North and South: An Island Story

JUNE, 1911

BY JULIA D. DRAGOUMIS

R. ROOD.

I

KATHARINE SHERMAN, the American girl who loved Poros so well that this was the third time in two years that she was staying in the island, had crossed over this morning to one of the old gardens on the mainland, where the trees grow so low down on the seashore that the overhanging branches often dip in the water.

One of the strong north winds, that sometimes blow in July and August, was covering the sea with frothy whitecapped waves, and Katharine had been drenched two or three times with the salt spray while crossing over from the island in the sailing-boat. It had been delicious, though, with the boat heeling over, the sail spread to the fresh wind, one of old Louka’s boatmen with his hand on the small ropes ready to let the sail slip down at any unexpected gust, and Dino, the son of Yoryi the blind one, sitting at the helm.

Katharine had only arrived the day before, and had found her old room in the little pink-washed hotel on the quay duly kept for her. Dino was the first old acquaintance she had met. He told her shyly that he was earning independent wages now, ever since the last Feast of the Virgin, and could provide his own boots. Katharine glanced inquiringly at his bare brown feet, but was promptly told that the boots were naturally only for Sunday and holiday wear. When, after a good deal of tacking, the boat touched at the little wooden pier of the garden, Katharine jumped out, paid the men and told them not to wait. She would walk back, she said, through Galata, and cross where the port narrowed.

She ran to the end of the long avenue of cypress trees — so tall that only a narrow strip of deep summer-blue sky showed above them — and halfway back again, before she stopped to rest, leaning against one of the straight, rugged trunks.

Good God, how beautiful it was!

How glad she felt that she had refused to follow her sister to Switzerland, but had braved the heat of a summer in Greece to see her beloved Southern land in all its splendor.

It was even more beautiful than she remembered it.

Below the cypress trees the taller straggling branches of the oleanders formed an archway, and she stood under a perfect glory of rose-red and white blossoms. Many of these climbed right up into the trees, and stood out in vivid rose-pink against the dense black foliage. Behind her was a long vine-clad pergola, heavily laden with bunches of still unripe grapes; before her, away down the avenue, the wide wooden gate, between its tall stone posts, leading out to the shore. One of the sides was thrown back, and through theopening the deep sapphire of the sea gleamed in the sun blaze, while showers of dazzling white spray covered the little pier.

Katharine thought that she knew Poros in all its phases and was familiar with all its lovely changes, but this summer wind was new to her.

Slowly she came down the avenue, drinking in the beauty and the light, and listening to the continuous chirping of the tettix on all sides of her.

In the open space down by the gate, the wind was tossing the tops of the giant eucalyptus trees to and fro, turning their feathery bunches of narrow leaves into blurs of whitish green. Long strips of bark hung in loose ends, laying bare the smooth gray-blue trunks.

They were picking lemons in the garden. The gatherers, women and children, carried their laden panniers on their shoulders into the spacious white-washed barn, where the packers awaited them.

Katharine stood in the open doorway, looking in.

It was cool and pleasant inside. On the broad sill of the low window the water was cooling for the workers, in rows of earthen jars. The lemons lay in yellow heaps on the floor, and the women and girls were twisting them with incredible rapidity into fine tissue-paper wrappers, and laying them in rows in the small cases, bound for Odessa or Roumania.

Many of the workers looked up smiling. The foreign lady with her light step, her pretty clothes and shining dark hair, was a familiar figure to most of them, and in a vague way they were pleased to see her in Poros once more.

The master of the garden, a thin man bearing an old historic name, came forward with words of greeting and the offer of a seat, but Katharine would not stay. She could not rest long in one place. She longed to see and enjoy everything at the same time. And when she stood a few moments later in the lemon-orchard, where beyond the wall the sea-line showed purple, — Homer’s ‘wine-colored’ sea, — where the scent of the lemon-blossom and the myrtle, and the shivering of the eucalyptus leaves were about her, all the old island sights, and scents, and sounds, she felt as though she might open her arms wide, and clasp them to her heart.

Suddenly, in the distance, among the many workers who came and went, filling their panniers, Katharine recognized a familiar figure.

The woman came slowly through the orchard, out of the shade of the many trees, into the clearer opening.

She wore a white kerchief which shaded her face, and whose ends were tied round her throat. The long sleeveless coat hung round her in straight folds. A large pannier full of lemons was on her shoulder. With her left arm she steadied the pannier, while her right hung loosely by her side.

On the trees behind her the fruit hung in yellow clusters, and the waving leaves made patches of shadow and light on her kerchief. She walked slowly, being heavily laden, and sometimes lifted her face to meet the breeze. She was a large woman, and all her movements were simple, free, almost classic.

‘Myrto, it is you?’ exclaimed Katharine.

The woman’s face lighted up as she brought down her pannier and rested it on the ground beside her. Her lips parted in a smile of glad welcome.

‘You have come to Poros again! That is well. Our hearts have pained for a sight of you.’

‘It is very sweet of you to say so, Myrto.’

Katharine’s Greek was distinctly original, and her genders and tenses wonderfully mixed, but she talked fluently enough, and always succeeded in making herself understood.

‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘of course I have come again. Did I not say I would ? Do you think anything would keep me away from Poros, once I was in Greece?’

‘And the lady, your sister?’

‘The lady, my sister, was with me in Athens, but she found it became too hot. She hates the blue sky when it is always without clouds. Just fancy that, Myrto! So she took her husband and the dear little girl, and they all went off to Switzerland, where it will rain as much as they like. You do not know where Switzerland is, do you, Myrto?'

‘Switzerland,’ repeated the woman slowly; ‘is it in Europe where the lemons are sent?’

‘Yes, it is in Europe, but then so are we here.’

‘No,’ corrected Myrto, ‘the garden here is on the Peloponnesus, opposite Poros.'

‘Still it is part of Europe.'

Myrto looked puzzled.

‘I do not know,’she said at last. ‘You are learned, and know many things; but so we say here, this is the Peloponnesus, and Poros is opposite, and the lemons go in the ships to Europe.’

An old woman came shuffling up to them, with bent back and outstretched hand.

Katharine greeted her kindly.

‘How are you, Kyra Marina? how is the bad knee? quite well again now? And do you always make such fine preserves of the little green lemons as you used to do? You must make some more for me to take back to my little niece. She does love them so!'

‘At your service always,’ answered the old dame. ‘But. we must wait for the next crop; these are too large now.'

Katharine nodded smilingly, and turned again to the younger woman.

