There were times when he struggled to escape her, his physical and mental activity rebelling against the subjection in which she held him. He protested that the affairs of the Islands claimed him; that Herakleion had granted but a month for negotiations; precautions must be taken, and the scheme of government amplified and consolidated. Then the angry look came over her face, and all the bitterness of her resentment broke loose. Having captured him, much of her precocious wisdom seemed to have abandoned her. 'I have waited for you ten years, yet you want to leave me. Do I mean less to you than the Islands? I wish the Islands were at the bottom of the sea instead of on the top of it.' 'Be careful, Eve.' 'I resent everything which takes you from me,' she said recklessly. Another time she cried, murky with passion,-- 'Always these councils with Tsigaridis and the rest! always these secret messages passing between you and Kato! Give me that letter.' He refused, shredding Kato's letter and scattering the pieces into the sea. 'What secrets have you with Kato, that you must keep from me?' 'They would have no interest for you,' he replied, remembering that she was untrustworthy--that canker in his confidence. The breeze fanned slightly up the creek where they were lying on the sand under the shadow of a pine, and out in the dazzling sea a porpoise leapt, turning its slow black curve in the water. The heat simmered over the rocks. 'We share our love,' he said morosely, 'but no other aspect of life. The Islands are nothing to you. An obstacle, not a link.' It was a truth that he rarely confronted. 'You are wrong: a background, a setting for you, which I appreciate.' 'You appreciate the picturesque. I know. You are an artist in appreciation of the suitable stage-setting. But as for the rest....' he made a gesture full of sarcasm and renunciation. 'Give me up, Julian, and all my shortcomings. I have always told you I had but one virtue. I am the first to admit the insufficiency of its claim. Give yourself wholly to your Islands. Let me go.' She spoke sadly, as though conscious of her own irremediable difference and perversity. 'Yet you yourself--what were your words?--said you believed in me; you even wrote to me, I remember still, "conquer, shatter, demolish!" But I must always struggle against you, against your obstructions. What is it you want? Liberty and irresponsibility, to an insatiable degree!' 'Because I love you insatiably.' 'You are too unreasonable sometimes' ('Reason!' she interrupted with scorn, 'what has reason got to do with love?') 'you are unreasonable to grudge me every moment I spend away from you. Won't you realise that I am responsible for five thousand lives? You must let me go now; only for an hour. I promise to come back to you in an hour.' 'Are you tired of me already?' 'Eve....'