"I come to see you as a neighbour. I am in the annexe."
Lewis greeted her, congratulating himself on the unexpectedness of the thing. Then he said suddenly in a formal voice:
"What have you got to do with the Apostolatos Bank?"
She replied, composedly, that her name was Apostolatos, Irene Apostolatos, that the Apostolatoses of Trieste were her first cousins and that they managed the bank between the three of them. The London Apostolatoses were her uncles; the New York Apostolatoses (who had married, one, a Lazarides of Marseilles, and the other a Damaschino of Alexandria) were her great uncles. In fact, they all belonged to the same family and came originally from the Greek Islands.
"What is the Apostolatos Bank doing here?" asked Lewis, as though he were unaware of the patient efforts of the Greek banking group to lay hands on the mineral products of the Mediterranean. He well knew the reputation for greed and stability held by this old house, which dated from the Greek Independence.
"Didn't Pastafina tell you that we held an option on the San Lucido deposits after the expiry of yours? I was alone at Trieste when they put it up to us, eight days ago. It interested me deeply; one of my cousins was at Vichy, the other in Constantinople; I took a fast Lloyd boat going to Malta and came on here."
"But now that I have signed?"
"I go back to-morrow; so there's no time to be lost. I came to see you, monsieur, to propose to buy you out. What do you want for the deposits?"
Lewis could not see her properly as she stood there in the light of a garden lamp round which the butterflies were hovering and casting flickering shadows on her face. Her dress was of that stiff yellow muslin which is put round chandeliers to keep away the flies. Lewis smiled as he thought of the lovely soft dresses which Welsm was producing that year in Paris. Nevertheless, as she stood there before him, her legs slightly apart, her stomach forward, her figure erect, she looked like a figure of "Victory."
"Do you mind if I put out the light? It attracts the mosquitoes," he said.