‘And Leftheri, Myrto? Is he well? Does he catch much fish in the new boat ? ’

The woman did not reply. She half turned aside, fingering the lemons in the high pannier.

Something in her attitude surprised Katharine. This was not a shy young girl, but a woman who had been already married some months the last time she had seen her.

‘ How is your husband ? ’ she repeated curiously.

Myrto kept her face almost, entirely turned away, but Katharine could see the shiver that ran through her whole body. She did not notice the pursedup lips of the old woman behind her.

‘What is it?' she asked boldly, ascertaining by a rapid glance that Myrto’s kerchief was white. ‘Where is Leftheri?’

‘Gone,’ muttered the woman at last, without turning round,

Katharine sprang toward her.

‘Gone! what do you mean? Where? How?’

‘I cannot tell you here,’answered Myrto in a colorless voice. ‘If you come some day to my house as you used to do, I will tell you, perhaps.’

‘ Gone ! ’ repeated Katharine in amazement; ‘gone for long do you mean? but where?’

‘No,’ broke in Kyra Marina, ‘gone for always; gone where the men go who do not care for their lives, who are driven away by evil ways, and bad words; gone to the sponge-fishing.'

‘ To the sponge-fishing!' echoed Katharine in dismay; ‘with the spongedivers? Leftheri?’ For she had lived enough in the islands to know a little of what such going meant.

Kyra Marina blinked her small wicked eyes set in a brown netvrork of wrinkles.

‘Tell the lady about it,’ she commanded authoritatively. ‘Wherefore will you be dragging her to your house ? Is it a place for her, and you a deserted woman? Do you think perhaps that people care to come to you now ?’

‘No,’ said Myrto meekly, ‘I know; few come.’ Then turning to Katharine, ‘ I brought no shame to my man, God be my witness, but he would flare up easily, and we often had hard words. Anger rises quickly in me too. I had no mother to teach me patience. I always washed him to work harder, and do more than the others. I told him every day that he was lazy, — too often, perhaps. Then one day that dawned badly I said it had been better I had married Penayi, the miller’s son: him who had asked for me. I said I should have fared better. I did not mean it really, it was just the evil moment that made me speak the words. But he believed them. You do not know these things, but it is a madness that comes over you.’

‘Yes,’ said Katharine gently, ‘yes, I know.’

‘And just then,’ continued Myrto, ‘there were those sponge-captains here, the dogs! drinking at Sotiro’s, tempting the lads, offering much money — and that night he went off with them. That is all.’ Then, in a hard voice, ‘Now you need not come to my house.’

‘No, no, of course she need not,’ piped the old crone shaking her head.

Katharine turned on her fiercely.

‘Please not to answer for me, Kyra Marina.’ Then to Myrto very simply, ‘Of course I shall come to see you, Myrto, perhaps to-morrow.’

Others were gathering round them by this time, so Katharine washed them good-day and made her way through the trees and up the long avenue to where an old gate, built under an archway thickly lined with swallows’ nests, led out of the garden.

She entered a narrow lane between high stone walls, green with overhanging plants. The rough path was shaded by the walnut and mulberry trees of the gardens on each side.

At first she walked along with bent head and troubled face. Myrto’s story had saddened her, and besides this, other thoughts had been awakened which she had been resolutely lulling to sleep for many days now.

‘It is a madness that comes over you — it is a madness —’ she repeated over and over again.

But by the time she emerged from the narrow walled-in path on to the seashore at Galata, she had shaken off her preoccupation, and was walking rapidly, with her shoulders well set back, her face lifted to the breeze, and her lips slightly apart.

Galata had grown since she had seen it last. Little straw-thatched sheds, open on all sides, where coffee and masticha were served, had been erected close to the sea, and many new houses had been built on the slopes among the olive trees.

Katharine loved it all, every step of the way, every sight and sound.

The boat in which she crossed over to Poros, painted in vivid blue-andgreen stripes, with its sail of many patches, charmed her. The short crossing of scarcely two minutes was breezy and sunny, and the island, as she drew nearer and nearer to its amphitheatre of old sun-baked houses, overshadowed by the brown man-faced rock, gave her the impression of a monster living cinematograph.

She jumped out of the boat, searching eagerly for known faces. The crew of urchins, that always haunted the quay, were the first old acquaintances she met. It was holiday-time, and they were nearly all there: Nasso, Yoryi, Mitso, Stavro, Kosta, Niko, Aristidi, Andrea, Savva, all in various degrees of tattered undress, all smiling and crowding round the quickly recognized ‘foreign lady,’ the well-remembered distributer of kouloutria and lepta in the past.

It was good to see it all again, just as she had dreamed of it so often. The brilliant flame-red, grass-green, and sky-blue little boats rocking on the waves outside the sea-wall; the fruitsheds with their panniers of ripe tomatoes, mounds of yellow melons, and purple aubergines, with the enormous over-ripe yellowish cucumbers, that only Poriote digestions can tackle with impunity. The groups of old men, sitting cross-legged under the scanty shade of the acacia trees, mending their fishing-nets; the old fountain standing close to the sea, with its marble dolphins twisting their tails round a trident on the one side, and the waves splashing on the other; Pappa Thanassi, the priest, who passed, bowing gravely, laying his hand on his breast as he did so; the familiar greeting of Kyr Apostoli, the baker; Barba Stathi’s old donkey, Kitso, waiting patiently outside the oven till his load of thyme should be lightened.

At last she stood on the steps of the little hotel, and gazed seaward before making up her mind to enter. The waters of the bay heaved and sparkled in the dazzling light, far away to the great mass of the Sleeper, whose highest peaks, seen dimly through the heat haze, might have been taken for clouds. The steamer from Piræus was just turning the corner by the lighthouse, and numbers of little boats started out to meet her.

Katharine ran quickly up to the balcony of her room, and with her opera-glasses carefully scanned every passenger who disembarked. When the last one had been rowed out to the quay, and the steamer had weighed her anchor and was on her way to Nauplia, Katharine laid down her glasses with a sigh, and began a long letter to her sister at Grindelwald.

II

Myrto, with the red earthen pitcher full of water on her shoulder, climbed up the rocky street in the fast-fading light, pushed open the door of her little low house, and closing it behind her, went into the dim, close room.

