Her natural instinct of defiant secrecy kept the flood of protest back from her lips. Already in her surprisingly definite philosophy of life, self-concealment held a sacred and imperious position. Secrecy--and her secrecy, because disguised under a superficial show of expansiveness, was the more fundamental, the more dangerous--secrecy she recognised as being both a shield and a weapon. Therefore, already apprehending that existence in a world of men was a fight, a struggle, and a pursuit, she took refuge in her citadel. And, being possessed of a picturesque imagination, she had upon a certain solemn occasion carried a symbolic key to the steps which led down to the sea from the end of the pergola of gourds, and had flung it out as far as she was able into the guardianship of the waters. She remembered this now as she sat on the parapet with Julian, and smiled to herself ironically. She looked at him with the eye of an artist, and thought how his limbs, fallen into their natural grace of relaxed muscularity, suggested the sculptural ease of stone far more than the flat surfaces of canvas. Sculptural, she thought, was undoubtedly the adjective which thrust itself upon one. In one of her spasmodic outbursts of activity she had modelled him, but, disdainful of her own talents, had left the clay to perish. Then she remembered acutely that she would not see him again. 'My mythological Julian....' she murmured, smiling. A world of flattery lay in her tone. 'You odd little thing,' he said, 'why the adjective?' She made an expressive gesture with her hands. 'Your indifference, your determination--you're so intractable, so contemptuous, so hard--and sometimes so inspired. You're so fatally well suited to the Islands. Prince of Aphros?' she launched at him insinuatingly. She was skilful; he flushed. She was giving him what he had, half unconsciously, sought. 'Siren!' he said. 'Am I? Perhaps, after all, we are both equally well suited to the Islands,' she said lightly. And for some reason their conversation dropped. Yet it sufficed to send him, stimulated, from her side, full of self-confidence; he had forgotten that she was barely seventeen, a child! and for him the smile of pride in her eyes had been the smile of Aphros. In the house, on his way through, he met Father Paul. 'Everything is known,' said the priest, wringing his hand with his usual energy. 'What am I to do? Malteios wants me to leave Herakleion. Shall I refuse? I am glad to have met you,' said Julian, 'I was on my way to find you.' 'Go, if Malteios wants you to go,' the priest replied, 'the time is not ripe yet; but are you determined, in your own mind, to throw in your lot with Hagios Zacharie? Remember, I cautioned you when we were still on Aphros: you must be prepared for a complete estrangement from your family. You will be running with the hare, no longer hunting with the hounds. Have you considered?' 'I am with the Islands.'