look on the bay again by night. Another hour's quick riding brought him to the head of a ravine which ran straight down to the sea, and at the bottom, lying like the clipping from a silver nail, was the farther edge of the bay, ashine with the risen moon; and when Mitsos saw it his heart was all athirst for home. Gradually, as he went down, the lower hills marched like shadows to the right and left, and between moonsetting and sunrise he stood on the edge of the shelving cove again, where he had brought the fish to land one night, and once again all was still but for a whisper in the dry-tongued reeds and the lisp of sand-quenched ripples. But never again would he and one beside him sit there filled through and through with love, and never again would the man he had loved pass by like the shadow of a hawk on one of those swift, secret errands. Yet, as he had hoped, there still lingered round the place a sweetness of sorrow. Horror had come not here, nor any bloodshed, nor crash of war, and none knew the message the spot held for him, its garnered store on which his heart had fed. Then leaving it, still rounded by the infinite night, he passed on by the white house at the head of the bay, whose sea-wall had been to him the gates of love flung open, and just after sunrise he struck the road on the other side of the water, and three hundred yards off were the whistling poplars by the fountain, and his father's house and the garden-gate, and the grave and memory of his boyhood. The risen sun spun mists out of the night dews and webs of sweet smell from the damp earth. It struck a galaxy of stars from the burnished surface of the bay, and from the heart of some bush-bowered bird it drew forth an inimitable song.
So he was come to the gate, where he tied up his horse while he should go inside, yearning to see his father; but as he walked up the path, raising his eyes he saw him already out and working in the vineyard beyond, and he would have passed by and gone to him there when, of a sudden, he stopped, and his heart stopped too.
For the house door was open, and from inside—it seemed at first only his own thoughts made audible—came a voice singing, and it sang:
"Dig we deep among the vines,
Give the sweet spring showers a home."
Then came a little feeble cry as from some young thing, and the singing stopped, and a mother's voice, so it seemed, cooed soothing to her baby; and with that Mitsos passed not on to the vineyard, but went in.
Suleima, busied with the child—the "littlest Mitsos," so she told herself—heard not his step till he was in the doorway, but then looked up, thinking it was her father, though earlier than his wont. And with a choking cry, hands outstretched, and a voice from a bursting heart:
"Suleima!" cried Mitsos.