It was a small room and her loom, with the blue and white threads stretched tightly across it, took up nearly all the space between the solitary window and the open fireplace, — an oldfashioned one, this, with an overhanging whitewashed mantel, and a deep flounce of faded cotton stuff nailed underneath it. Over the loom, a platerack, ornamented with bright green paper cut into fantastic shapes, held five white plates and two cups. Besides the rack there was also a little painted cupboard let into the wall, high up beyond the fireplace, for the safe-keeping of the better crockery. On a shelf on the other side stood half a melon, two tomatoes and a big hunch of brown bread. Two hens and a cock were walking unconcernedly over the loom, picking up stray crumbs which had fallen on it.

Myrto set down her pitcher from her shoulder with an effort, filled the smaller drinking one and set it to cool outside on the ledge of the small courtyard at the back. Cool water is a serious question in Poros. The nights were long and hot; Myrto, who did not sleep much, was often thirsty. Treading heavily, she came back into the room, and carefully stopped up the mouth of the larger pitcher with a green lemon which she had brought with her from the garden.

Suddenly she let herself drop on a low stool, leaning her head against the wooden post of the loom. She felt faint and sick. Her back ached as if it would break, and her knees trembled as she tried to stretch her legs to give them more ease. She had been down to the fountain quite late, hoping to meet no one. But Kyra Marina had been there. The other women had taken her turn, she said; there was no respect left for old age. Myrto had tried to keep silence, but she had been soon overwhelmed by a torrent of words.

‘Yes,’the old woman wound up, ‘Leftheri may have been lazy enough, and easily roused to anger, but you must have broiled the fish on his very lips, my girl, to make him go off so, and to such work. Do you know that the poor divers are the slaves of the sponge-captains? That they keep them down in the sea till they burst if they do not bring up many sponges the first time, and throw them into a dark hold to rot when their legs are seized and they can work no more? Are they few, the strong men who have returned crippled for life? Like enough, if ever you see your man again, he will be dragging his legs after him, and then you may have him lying there on a mattress, a useless log all the rest of his days. And that will be bad work to remember, my girl. To have driven a man away from his country, and his house, by your evil tongue! Eh, but there are few have a good word for you now.’

’I know,’ sobbed Myrto.

Poros gossip would have it that Kyra Marina’s own daughter and sonin-law had been driven to seek work out of the island, to escape her railing tongue. It is true this was long ago, and with her age her memory may have been failing her.

‘I am sorry,’, she continued, ‘that you are with child. It is bad enough to be born a widow’s child, but worse still to have a deserted wife for mother.’

She would probably have gone on for some time in this encouraging strain had not her victim at last seized her pitcher, only three quarters full, and started homeward, leaving the old woman muttering behind her.

But now as she sat there, weary and sick in mind and body, every cruel word came back to her with renewed force. Her poor man! a slave to those brutes! Left to rot in the dark hold of a rolling ship or sent off with both legs paralyzed. He who was so proud of his strength and agility. He the best dancer in the Skyrto dance at the Vithi fair! Myrto clasped her hands together as she half sat, half crouched there in the gloom, and broken words of prayer escaped her.

‘My little Virgin, have mercy upon me! Pity me, my little Virgin! Stretch out your hand and save my poor man.

I have been bad, yes — but save him and bring him back hale and sound for the sake of the child that lies heavy within me.’

She lifted her head and clasped her hands over her burning eyes.

Would the Holy Virgin listen to her ? What had she done to be heard? Little by little the vague notion of some necessary sacrifice took form in her tired brain. She could scarcely drag her limbs to the fountain this evening after her hard day’s work in the garden, and on the morrow she had meant to sit at her loom all day for a rest. But she decided that instead of this she would go on foot to the Monastery, and repeat her petition to the Virgin up there in the Chapel, lighting a candle before the icon which the Italian painter had painted.

But even then — what? Was there any hope? Would her prayers, her candle, her pilgrimage, help her man ever so little? They let them rot in the hold, Kyra Marina had said. Rot! that meant what? Ah, yes, she knew! Had not the sailors of the little transport ship which had been sent out by the Government to overlook the spongediving, told their women, and had not their women repeated it at the fountain? Had she not heard the gruesome tale of the poor young man from Smyrna, rescued by the officers of the transport ship from the clutches of one of those sponge-captains, only to die of advanced gangrene three days later? Had not the sailors spoken of the festering wounds caused by long neglect; by days and nights spent untended on a loathsome mattress in a filthy, noisome hole? Had not these wounds been described in all their sickening details by those who had seen them with their own eyes — aye, and not only seen them! —

Myrto dropped her head on her breast and swayed backwards and forwards with clenched teeth, as the picture arose before her.

A lull came, and she heard footsteps approaching. Then a tapping at the closed door.

She knew at once that it must be Katharine. No one else in Boros had that light, springy step. The old people shuffled; the young ones, being generally laden, or tired, trod heavily; and the little children pattered. Besides, no one but the 4 foreign lady’ would have dreamed of knocking at the door.

She opened it at once and Katharine entered; a trim figure in white linen, holding a bunch of pink oleanders in one hand, and a tall shepherd’s stick in the other.

‘I have been up to the Temple of Poseidon,’ she announced, ’right up to the top with Barba Stathi, though I never once got on to Kitso’s back. It was hot, but I did it, and now I am tired and thirsty. So I thought I would rest for a little here, and have a talk with you at the same time.’

4 Welcome,’ said Myrto simply. 4 Will you sit here?’ spreading a clean cloth on the second stool. ‘Or will you come into the sala? there is a sofa there.’

‘Oh, here; certainly.’ Then, catching sight of the woman’s face, of the eyes that had no light in them, of the waxen color which made the strong, arched eyebrows look too black, ‘You poor thing!’ she exclaimed, ‘what have they been doing to you? Sit right here beside me, and tell me all about it.’

But Myrto would not hear of it.

Katharine had said she was thirsty. She must drink first: drink out of one of the glasses kept in the little wallcupboard, a thin glass with a gold rim, and a gold fox engraved on one side. Myrto wiped it very carefully and filled it from the drinking-pitcher outside, explaining to Katharine as she came and went, that she need have no scruple about drinking of the water, as she herself never drank from the mouth of the pitcher, as some of the villagers did, but always used a cup or a tin dipper.

Then she placed the filled glass on a little round tray, and beside it a small pot of small lemons preserved, which Kyra Sophoula, a kind neighbor, she said, had given her, and one of the six silver spoons which had formed part of her dowry. This tray she presented to Katharine, standing before her while Katharine served herself. Only when the duties of hospitality were over could Katharine persuade her to sit down again.

