away with the tray in her hand, ascending the stairs as though
rehearsing an entrance, and stood stock still outside Mr. Spokesly's
door, listening.
Mr. Spokesly was listening, too. He had heard the slip-slop of the loose
slippers, the tinkle of spoon against china, and then a faint tap. He
went over to the door and pulled it open.
"You!" he said, with a thrill. He could not have said a word more just
then. She smiled and held a finger to pursed lips to enjoin silence. He
stood looking at her, hypnotized.
"Drink coffee with me?" she whispered sweetly, holding up the tray. And
then she moved on along the passage, looking back over her shoulder at
him with that smile which is as old as the world, the first finished
masterpiece of unconscious art.
She led the way to a darkened room, set the tray down, and pushed the
green shutters away, revealing a wooden balcony with chairs and a green
iron table. Below, in the hush of early morning, lay the road, and
beyond the trees and houses that followed the shore they could see the
Gulf, now streaked and splotched with green and gray and rose. The early
morning, charged with the undissipated emotions of the night, is a far
more beautiful hour than the evening. To Evanthia, however, who had
always dwelt amid scenes of extravagant natural beauty, this exquisite
sunrise, viewed as it were in violet shadow, the invisible sun tingeing
the snow of the distant peaks with delicate shell-pink and ivory-white,
the vessels in the roadstead almost translucent pearl in the mist, the
shore line a bar of solid black until it rose ominously in the sullen
headland of Karaburun--all this was nothing. To Mr. Spokesly it was a
great deal. It became to him a memory alluring and unforgettable. It was
a frame for a picture which he bore with him through the years, a
picture of himself on a balcony, listening to a girl in a yellow kimono
while she whispered and whispered and then sat back in her chair and
raised her cup to drink, looking at him over the rim of it with her
brilliant amber eyes.
"I don't know as it can be done," he muttered, shaking his head
slightly, gulping the coffee and setting the cup on the table. "Not so
easy, I'm afraid."
"_You_ can do it," she whispered imperiously.
"S'pose you get caught?" he replied cautiously. She waved a hand and
shrugged.
"_N'importe. C'est la guerre._ That don't matter. You can do it, eh?"
Mr. Spokesly rubbed his chin.
"I don't say I can and I don't say I can't. _He_ might be able to get
you down there as a passenger."
She shook her head vigorously, and leaned over the table, touching it
with her long filbert nails.
"No!" she said. "He says 'no good.' Nobody allowed to go Phyros, nobody
to Alexandria. Nobody. You understand?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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