“What are you doing with my box?” demanded Danaë angrily.
“The Despot’s orders, my lady!” was the reply, and the two together bumped and banged the box down the stairs, at the foot of which stood Prince Christodoridi. When he saw his daughter, he shouted to her to come down too, in a voice that rose triumphant above Angeliké’s wails and screams. In the courtyard two of the men who hung about the place were arranging armfuls of withered olive-branches, and another came up with a jar of oil. Angeliké’s shrieks were growing fainter. It almost seemed as though the course of events had not fallen out precisely as she intended. As Danaë came down the stairs, her father seized her wrist in an iron grip. She made no attempt at resistance, but he held her fast while, with set face, she watched her treasures, Zoe’s gown, the photographs of the Klaustra party, books, writing and sewing materials—all the relics of her life on the mainland—ruthlessly saturated with oil and piled into a bonfire. Angeliké was weeping now, unrestrainedly, but Danaë did not utter a sound. When the flames died down, her father suddenly pulled her round to face him.
“Now, Lady Danaë, I have a word to say to you. You bring back a European dress, intending to wear it at the next panegyris [Saint’s day rejoicings] and steal your sister’s bridegroom from her, do you? Well, you see the end of that. We will have no vile Frankish clothes or any other evil inventions in Strio, and any that are brought here will be treated as yours have been—” the voice was raised to reach the listening servants. “What you want, Lady Danaë, is a strict husband, and you shall have one, sooner than you expect. As for you, weeper!” he cast a scathing glance at the cowering Angeliké—“it will do you no harm to wait a little. You are in too great a hurry.”
Danaë, released with two black bruises on her wrist where he had gripped her, walked upstairs again with admirable steadiness, and was seen no more until the evening. What brought her out then was the voice of Angeliké, a frightened and miserable voice, at the door.
“Danaë, come down. Come down at once—to our mother. Something terrible—oh, I cannot utter it——”
The tone seemed genuine, and after a decent pause, for the sake of her own dignity, Danaë pulled back the bed with which she had blocked the door, and came out, following Angeliké down to their mother’s room. At first she thought that the obvious disturbance afflicting Princess Christodoridi was due to the destruction of the box and its contents, which she had promised herself much entertainment in examining, but she soon saw that it must be something worse. Her mother was sitting upright, and was clearly much excited.
“I cannot bear these sudden changes. They are so upsetting!” lamented the poor lady. “Why you should have chosen to come home just now, Danaë——”
“But what has happened?” asked Danaë breathlessly.
“I always said evil would come of sending you to be educated,” her mother went on. “Your father had always declared he would never hear of such a thing, and I agreed with him. Then he changes his mind suddenly, and expects mine to be changed even before I knew that he had changed his. But I never changed. ‘You will do what you like, of course,’ I said; ‘but mark my words, no good will come of it.’”
“Then I am sure you said it to yourself, and not to the Despot, my mother,” said Angeliké impatiently. “No one would have minded Danaë’s going away, if only she had not come back.”