“Please don’t ask me about myself,” she said softly; “you must just think of me as—as someone who pleases you for an hour.”
“But perhaps I can help you?”
“You have helped me. You must let me keep my sorrows to myself.”
With their supper the waiter brought a little lamp with a shade the colour of the evening sky. It was now almost dark in this garden. Two large white moths dashed themselves impetuously against the lamp, their eyes shining with excitement. Excited, too, was the owl that called and called somewhere in the grove of pepper-trees behind them....
As Artemis was about to leave Onias’ house that night, he placed five twenty-five-drachma notes in her hand.
“It is too much,” she said involuntarily.
“Oh no: I like to give it to you.”
“If it were for myself, I should not take it all; but it is for some one who is dying.”
“Poor Lucette! Some one you love?”
“Yes. He has nothing but what I give him.”