1 What were you doing when I came in? You must not let me stop your work,’ she said.

‘I was doing nothing. I often sit idle now, with my hands crossed.’

‘Ah, but that is bad!' exclaimed Katharine with swift Anglo-Saxon energy; ‘there is nothing like work, you know, to make you forget troubles.'

Myrto shook her head. ‘There is always work enough,’she said in a tired voice, ‘if one would not starve. Besides, as you see, there is the child that will come soon, and I am often heavy and tired.’

Katharine knew Poros ways and talk. ‘May it be safely born, and live long to be a joy to you,’she said in a grave, compassionate voice. ‘Tell me, at least,’she added after Myrto had thanked her, ‘what you were thinking of, since you were not doing anything.'

‘I was thinking that to-morrow I shall go to the Monastery.’

‘To the Monastery? You?’

‘Yes, on foot; to light a candle before the icon of the Holy Virgin. — Ah, yes, I know what you would say —you are foreign, you speak our language, but you do not know our Faith, and you will say that it will do no good; that I cannot walk so far. But I can, and I will, and it must do good.’

‘Why should it not do good?’ said Katharine quietly. ‘And if it makes you any happier, of course you must go. Only you must rest when you get there.’

‘Yes, I will rest,.’

‘ How long ago is it that Leftheri went ? ’

‘Very soon it will be eight months.’

‘Then,’asked Katharine, hesitatingly, ‘ had you — I mean did he know? ’ —

‘No,’ said Myrto, ‘he did not know anything.’

‘Poor Myrto! If he had known he would never have left you.’

‘I do not know—perhaps not. He wished for a child. But perhaps also he bore all he could. What can a man do when a woman is always angry, and has evil words ready when he returns from his work? Ah, Kyra Marina was right, you should not come to my house! I am a bad woman! Not in deeds—not — that I swear on my marriage-wreath — but in words — Ah, God, did I not tell him it were better I had married another man! I, his wife! There are some words no man can forgive; words that the longest life is too short to forget in.’

Katharine started a little, and leaning forward looked into Myrto’s face.

‘Do you think so, Myrto? Are there any unforgivable words? Then more than ever should I come to your house and sit with you, and listen to you — for I too have spoken such.’

‘You! to whom? You are not married ? ’

‘ No — but there is some one — I am — I was engaged to. You understand ? ’

‘I understand — you were betrothed. Your parents had exchanged your rings, though the priest had not yet exchanged your wreaths.’

‘Well, not quite,’said Katharine, ‘but it comes to the same thing.’

‘Was he foreign also? — was it in your own country?’

‘He is not Greek; but not of my own country, either; he is an Englishman. Never mind, I cannot explain. Anyway, a foreigner here, like myself. And it was not in my own country we met, but in Athens. We stayed many months there, and traveled together with some other people. And when we found out, Myrto, that we loved each other very much, we were betrothed as you call it, though there was no ceremony, we just knew it ourselves.’

Myrto looked puzzled. ‘But the lady, your sister?'

‘Oh, my sister knew of course; her husband also. And — and, we were to have been married now, this Easter.’

There was a pause.

‘Why then did not the marriage take place?’ asked Myrto; ‘was not your dowry ready?'

‘Oh, quite ready; yes.’

‘Then why?’

‘Well, you see, we loved each other very, very much, but still we often disagreed, and like you, I too get angry easily; I have always been free, and sometimes I hated the thought of feeling bound, of being asked where I went and what I did.’

‘But since he was your betrothed?’ said Myrto gravely.

‘I know; but it was only at times I hated it. Sometimes I liked it. Then you know I am — well, rather rich. My father left me what you would call here a big dowry, and he — Jim — has very little money, and one day when he had vexed me about something —I — as you say it is a madness that comes over you — I told him that he did not care for me so much as I had thought he did, and that, perhaps if I were not so rich he would not wish to marry me! Yes, I told him that, beast that I was!’

And, like Myrto a little while ago, Katharine covered her face with her hands and rocked backwards and forwards.

‘But — ah, please do not say such words — you! a beast! but, perhaps what you told him was true.’

‘How dare you, Myrto? What do you mean?’

‘ I ask your forgiveness — I only mean that though he must have been glad that you were beautiful and good, of course he must have been very glad also that you were rich; such a “good bride.” ’

‘Ah, you do not understand. How should you? But I must say it all — I must, I must.’

She rose suddenly, laid her arms down on the narrow chimney-shelf, and buried her face on them. ‘He was a man, you see, who was very proud; who did not care anything at all for the riches, and if another man had said this to him he would have knocked him down. But I was a woman, so he — he just went away and left me. And at first I thought I did not care much — but now —’

‘Ah, yes; I know; I understand. At first one is angry and glad, — not a good gladness, — but afterwards you do not wish to see the sun shine by day, and when night comes you cannot sleep.’ Then, after a pause, ‘He went far away ? ’

‘Not very far, but he was away a long time.’

‘He has returned?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then if you suffered still, why did you not ask his forgiveness?’

‘ You did not, Myrto.’

‘I? It is different. We are poor people, I cannot write; and if I could, do I know where he is, if I could find him? But you, a lady, it is another thing. You are learned, and can write and say much. Why did you not send him a letter?’

‘I did, Myrto. But he never answered.’

‘Then you must send another. Perhaps it was not given to him, or perhaps even his anger is slow to pass. You must write once more.’

Katharine lifted her head from her arms and looked at Myrto.

‘I think I will,’ she said slowly.

III

Though the afternoon was well advanced, the heat was still great when Myrto the next day toiled up behind the white-walled cemetery on her way to the Monastery.

The first part of the road is arid and treeless, without a particle of shade. Myrto had laden herself with a small earthen pitcher to fetch back water from the Monastery spring, which is famed even beyond Poros for its sweetness and purity.

The flocks of brown and black goats browsing on the slopes, to her left, were scarcely distinguishable among the huge gray rocks. Only the tinkle of their bells revealed their presence. Myrto dragged her feet wearily, and changed her pitcher from one arm to another. She rested it for a few moments on the top of the low wall which is built on the right of the road, where the cliffs are steepest, and then, with a spurt of courage, walked on, crossed the stone bridge, and almost ran down to the wide stretch of beach where the big fig trees grow. There, under their shade, she rested a while.

The old woman who was guarding the ripe figs spoke to her. 1 Where may you be for?’

’For the Monastery: to light a candle.’

The old woman glanced at her. ’That is far. You should go to Saint Eleftherios. That is the church for those who are as you are.’

