“Does all this not make your head and eyes ache, Mademoiselle Andromache?” he asked.
“No,” said the Greek maid, untroubled by nerves, and smiled in healthy admiration. “Are not the bouquets pretty?”
“If you think them pretty, they must be pretty,” said Rudolph, striving loyally to see their beauty. “I am glad you like flowers.”
“Why?” asked Andromache, meeting his eyes consciously.
“Because there are such quantities of flowers about my home in Austria. It is a lovely place, Mademoiselle Andromache. Imagine a great forest, so silent and shadowy. Oh, if you could see it in the moonlight! The trees drop silver, and fairies seem to play among the branches. I wish I could show it to you, take you to see the haunted well, and show you my mother’s favourite walk. You would have loved my mother, dear Mademoiselle Andromache. She was so good, so sweet, so gracious. Oh, it was a bitter loss to me. I cannot accustom myself to it. Sometimes I wake up at night and fancy I hear her enter my room, and feel her soft kiss on my forehead—and it is dreary to know that it is only fancy.”
His voice shook and his clear eyes clouded. Andromache involuntarily pressed his arm in sympathy, and when he looked down upon her he saw responsive tears tremble on her lashes.
“Dear Andromache,” he said, in a whisper, “you make me feel less lonely. Ah, how my mother would have loved you!”
And then these shy young persons, desperately afraid of each other and of themselves, rushed eagerly on to impersonal ground.
At the Byzantine church of Camcarea, which quaintly obstructs Hermes Street, they were jostled out of sight of their escort, upon which Kyria Karapolos was thrown into a state of voluble alarm.
“Where are they, Miltiades? Panaghia mou! Andromache alone with that young man! Come, Miltiades! I shall have a fit if they have gone far.”