Her account books and rod were in my pack-basket. She sauntered along the shadow-flecked path beside me, at first paying me scant attention, but singing carelessly to herself in a demi-voix snatches of any vagrant melody that floated through her mind.
I recognized none of them. One strange little refrain seemed to keep on recurring to her at intervals:
—"And Aphrodite's throat was white
As lilies opening at night
In Naxos,
In Naxos.
And red were Aphrodite's lips—
And blue her eyes and white her hips
As roses, sky, and surf that clips
The golden shore of Tenedos.
O Tenedos, my Tenedos,
Set in the purple sea!
O Naxos, my Naxos,
I hear you calling me!
The old gods have gone away;
I follow them with feet astray,
But in my heart I'll faithful be
To Tenedos and Naxos!"
She strolled on, singing to herself, an absent look in her starry eyes, switching idly at the leaves with some dead stalk she had picked up. And no matter what other fragments of melody occurred to her she was ever coming back to her odd little song of Naxos and of Tenedos, where flowers and sky and sea matched Aphrodite's charms.
Now and again I was conscious of a leisurely sideways glance from her as though indifferently marking my continued but quite uninteresting existence in the landscape.
When we came to the wooden bridge she rested both hands on the rail and looked down at the limpid greenish pool. But her gaze seemed serious and remote, and I became quite sure she was not thinking about trout.
However, I rigged up her rod for her and was preparing to impale a worm upon her hook when she noticed what I was about and remarked that she preferred an artificial fly.
"That one," she added, coming up beside me and looking over my shoulder at the open fly-book in my hand.
So, that matter settled, we took the leafy path which ran through ferns along the northern bank of the stream.
VII