’No,’ said Myrto simply, ’it is not for that I am going. My man — is away — I want to light a candle for his safe return.’ She rose as she spoke.

‘May it be for your help,’ cried the woman after her. ‘There is shade the rest of the way.’

Myrto passed the walled-in lemongardens, the tiny white chapel among the rocks close to the sea; and then the

pines began. She was rested now, and a little breeze cooled her face as she walked.

Nature as a rule appeals little to those who live in the heart of her loveliest spots, but in a vague way Myrto felt the beauty of the road and the hour. The warm Sienna-red of the steep path wound up through the luminous green of the young pines. Very far below, on the right, the sea lapped lazily against the wooded crags, and the mountains of the mainland opposite stood out in one uniform tint of deep blue, against the paler blue of the sky. Nothing broke the silence but the low note of the crickets along the wayside, and the far distant striking of the waters by a many-oared trata, making for one of the little inlets below.

Long before she reached the Monastery she could see it in the distance. A long, low, white building, built round a square, after the fashion of the old Moorish palaces, half buried in the masses of surrounding trees.

The path wound in and out, now rising, now falling. It rose to the top of the cliff where the bright red earth crumbled between the gray rocks on the left; the open sea spread out in all its glorious expanse at the foot of the sheer fall of wooded crags on the right, and the Monastery gleamed white before her. Then again the path would dip suddenly, closing her in among the great pines, with nothing but their waving branches over her head, and their soft needles beneath her feet. Farther on, multitudes of young pines grew right down the hill to the water’s edge. Seen from the height, they stood out in bright golden green against the dazzling blue of the sea. On canvas the colors would have seemed too crude, too shadowless, too glaring; but enveloped in that warm, quivering sunlight, they were a perfect harmony. Three or four times the winding of the path made Myrto entirely lose sight of the Monastery, before she reached the spring under the giant plane tree overhanging the ravine.

There were some rough wooden benches under the shade of the tree. Letting her empty pitcher slip to the ground, she sank down inertly on one of these. Her aching back leaning against the trunk of the tree, her arms hanging down at either side of her body, her legs stretched out limply before her, her head drooping on her breast, and her eyes closed, she remained there, not asleep, but with all thought and sensation wiped out, save the one of rest after toil.

It was much later, almost dusk, when the thought began to shape itself in her tired brain, that she was at the Monastery, and her task not yet accomplished. She dragged herself wearily off the bench. A separate pulse seemed throbbing in each limb, and as she stooped over the spring to fill her pitcher, she felt a numb pain in her back which made her think that she could not stand upright again. However, it passed in a moment, and she rose and placed her full pitcher in the shade with a sprig of myrtle to stop up the mouth.

Then she slowly skirted the ravine, painfully climbing the broad low steps cut into the rock, leading up to the natural terrace on which stands the Monastery of the ‘life-giving spring.’

Through the covered gateway she went into the inner court, planted with orange trees. Rows of arches support the white cells above. Two or three monks, standing on the wooden gallery which gives access to the cells, looked down curiously at her as she passed under the trellis with its overhanging bunches of grapes, and stopped to lean for a moment against the tall palm outside the chapel door.

One of them called out to her that they were just going to close the chapel for the night, but she passed straight in, seeming not to have heard him.

The double-headed Byzantine eagle on the centre flag of the floor, the magnificently carved templon before her, were nothing to Myrto, nor the graves of by-gone heroes of the War of Independence, whose epitaphs she could not read.

She took two candles off the brass tray at the entrance, laying down her copper coins in exchange. She lighted the first before the icon of the venerable white-bearded Saint Nicholas, who helps all those at sea; the second and larger one she stuck carefully, after lighting it, on a small iron spike in the circle of little candles placed round the tall wax candle, in its monumental candlestick, before the Virgin’s icon.

This was quite a modern picture, the work of an Italian painter whose daughter had died, about fifty years ago, in the guest-house of the Monastery. It had been painted in gratitude for the care and attention she had received at the hands of the monks; the Virgin’s face, it is said, being that of the lost daughter. Certainly it is a sweet, gentle face, not like the dark stern-looking Madonnas of most of the Byzantine icons.

Myrto stood with bent head before it, crossing herself devoutly. She felt strangely weak and dizzy, and words seemed to have lost their meaning. No form of prayer, no connected words even, rose to her lips.

‘My little Virgin — my little Virgin, oh, my little Virgin!’ she repeated over and over again. Then she bent forward and kissed the painted hand, the smooth, white, long-fingered hand, that made her think of Katharine’s.

An old man, gray-bearded, in a rough frieze coat, came up to her out of the gloom.

‘Are you staying long?’ he asked. ‘It will soon be dark.’

‘Nay, I shall go now. I only came up to light a candle. This is it. Please leave it there, till it burns itself out, It is for my man. He is — away at sea.’

‘Be easy,’ he answered, ’no one ever touches the candles.’

They passed out of the chapel to the terrace. Over the wooded hill and the sea below, the light was fading fast.

‘You came alone?’

‘Yes; who should come with me?’

‘You are from Poros?’

‘Yes, from Poros.’

‘The way is long for you.’

‘I shall hold out,’ she said. ‘Goodnight. to you.'

‘Good-night,’ he answered; ‘God be with you.'

Myrto never clearly remembered afterwards the details of that walk home in the fast-falling darkness.

At first, forgetting her pitcher at the spring, she plunged straight down into the ravine, into a tangle of lentisk and osier bushes. But as she had an impression afterwards of pieces of broken red earthenware on the ground and of the water about her feet, she must at some time have returned for the pitcher. She had vague memories of trees looming unnaturally tall before her, of rocks that seemed to rise under her feet, of a road that seemed as endless as a dream road, of darkness, and heat, and pain, and deadly fear. At last she had laid herself down, to die, she thought, on the broad ledge of the well, where the flocks are watered outside the village. Here there must have been a period of complete unconsciousness. She woke to find Barba Stathi’s kind old face bending over her. She remembered being lifted on Kitso’s back, and then waking again on her own mattress. Then she sent the old man to fetch her neighbor, Kyra Sophoula, to her.

The small brown-faced old woman came at once. She grunted angrily, though, when she heard of the expedition.

‘One dram of good sense while you had your man with you, my daughter, would have availed you more than walking barefooted from here to the Annunciation in Tenos, if you could do it .’ Then, with a sort of rough pity for the hidden face, and writhing body, ‘I do not say the Holy Virgin and Saint Nicholas will not listen to you, but I am old and have seen much. The saints will not help a fool too often.’

