She went to her room, and opened the window to look out upon the peaceful night scene. Her terrace ran round the house, and commanded a view of the plain rolling to the distant sea and the girdling hills and wide dim valleys. The moon was high under a white veil of milky way. The bright metallic stars made a counter-radiance to her silver light, and every leaf and rugged contour was sharply visible in the mystic illumination. An oppressive silence lay upon the mountains, heavy stillness enveloped the valleys; the leaves dropped silver, and the flow of the torrents and the tiny quivering rills ran chill upon the nerves. The spirit of water and moonlight pervaded the scene, running through it with innumerable thin faint echoes. Every nook and crevice lay revealed, and the shadows were defined with harsh distinctness, the distances losing themselves in their own dark verges. Through the dusk, yellow lights from the farm casements were sprinkled here and there, and villages showed through their gardens and orchards as black masses upon the barren highlands.
Her heart was empty from excessive feeling as she looked across the land. Oh, for courage and freedom to wander forth and touch with feet and hands each well-remembered spot! A bat flitting through the air brushed her cheek, and she looked up to follow its black passage. She sat and watched everything, her energies expended in the delight of recognition. The waves of white cloud stealing across the heavens, and the moon imperceptibly beginning to dip, warned her that time was running apace, and a fluttering movement in the trees underneath told of birds softly stirring in their warm nests. The thought of their warmth made her aware that her teeth were chattering and her limbs were rigid with cold.
Still she sat through the night, and watched the day ushered in upon violet light, that soon glowed like fire. Crimson wings sped over the sky with quivering promise. At their touch the stars seemed to tremble, grew pale and were extinguished one by one. The little birds exulted in their nests and essayed a note or two. Daylight broke upon the earth from the fires of the East. Warmth travelled down the abysses of air, and in its first caress the night-dews shone like jewels on the leaves and flowers. The rapture of the birds grew into a spray of delirious song; it dashed upwards with the ring of silver mellowing to gold as it caught melody. The moon gazed pallid regret upon the scene and melted away in sickly stealth, as the voices of the morning awoke with the shrill crow of the cocks. Every folded leaf was now unclosed, and upon the skirts of the flying dawn the sun rose and spread his tyrannous light over hills and valleys. The world breathed in day, the dewdrops were beginning to melt, and the song of the birds was insufferably sweet to the ears.
Her hands were clammy and her frame was stiff when Inarime rose and entered her room. Never more would she be asked to leave this place. The hand beggared of the touch of Gustav’s, she was now free to keep unclaimed by any other man. Even that small boon was something to be thankful for, and she blessed her father before flinging herself down to snatch an hour of oblivion and rest for her tired young limbs. In a few hours the kindly villagers would flock to welcome her in person, and the dispensing of customary hospitalities would leave no time for poignant thoughts.
CHAPTER XXVIII. SHOWING A LADY KNIGHT-ERRANT TO THE RESCUE OF UNHAPPY LOVERS.
Spring waned in the extinguishing heat of summer. The noonday blue of the heavens was lost in a warm grey mist. All the green was burnt off the face of the earth, and the eyes turned in pain from the burning hills and shadowless plain, from the awful glimmer of marble upon the Acropolis and the hot streets below. Shade, shade, darkened chambers and cool drinks, and the sweet siesta, curtained off from the sting of the mosquito, were all that nature called for.
The Baron and Baroness von Hohenfels had left Athens for the repose of an Austrian country house. They knew that Rudolph and Photini were wandering about the south of France with an inconvenient train of live pets, a grand piano, a violin, and discontented hearts. More than this they did not care to know, and patiently awaited the hour of reform, when the wild oats period should have exhausted itself, and the prodigal return to the comfort of more discreet irregularities, hardened, cynical, and very well disposed to settle down in marriage.
The Karapolos were looking forward with much satisfaction to the next September move, and this time were in treaty with the owners of a flat in Solon Street. Miltiades was away in Thessaly with his regiment, and was not expected back until October. Andromache went about the same as ever, and no one knew whether the wounds of her heart were permanent or not. But Agiropoulos was attentive, though far from communicative in the proper way, and Kyria Karapolos, in her state missives to the absent hero, thought it not improbable that Andromache might be induced to accept him.