'That's why I do it.'
'I know,' she said, with sudden humility, the marvellous organ of her voice sinking surprisingly into the rich luxuriance of its most sombre contralto.
He noted with a fresh enjoyment the deep tones that broke like a honeyed caress upon his unaccustomed ear. His imagination bore him away upon a flight of images that left him startled by their emphasis no less than by their fantasy. A cloak of black velvet, he thought to himself, as he continued to gaze unseeingly at her; a dusky voice, a gipsy among voices! the purple ripeness of a plum; the curve of a Southern cheek; the heart of red wine. All things seductive and insinuating. It matched her soft indolence, her exquisite subtlety, her slow, ironical smile.
'Your delicious vanity,' he said unexpectedly, and, putting out his hand he touched the hanging fold of silver net which was bound by a silver ribbon round one of her slender wrists.
II
Herakleion. The white town. The sun. The precipitate coast, and Mount Mylassa soaring into the sky. The distant slope of Greece. The low islands lying out in the jewelled sea. The diplomatic round, the calculations of gain, the continuous and plaintive music of the Islands, the dream of rescue, the ardent championship of the feebler cause, the strife against wealth and authority. The whole fabric of youth.... These were the things abruptly rediscovered and renewed.
The elections were to take place within four days of Julian's arrival. Father Paul, no doubt, could add to the store of information Kato had already given him. But Father Paul was not to be found in the little tavern he kept in the untidy village close to the gates of the Davenants' country house. Julian reined up before it, reading the familiar name, Xenodochion Olympos, above the door, and calling out to the men who were playing bowls along the little gravelled bowling alley to know where he might find the priest. They could not tell him, nor could the old islander Tsigaridis, who sat near the door, smoking a cigar, and dribbling between his fingers the beads of a bright green rosary.
'The papá is often absent from us,' added Tsigaridis, and Julian caught the grave inflection of criticism in his tone.