She was silent that evening, so silent that Grbits, the unobservant, commented to Kato; but after they had dined, all four, by the fountain in the court, she flung aside her preoccupation, laughed and sang, forced Kato to the piano, and danced with reckless inspiration to the accompaniment of Kato's songs. Julian, leaning against a column, watched her bewildering gaiety. She had galvanised Grbits into movement--he who was usually bashful with women, especially with Eve, reserving his enthusiasm for Julian--and as she passed and re-passed before Julian in the grasp of the giant she flung at him provocative glances charged with a special meaning he could not interpret; in the turn of her dance he caught her smile and the flash of her eyes, and smiled in response, but his smile was grave, for his mind ran now upon the crisis with Herakleion, and, moreover, he suffered to see Eve so held by Grbits, her turbulent head below the giant's shoulder, and regretted that her gaiety should not be reserved for him alone. Across the court, through the open door of the drawing-room, he could see Kato at the piano, full of delight, her broad little fat hands and wrists racing above the keyboard, her short torso swaying to the rhythm, her rich voice humming, and the gold wheat ears shaking in her hair. She called to him, and, drawing a chair close to the piano, he sat beside her, but through the door he continued to stare at Eve dancing in the court. Kato said as she played, her perception sharpened by the tormented watch she kept on him,-- 'Eve celebrates your victory of yesterday,' to which he replied, deceived by the kindly sympathy in her eyes,-- 'Eve celebrates her own high spirits and the enjoyment of a new partner; my doings are of the last indifference to her.' Kato played louder; she bent towards him,-- 'You love her so much, Julian?' He made an unexpected answer,-- 'I believe in her.' Kato, a shrewd woman, observed him, thinking,--'He does not; he wants to convince himself.' She said aloud, conscientiously wrenching out the truth as she saw it,-- 'She loves you; she is capable of love such as is granted to few; that is the sublime in her.' He seized upon this, hungrily, missing meanwhile the sublime in the honesty of the singer,-- 'Since I am given so much, I should not exact more. The Islands.... She gives all to me. I ought not to force the Islands upon her.' 'Grapes of thistles,' Kato said softly. 'You understand,' he murmured with gratitude. 'But why should she hamper me, Anastasia? Are all women so irrational? What am I to believe?' 'We are not so irrational as we appear,' Kato said, 'because our wildest sophistry has always its roots in the truth of instinct.' Eve was near them, crying out,-- 'A tarantella, Anastasia!' Julian sprang up; he caught her by the wrist,-- 'Gipsy!' 'Come with the gipsy?' she whispered. Her scented hair blew near him, and her face was upturned, with its soft, sweet mouth.