Myrto had sent for the old woman in all confidence, for Kyra Sophoula was that best of all things in man or woman, in gentle or simple: she was absolutely and entirely dependable. One knew that she would never fail in any emergency, great or small, from a cut finger to sudden death.

She was sharp-tongued — no doubt about that; many knew it to their cost, more especially as she had the mysterious gift of proving suddenly well aware of secret weaknesses, which the owners fondly imagined safely hidden. She would call any one a fool with the greatest equanimity, if she thought the epithet deserved; but she would help that same fool afterwards, or even before, if the matter pressed.

In the present case the necessity was urgent, and Kyra Sophoula talked no more, but did all that could be done to help Nature; for in Poros a doctor is called only if the case is very desperate. Happily Myrto’s strong constitution and simple life helped her in her trial; perhaps even this last mad expedition had been of some use; for though she suffered much, the big clock of the Naval School had not struck midnight before her little son was born to her.

There was no circle of sympathizing neighbors to admire him, no proud father to receive him, no gun-shots were let off for joy at his birth; but Kyra Sophoula duly rubbed the tiny limbs with sugar that sweetness might follow him all his life, and did not neglect to fasten a piece of cotton-wool inside the little cap, that he might live to be white-haired. Then she laid him down beside his mother and watched them while they slept.

IV

About five days later, when the passengers from the Piræus steamer stepped out of Louka’s rowing-boats upon the quay, there was a stranger among them who stood looking curiously about him. Not only a stranger, but certainly a foreigner as well. He was a square-shouldered young man of middle height, with a fair, sunburnt skin, dressed in a suit of gray flannels, of unmistakably English cut, and closely followed by a plump little foxterrier, whose black patches on each side of his head were separated by a broad white parting.

His master shaded his eyes with his hand and looked out across the bay. He had traveled much in Greece, but had never before been to Poros.

What he saw was a blazing sun in a deep blue sky, a stretch of glittering water, the wooded hills, golden green with pines, on his right, and gray green with olives, on his left; and far away, masking the entrance by which the steamer had just come into the bay, the blue mass of the Sleeper.

‘Pretty decent, is n’t it, Pat?’

Pat looked up, cocked his ears, then, running across the quay, began vigorously sniffing at a row of empty jars set out for sale.

‘Thirsty, eh? Well, wait a minute, old fellow.’

He beckoned to a man who was setting out little tables under the awning round the old column.

‘Oristé,’ came the quick reply, ‘at your service.1

As the new-comer was a stranger of whom it was considered wise to take immediate possession, before the people at the rival inn could even discover his arrival, in a moment the master of the hotel himself was beside him, listening with admirable gravity to his halting Greek.

A room, certainly! one of the best, with a balcony to it. — Clean? Oh, that did not need a question. He had been to Athens and knew what gentlemen and ladies required.—Water for the little dog? ‘Oristé,’—at once. Yanni; Kosta; quickly a pan of water for the gentleman’s little dog!

And as Pat proceeded to slake his thirst, the hotel-keeper eyed him approvingly.

A fine little dog, truly; there was one like him at the red house on the hill, but thinner. What did the gentleman say his name was? stooping over him as he asked. ‘Paat? oh yes, Paat, Paat, good dog!’

Pat, who was admirably brought up, made a polite little movement with his tail and went on drinking.

But the gentleman was asking another question; Kyr Panayoti straightened himself up to answer.

A young lady? A stranger? Was she at his hotel? But certainly, certainly. She could not possibly have gone to the other little inn. Honest people? Oh yes, he did not wish to say the contrary, but not a fit place for a lady! What? Was she in the hotel just then? Well, he supposed so. At this hour! Where else would she be in the sun blaze?

At this moment the man at his elbow explained volubly.

‘You will pardon me,’ Kyr Panayoti continued, ‘I see I was mistaken. The servant says she left early this morning; an old man and his beast went also; and they took a basket. She said, it seems, that she would return late. I did not see the direction—no. Kosta, did you not notice which road the lady took with Barba Stathi, you stupid one ? No, unfortunately the servant also does not know. It is a pity, but —’

Jim Larcher interrupted the flow of words. ‘Very well. I will wait here. Can I have something to eat?’

‘But certainly, oristé, at once; the pilaf will be ready now in two minutes, and the red mullets are of this morning’s fishing.’

The young man crossed over to the shade and sat down.

Pat started on a little voyage of investigation on his own account, sniffed round the fishing-nets and the fruitsheds, refused with disdain the invitation to fight of a little yellow dog, begged shamelessly from an old man who was eating bread with white touloumi cheese; chased two pigeons for a little way; jumped, with remarkable agility, considering his bulk, over a pannier placed in his way by one of the boat-boys; and at last returned to his master. After lolling out a pink tongue, and panting violently for a few seconds, he sat up and begged.

‘What’s the matter, old man? Feel the heat, eh, and want me to stop it? Well, I’ve already explained that that is n’t so easy as you think. Sure to feel the heat, you know, with all that superfluous flesh of yours!’

For Pat was undoubtedly very stout. Disrespectful people had even been known to compare him to a little prize pig.

While waiting to be served, Jim pulled a letter out of his pocket, and began reading it. Though not a very lengthy one, it had occupied most of his time during the three hours’ journey from Piræus; but he read every word of the four pages twice over again, and returned a third time to the postscript.

‘Please, Jim, dear,’ he read, ‘don’t think for a single instant that I shall be too proud to ask for your forgiveness, if you come to me, or that I have written all this to avoid the awkwardness of speaking it. Why, I shall just love to do it — after dreaming of it so often.’

The man came up with the dishes, and Jim thrust the letter back into his pocket.

After his coffee, he went up to his room and attempted a siesta, after the fashion of the country. But it was maddening to lie open-eyed on his bed, listening to Pat’s contented snores. So he awoke the dog ruthlessly.

4 Come along, Pat, you lazy brute, it will be better outside, anyway.’

Pat, having been most comfortably settled, felt doubtful, but he followed dutifully out to the now deserted quay.

V

Katharine had spent most of the preceding day in Myrto’s little house, comforting and encouraging her, cooking beef-tea for her on her own little spirit-lamp, nursing the baby, trying hard to persuade Kyra Sophoula to dress it American-fashion and release its little arms from the swaddling clothes, promising that she and none other should be its god-mother.

‘What shall we name him, Myrto?’

4 Whatever your nobility pleases,’ had answered Myrto.

But her ‘nobility’ knew better.

