Gascoyne looked at him curiously for a moment, and then laughed.
“What a funny old thing you are!” he said. “No. Been to Athens before?” he asked Cassels.
“No—this is my first visit.”
“Very well, then. We’ll go to the Acropolis to-night. There’s a full moon, and one’s first sight of the Acropolis should always be by moonlight. This morning we’ll take the car to Eleusis. There are Mysteries there,” he added, darkly, “undiscoverable Mysteries. The Temple of Demeter is now a confusion of broken stones. We can bathe there. The sea is blue.”
He drank more whisky and still more, and while his friends ate their breakfast he had continual recourse to the decanter. But he exhibited none of the more obvious signs of intoxication: his voice and gait were steady; only his eyes were wild, and his face strained.
After pacing the room for a short while, he sat down in a deck-chair facing his friends.
“Finished?” he asked. “Do have some more. Those oranges were plucked only this morning. No? Well, then, come upstairs with me: I’ve got something rather magnificent I want to show you.”
He rose and led the way from the room. The house was full of greenish light reflected from the half-open shutters. The staircase leading to the upper story was made of white marble flushed gently with pink. Gascoyne, opening a door, said:
“This is my bedroom.”
They entered and he pointed to a plaster cast of a woman’s head nailed upon the wall opposite the window. Walking to the window, they half-seated themselves upon the dressing-table there and looked at the cast. Instinctively, Cassels knew it was Gascoyne’s love.