'Exactly!' he exclaimed. 'It seems to you extraordinary that I should still remember Paul, or that his death should have made any impression upon me. I ought to hate you for your indifference. Sometimes I have come very near to hating you. But now--perhaps my mind is getting broader--I blame you for nothing because I believe you are simply not capable of understanding. But evidently you can't explain yourself. I love you!' he said, 'I love you!' He knew that her own inability to explain herself--her unself-consciousness--had done much to strengthen his new theories. The flower does not know why or how it blossoms.... On the day that he told her, with many misgivings, that Kato was coming to Aphros, she uttered no word of anger, but wept despairingly, at first without speaking, then with short, reiterated sentences that wrung his heart for all their unreason,-- 'We were alone. I was happy as never in my life. I had you utterly. We were alone. Alone! Alone!' 'We will tell Kato the truth,' he soothed her; 'she will leave us alone still.' But it was not in her nature to cling to straws of comfort. For her, the sunshine had been unutterably radiant; and for her it was now proportionately blackened out. 'We were alone,' she repeated, shaking her head with unspeakable mournfulness, the tears running between her fingers. For the first time he spoke to her with a moved, a tender compassion, full of reverence. 'Your joy ... your sorrow ... equally overwhelming and tempestuous. How you feel--you tragic child! Yesterday you laughed and made yourself a crown of myrtle.' She refused to accompany him when he went to meet Kato, who, after a devious journey from Athens, was to land at the rear of the island away from the curiosity of Herakleion. She remained in the cool house, sunk in idleness, her pen and pencil alike neglected. She thought only of Julian, absorbingly, concentratedly. Her past life appeared to her, when she thought of it at all, merely as a period in which Julian had not loved her, a period of waiting, of expectancy, of anguish sometimes, of incredible reticence supported only by the certainty which had been her faith and her inspiration.... To her surprise, he returned, not only with Kato but with Grbits. Every word and gesture of the giant demonstrated his enormous pleasure. His oddly Mongolian face wore a perpetual grin of triumphant truancy. His good-humour was not to be withstood. He wrung Eve's hands, inarticulate with delight. Kato, her head covered with a spangled veil--Julian had never seen her in a hat--stood by, looking on, her hands on her hips, as though Grbits were her exhibit. Her little eyes sparkled with mischief. 'He is no longer an officer in the Serbian army,' she said at last, 'only a free-lance, at Julian's disposal. Is it not magnificent? He has sent in his resignation. His career is ruined. The military representative of Serbia in Herakleion!'