'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. 'Entirely uneducated,' Christopoulos said again, shifting his shoulders as he leaned against the wall. 'That is why Paris liked her: as a contrast. She was clever enough to know that. Contrasts are always artistically effective.' He went off, pleased, to repeat his facile epigram to the Danish Excellency. Madame Lafarge was looking round to see whether the audience had approved of the innovation. The audience was waiting to hear the expression of an opinion which it might safely follow. Presently the word, 'Uneducated' was on every lip. Julian remained at the window, chained there by his natural reserve and shyness; he looked up at the lighted chandeliers, and down at their reflection in the floors; he saw the faces of people turned towards him, and the back of their heads in the mirrors; he saw Armand, the French secretary, with the face of a Persian prince, offering red sirop to Madame Kato. He wished to go and speak to her, but his feet would not carry him forward. He felt himself apart from the talk and the easy laughter. Presently Mlle Lafarge, seeing him there alone, came to him with her awkward and rather touching grace as a hostess. 'You know, I suppose,' she said to him, 'that Madame Kato is a friend of Eve's? Will you not come and speak to her?'