‘What was the name of Leftheri’s father ?’ she inquired.

4 Petro.’

‘Then Petro it shall be, and if it be allowed, I will give him also the name of my own father, Paul.’

‘Why,’ cried Myrto, delighted, ‘he will have the same name-day for both names, on the twenty-ninth of June.’

‘That will be splendid. Peter Paul! It was a great painter’s name too, but I suppose you do not care about that.’

It so fell out that on the morning Jim arrived, Katharine felt the need of open air, after having been cooped up one whole day and the greater part of another in a tiny house, and had started early, accompanied by Barba Stathi and his donkey, for Poseidon’s Temple; descending, before the heat became too great, over the hills into the Monastery woods. There she stayed during the greater part of the afternoon, reading, talking to old Barba Stathi, exploring the chapel, even attempting to sketch the beautiful inner court, with its trellis of grapes and its tall palm tree in the centre.

About five o’clock they started for Poros by the Monastery road. But when they arrived at the big beach, where the fig trees grow, it occurred to Katharine that it would be far too early when she returned to the village to shut herself up in the hotel, so she explained to Barba Stathi that she would stay here by the sea, and return alone later on. She paid him generously, and dismissed him with a smile, and Kitso with a friendly pat, on their homeward way.

There is a tiny crescent-shaped beach after the big one, closed in by whiteveined gray rocks, over which the little waves tumble and foam. Katharine sat down there and watched the sea washing in between the jutting rocks in a perfect semi-circle, leaving white fringes of froth as it retreated. Beyond the point of the rocks, far away to the left, she could just distinguish a little white house, a walled-in garden with tall cypresses towering above the lemon trees, and then the headland with the sunset glow on its pines. At the extreme point two solitary trees stood out darkly against the pale pink of the sky. The red line of the Monastery road wound up through the pines, and below them the rocks dipped boldly into the purple sea. Then straight out from the rocks swept the line of the horizon, that perfect, pure blue line that surpasses any curve in beauty. The violet hills of the mainland opposite closed it in on the other side.

The whole scene was almost too perfect, its coloring too vivid. In a painting, Katharine was positive she would have criticised it as too conventionally beautiful in all its details. But in Nature the eye had nothing left to wish for. Katharine thought of her sister at Grindelwald. Not for all the snow mountains and foaming cataracts in the world would she have changed with her, though she knew Hester was convinced of the contrary, and must be contemptuously pitying her for staying behind to be broiled in Greece, without any necessity. She wondered what part of the brain or temperament it is that invests all lines and coloring of the South with such an intense charm for some people, a charm which they cannot always put into words, when lovers of the North complain so bitterly of the heat, the dust, and the monotony of constant sunshine. This made her think of the book she had with her, and open it. The author was not only a lover of the South like herself, but he put her love into words for her, for which she was profoundly grateful. The book was Rodd’s Violet Crown, without which she rarely went anywhere in Greece. Not the verses of a great poet. She knew that. But of one who had written the most tenderly of the land she loved, and who had defined its charm more perfectly than any modern author.

She opened the volume at hazard, looking up at the end of each verse.

Surely those were the hills opposite her on the mainland! And then —

Yes, there were two of them: San Giorgio and the lion-shaped Modi, in the distance.

When she came to the last verse, she smiled to hear the goat-bells tinkle on the slopes behind her, they fitted in so perfectly.

As she put the book down, its leaves fell open of their own accord at one of the last pages, and she read once more the verses she almost knew by heart.

She had not read for many minutes, but when she looked up again the glow was already fading. The purple of the sea turned to green as she watched, the violet of the hills to a dull blue, and over the rose of the sky a gray veil seemed to be slowly drawn. The little house in the distance stood out whiter against the hill, and the pines darker. A small brown fishing-boat shot out behind the rocks on the right. The two men in it sang as they rowed: a monotonous chant which died away as they disappeared round the rocks to the left. The plash of their oars came fainter and fainter for a few moments, and then ceased.

Katharine stood upright, shook her skirt free of the pebbles she had collected in her lap, picked up her basket and book, and turned to go.

From the road behind the shore came a series of short, sharp barks.

Surely, she thought, that was not a sheep dog.

The next moment a wildly-excited little white ball came tumbling down the slope, and was followed a moment later by a man in gray, walking rapidly toward her. As soon as she caught sight of the outline of his figure against the sky, she stopped suddenly. For a moment a darkness came before her eyes, and her knees trembled. The little dog jumped wildly about her, but she did not heed him.

The man came nearer. As he came he raised his hat, and just spoke her name in a low voice: —

‘ Katharine!5

When she heard his voice, she started forward, and her lips parted. But no sound came from them. They only trembled a little.

‘ Katharine! ’ he said again, hoarsely, putting out his hands.

She came two steps nearer and stretching out both her own, she laid them in his, and stood before him, her head bent so low that her face was hidden.

The man’s face flushed.

’No,’ he said, almost roughly, ‘no, don’t do that. Look at me. For God’s sake, look at me, Katharine.'

She raised her head, and their eyes met.

‘I have come, you see, as soon as you sent for me, though—if you remember — I swore I would never see you again. Tell me now, if you can, what made you say what you did to me at that awful time? It was a brutal thing to say to a man, Katharine!’

’Jim,’ and she disengaged one hand to wipe her eyes clear of the tears which had gathered in them, ‘it would be far harder for me to beg your forgiveness for the vile words I said, if I had wronged you in my thoughts for any length of time. But I never really believed them, Jim. I was angry, dear, blindly, furiously angry, and I just picked out the words I knew would hurt most terribly, as, had I been younger, I might have picked up a stone to throw at you.'

‘ I wish it had been a stone. It would have hurt much less.’

‘Yes; I know that. Jim, you can never understand, however you may try, those moments of mad anger, of cruel anger. You are so different, so good, they never come to you. When they get hold of me, I want to hurt and to hurt badly. Afterwards, when you had left me, I tried to make myself believe what I had said, as a sort of justification. Jim, I know you will be loving and dear to me always, I know you will want me to forgive myself, to forget — but you, you, can you ever quite forgive? Can you ever forget that I wanted to hurt you? Can you ever wipe out entirely? Ah, Jim, Jim,’ and her voice broke, ‘Jim, we shall always remember. There is no forgiveness that can ever make cruel words unsaid.’

The tears rolled fast down her face. Jim lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them, very tenderly.

‘No, dear, I am afraid there is n’t.’

