'Quite uneducated,' Christopoulos said loftily. 'Any woman in the fields sings as well. It was new to Paris, and Paris raved. You and I, my dear Julian, have heard the same thing a hundred times. Shall we escape?'
'I must wait for my father,' said Julian, who detested his present companion; 'he and I are going to dine with my uncle.'
'So am I,' Christopoulos answered, and, leaning over to the English boy, he began to speak in a confidential voice.
'You know, my dear Julian, in this society of ours your father is not trusted. But, after all, what is this society? un tas de rastas. Do you think I shall remain here long? not I. Je me fiche des Balcans. And you? Are you going to bury yourself on those Islands of yours, growing grapes, ripening olives? What? That satisfied the old generations. What have I to do with a banking house in Herakleion, you with a few vineyards near the coast? I shall marry, and spend the rest of my life in Paris.'
'You're ambitious to-day,' Julian said mildly.
'Ambitious! shall I tell you why? Yesterday was my twenty-fifth birthday. I've done with Herakleion....'
'Conquered it, you mean,' said Julian, 'squeezed it dry.'
The other glanced at him suspiciously.
'Are you laughing at me? Confound your quiet manner, Julian, I believe my family is right to mistrust your family. Very well, then: conquered it. Believe me, it isn't worth conquering. Don't waste your youth on your vineyards, but come with me. Let the Islands go. They are always in trouble, and the trouble is getting more acute. They are untidy specks on the map. Don't you hear the call of Paris and the world?'
Julian, looking at him, and seeing the laughable intrigue, was mercifully saved from replying, for at that moment Madame Kato began to sing. She sang without accompaniment, songs of the people, in a curiously guttural voice with an occasionally nasal note, songs no different from those sung in the streets or, as Christopoulos had said, in the fields, different only in that, to this peasant music, half melancholy, half emotional, its cadence born of physical labour, she brought the genius of a great artist. As she stood there, singing, Julian reflected that her song emphasised the something classical, something massive, something monumental, about her, which overshadowed what might have been slightly grotesque in her appearance. She was, indeed, a Demeter of the vineyards. She should have stood singing in the sun, not beneath the pale mockery of the candles.