"The Duchy of Naxos," I repeated.
I have never seen an angrier or more excited girl. She sprang to her feet and began to pace the bedroom, her hands doubled in fury, her face tense and white.
"Naxos!" she kept repeating in a voice strangled by emotion. "That treacherous Tino offers Naxos to a miserable, fat Russian Princess! Oh! Was ever such an insult offered to any girl! Naxos! My Naxos! Could the civilized world believe it! Can the outrage on Belgium equal such an infamy! Even with the spectacle of martyred France, of Roumania in Teuton chains, of Russia floundering in blood—could the world believe its senses if Naxos is betrayed!"
Her emotion was tragic, yet it seemed to me that the lovely Thusis took Naxos a trifle too seriously. Because I was not at all certain that this same civilized and horrified world was unanimously aware of the existence of Naxos. But I didn't say this to Thusis.
As she paced the room she wrung her hands once or twice naïvely deploring the avalanche.
"Because," she said, halting in front of me, "Smith or no Smith, I should certainly attempt to seize this treacherous, beastly Constantine, and smuggle him over the frontier. The traitor! The double traitor! For Naxos is not his! No! It is a Venetian Duchy. What if Turkey did steal it! What if Greece stole it in turn? It is Venetian. It is Italian. It is my home and I love it! It is my birthplace and I worship it! It is my native land and I adore it!"
"The King of Italy," I reminded her, "does not seem to desire that Naxos be included in his domain."
"But I do!" she said passionately. "I am a Venetian of Naxos. Have I not the right to decide where my island belongs? For six hundred years my family has owed allegiance to Venice—and naturally, therefore, to Italy. Have I not every right to raise the banner of revolt in Naxos and defy this ruffianly ex-king who comes sneaking stealthily into Switzerland to plot for his own restoration?—who comes here secretly to offer Naxos to a vulgar Russian as a bribe for financial aid?—offers to sell my home for a few millions cash and buy cannon and men and send them into Greece to fight for him and his rotten throne?"
"Thusis——"
"No!" she said violently, "there is no argument possible. And God never sent His avalanche to ruin my hopes and destroy all chance of freedom for Naxos! It was the bestial Gott of the boche who loosed the snow up yonder—the filthy fetish of the hun who did that!" She flung out her white arms and looked upward. And "oh!" she cried, "for one hour of the old Greek gods to call on! Oh for the thunderbolts of Zeus!—the spear of Athene!—the tender grace and mercy of Aphrodite, and her swift and flaming vengeance when her temples were profaned!—when her children were betrayed and disinherited!—Naxos—my Naxos——"