For a moment her face was convulsed. Then she lifted her head up and tried to smile bravely through her tears.

‘Yes, Jim, I know. But we will try not to let them spoil our happiness, won’t we?’

He pressed both her hands close to him and looked into her face. ‘Dear,’ he said, ‘my own dear one, I know perfectly well that I seem a brute, and worse, not to say that no forgiveness is needed; that everything you do or say is forgiven in advance; that it is all forgotten long ago. But it would not be true. I’ve suffered horribly, dear, and you would not believe me if I said I had not. Only this you must believe. I love you so, that if you were to hurt me ten times worse, I should come back to you again, whenever you sent for me. Katharine, I can’t forget the pain all at once, dear, but I know you will take it away — and now, I only love you — I love you.’

His voice trembled as he spoke.

‘If I live,’ she said solemnly, ‘I will take all the pain away. Oh, Jim, Jim, I don’t deserve you should be so good to me.’

And then she put her arms round his neck and kissed him.

VI

‘Look here, dear,’ said Jim, presently, ‘you know my Aunt Charlotte has been staying all last spring in Athens, at the Angleterre, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I met her one day last March, when I was out shopping alone, and she stopped and spoke so nicely to me. It was so lovely of her to do it, when she might have passed me by with the chilliest of bows. I could have hugged her for it.’

‘She’s really fond of you. So you won’t be vexed, will you, that last night I told her about your letter and how things were all right with us again. You don’t mind, do you?’

Katharine gave a little start, but she answered at once, ‘Why, no, I don’t mind. Did she seem pleased, Jim?’

‘Pleased! Why she was so glad, she just sat down and regularly cried for joy. She’s an awfully good sort, is Aunt Charlotte, and she promised, any time I wired to her, that she’d come out here and stay with us for as long as we liked. How does that idea strike you? Better than returning to town just now, is n’t it?’

‘ Let’s go right, away now and cable, shall we?’

Then as they got on the road again, she stopped a moment and laid her hand on his arm.

‘Ah, Jim, just look! You have never been here before, I know. Look at that red road through the pines — we shall go there to-morrow. Look at that curve of the bay and the reflection of those pink clouds. Did you ever see anything so perfect? Jim, speak — is n’t it glorious?’

‘Pretty decent,’ acquiesced Jim, after a hasty glance round; and then, ‘Don’t ask me to look at anything else but you for a few days yet; I’ve been too famished. And photos are no good after you’ve had them for some time. They get to look like themselves, and not like the real person at all.'

‘I know,’ agreed Katharine, laughing happily.

When they came in sight of the Naval School the lights were already lighted, and by the time they reached the Narrow Beach, night was upon them, the soft summer night of Poros, star-lighted and pine-scented.

VII

It was nearly a month later, in the early dawn. The sky in the east was very faintly tinted with pink. There was a pinkish reflection on the white walls of Myrto’s little house, and every leaf of the old mulberry tree in the courtyard was clearly outlined on the pale morning sky.

‘You stay outside, Jim. She may be asleep yet, poor thing.’

Jim, nothing loath, waited with Pat beside him, while Katharine, after tapping gently, pushed open the door and went in.

He heard voices at once. Evidently Myrto was awake. He could not catch the rapid Greek, but once he fancied he heard a sort of a gasp. Then silence. Then Katharine’s voice again, low and pleading, then slightly raised.

At last the shutters of the low window were thrown open and he heard himself called.

Katharine was standing at the open window, framed in the vine that grew around it, with the little child in her arms.

‘Jim, come and help me; I can’t persuade her that she must go to him. She thinks he will not want her.’

Myrto staggered past Katharine and stood in the doorway, her hands tightly pressed against her breast. She looked very white, and her eyes were fixed.

’And if he should send me away from him?’ she said in a choking voice.

Jim saw that Katharine was on the verge of tears, whereupon he summoned up his best Greek to come to the rescue.

‘No,’ he said, ‘never will he send you away. He wishes to see you very much, so much that he fears to come to you.’

‘He fears! — he fears!’ she repeated. ‘Oh, my man, my man!’

Suddenly she sank down beside the door-post, and began sobbing violently, hiding her face in her arms.

In an instant Katharine was bending over her, trying to make her cease, thrusting the child into her arms.

‘Take it, Myrto. Take it and go. Take the wee creature to his father, who has never seen him. The boat stands out there near the Rock of the Cross. All the men left it last night. Only Leftheri remained on board. Go, I tell you, go!’

At last they persuaded her. She rose, tied her kerchief over her head, wrapped a shawl round the child. As she closed the door and turned toward the sea, Katharine, who knew many of the island phrases, said, ‘May his return be joyful to you.’

Myrto stopped and turned her face toward them, with the tears still streaming down her cheeks. 4 Whether he return with me or not, God lengthen your years, you who have been so good to me, and may your eyes never see parting.’

They smiled their thanks and stood together, looking after her, and she went down the steep street with the soft burden in her arms.

She walked past the deserted square, past the market-place, where a few early sellers were setting out their wares, and straight along between the smaller houses of the village and the line of moored boats, toward the Rock of the Cross.

Three or four people looked after her, curiously, but she never saw them. A girl whom she pushed unconsciously out of her way, called out angrily after her, but she paid no heed to the cries. The child whimpered and she hushed it mechanically, without looking at it. Once she stumbled over a net, and the old man who helped her up, said, ‘Surely the net is big enough before your eyes. And carrying a child, too! Are you blind, my good woman?’

But she never answered him.

The boat, a large, blue-painted one, with its sails spread open to dry, was moored close to the sea-wall. A broad plank led from the shore to the lowdeck.

Myrto knew it at once for a Poros boat which often carried lemons to Constantinople.

A little yellow dog came to the edge of the boat, and barked at her persistently. He seemed the only live thing on board.

Without pausing, only holding the child a little closer to her, she placed her foot on the sloping plank and stepped firmly up, on to the little deck.

There she staggered and caught at a rope to steady herself. Her limbs were heavy and numb, and her head felt as though she walked in a dream.

At last it seemed to her that she heard a movement below, like the drawing of a wooden stool across the floor. She advanced noiselessly to the dark opening leading to the small cabin, and looked down.

A man was there alone, seated before a table, his head buried in his arms.

Suddenly Myrto seemed to awaken, and with an inarticulate cry, just as she was, with the child in her arms, she half climbed, half flung herself down the stairs toward him.

It was long after sunrise when the man and the woman, with their child in his arms, climbed up the steep cabinstairs and stepped out together into the light.