though what she really wanted was a knight. Evanthia had no use for
knights, save perhaps those of Aristophanes. She, too, accepted men; but
they had to transform themselves quickly and efficiently into the
votaries of a magnetic goddess. Sighs and vows of allegiance were as
nothing at all to her. She had a divinely dynamic energy which set men
going the way she wanted. The gay young devil who had been sent packing
with the consuls and who was now sitting in his hotel in Pera was
wondering at his luck in escaping from her and scheming how to get back
to her at the same time. Yet so astute had she been that even now he did
not suspect that she was scheming, too, that she was in an agony at
times for the loss of him, and talked to Mrs. Dainopoulos of killing
herself. She was scheming as she came walking among the grass-plats at
the base of the Tower and saw Mr. Spokesly descend from a carriage and
take a seat facing the sea. She came along, as she so often did in her
later period, at a vital moment. She came, in her suit of pale saffron
with the great crown of black straw withdrawing her face into a
magically distant gloom, and holding a delicate little wrap on her arm
against the night, for the sun was going down behind the distant hills
and touching the waters of the Gulf with ruddy fire. She saw him sitting
there, and smiled. He was watching a ship going out, a ship making for
the narrow strait between the headland and the marshes of the Vardar,
and thinking of his life as it was opening before him. He took out a
cigarette and his fingers searched a vest-pocket for matches. They
closed on the emerald ring and he held the cigarette for a while unlit,
thinking of Evanthia, and wondered how he could make the gift. And as he
sat there she seemed to materialize out of the shimmering radiance of
the evening air, prinking and bending forward with an enchanting smile
to catch his eye. And before he could draw a breath, sat down beside
him.
"What you do here?" she asked in her sweet, twittering voice. "You wait
for somebody, eh?"
"Yes," he answered, rousing, "for you."
"Ah--h!" her eyes snapped under the big brim. "How do I know you only
tell me that because I am here?"
Her hand, gloved in lemon kid, was near his knee and he took it
meditatively, pulling back the wrist of it until she drew away and
removed it herself, smiling.
"Eh?" she demanded, not quite sure if he had caught her drift, so
deliberate was his mood. He took the ring out of his pocket and grasped
her hand while he slid the gem over a finger. She let it rest there for
a moment, studying the situation. No one was near them just then. And
then she looked up right into his face leaning a little towards him. Her
voice caught a little as she spoke. It was ravishing, a ring like that.
For a flicker of an eyelash she was off her guard, and he caught a
smoulder of extraordinary passion in her half-closed eyes.
"You like me," she twittered softly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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