"I've no doubt it's juicy," replied Curtis, "but I couldn't eat it to save my life. It looks as though it could see. Excuse me, Kyr' Demarche," he continued in Greek, "I do not care for the eye. If you will give me a little more of the meat, please--" and he passed his plate. "Not like the eye!" shouted everybody in astonishment. Lindbohm took the succulent morsel from Curtis' hand, and swallowed it with a loud sipping sound, as though it were an oyster. "Kalo! kalo!" he exclaimed, smacking his lips. And so the feast wore on. When it was not possible for anybody to eat another mouthful, Turkish coffee was prepared over the miller's _foufous_, two or three little portable stoves, circular and made of sheet iron; and cigarettes were lighted. Under the soothing influence of the mild Cretan tobacco silence fell again, disturbed only by the soft splashing of waters. Through a rift in the branches of the giant oak Curtis could see the bright, silver bow of the new moon, and, far below, a glittering star, like the tip of an arrow shot athwart the night. The girls were tumbling the flowers into a pile beneath the lamp: bright red geraniums, clusters of the fragrant heliotrope, April roses, small, red and very sweet; aromatic basil, myrtle with its bridal green. Then they sat down about the heap and began to weave garlands, using the myrtle as a background for the pied coloring of the blossoms. A nightingale sang somewhere among the trees behind the old mill, the waters never ceased to murmur and gurgle in the moonlight, and a faint breeze from the far sea brought a message of cherry trees in bloom. A young man sitting on the ground with his back against the tree played a few chords upon a guitar, and sang, with much feeling, one line of a couplet: "My little angel, sugar sweet, angelic honey maiden"-- That he was not improvising was evident from the fact that all the Greeks present joined him in the second line: "Oh sweeter than cold water is, that angels drink in Eden!" For several moments he strummed the strings softly and then sang: "If I should die at last of love, my grave with basil cover;"-- and again came the response, "And when you water it perchance you'll weep for your poor lover!" The words even in Greek did not mean much, but they sounded very beautiful to those simple peasants, for they were associated with many such scenes as this; they carried the memories of some back to childhood, of others perhaps to their wedding day. They made Panayota think of the little cottage among the Sphakiote mountains, and of her mother singing as she paddled the white clothes at the brook. The words contained the untranslatable spirit of poetry, the power to move the heart by association rather than by their meaning.