I must say, the last thing I expected to hear in Sikinos was a romance, but on one of the stormy days of detention there, with the object of whiling away an hour, I paid a visit to Nikola in his clean white house in “the other place.” He met me on the threshold with a hearty “We have well met,” bade me sit down on his divan, and sent his wife—a bright, buxom young woman—for the customary coffee, sweets, and raki; he rolled me a cigarette, which he carefully licked, to my horror, but which I dared not refuse to smoke, cursed the weather, and stirred the embers in the brazier preparatory to attacking me with a volley of questions. I always disarm inquisitiveness on such occasions by being inquisitive myself. “How long have you been married?” “How many children have you got?” “How old is your wife?” and by the time I had asked half a dozen such questions, Nikola, after the fashion of the Greeks, had forgotten his own thirst for knowledge in his desire to satisfy mine. In Nikola’s case unparalleled success attended this manœuvre, and from the furtive smiles which passed between husband and wife I realised that some mystery was attached to their unions which I forthwith made it my business, to solve. “I always call her ‘my statue,’” said the muleteer, laughing, “‘my marble statue,’” and he slapped her on the back to show that, at any rate, she was made of pretty hard material. “Can Pygmalion have married Galatea after all?” I remarked for the moment, forgetting the ignorance of my friends on such topics, but a Greek never admits that he does not understand, and Nikola replied, “No; her name is Kallirhoe, and she was the priest’s daughter.” Having now broached the subject, Nikola was all anxiety to continue it; he seated himself on one chair, his wife took another, ready to prompt him if necessary, and remind him of forgotten facts. I sat on the divan; between us was the brazier; the only cause for interruption came from an exceedingly naughty child, which existed as a living testimony that this modern Galatea had recovered from her transformation into stone. “I was a gay young fellow in those days,” began Nikola. “Five years ago last carnival time,” put in the wife, but she subsided on a frown from her better half; for Greek husbands never meekly submit, like English ones, to the lesser portion of command, and the Greek wife is the pattern of a weaker vessel, seldom sitting down to meals, cooking, spinning, slaving,—a mere chattel, in fact. “I was the youngest of six—two sisters and four brothers, and we four worked day after day to keep our old father’s land in order, for we were very poor, and had nothing to live upon except the produce of our land.”