The words were low, but sounded very joyous.
The girl merely cast a swift glance at the speaker, and then seemed as busily occupied with her roses as if she were sitting entirely alone.
"Well?" he asked again, fixing his large dark eyes upon her with an expression of surprise, and waiting for some greeting.
As she remained persistently silent, he exclaimed, still in the same attitude:
"I wish you a joyful morning, Xanthe." The young girl, without answering this greeting, gazed upward to the sky and sun as long as she could endure the light, but her lips quivered, and she flung the rose she held in her hand among its fellows in her lap.
Phaon had followed the direction of her look, and again broke the silence, saying with a smile, no less quietly than before:
"Yes, indeed, the sun tells me I've been sleeping here a long time; it is almost noon."
The youth's composure aroused a storm of indignation in Xanthe's breast. Her excitable blood fairly seethed, and she was obliged to put the utmost constraint upon herself not to throw her roses in his face.
But she succeeded in curbing her wrath, and displaying intense eagerness, as she shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed toward some ships that appeared in view.
"I don't know what is the matter with you," said Phaon, smoothing with his right hand the black hair that covered half his forehead. "Do you expect the ship from Messina and my father already?"