"Who was she? Oh, where did you meet her? Did you love her very much?" "I met her on a little coasting boat belonging to her father, on which I had taken passage from Chios to Smyrna. She knew no English. I knew only one sentence of modern Greek, and I was not sure of the meaning even of that. So I had to be careful. I had it from a poem which was making a noise at the time." "Oh, _I_ know," cried Patsy, "Louis is always saying it over to me: _Zoe mou, sas agapo!_ What does it mean?" "That I did not know at the time, but I know what I meant the words to mean." "Was she _very_ lovely?" "Very," said Uncle Julian. "I see you want a description, but I can only indicate. She had great dark eyes into which every sort of languid delight seemed to have been melted and concentrated, and eyelashes like the fringed awnings of a tent. When she lowered them they swept the ground, and when she lifted them it was slowly, as if their very weight fought against her will!" "Oh-o-o-h!" said Patsy, feeling with her fingers, "I have regular scrubs. You won't ever love me when you think of her, Uncle Julian." "I might," he answered, "if you had only the yellow sandals--" "No, no, tell me about her! What did you say to her?" "I said '_Zoe mou_' half a dozen times, sitting closer to her every time. I spoke lower and lower, till the last '_Zoe mou_' was whispered into her ear. "Then I risked the other part, '_sas agapo_'--and expected a box on the ear, or perhaps an appeal to her father, but instead she turned and kissed me!" "Hurrah, Uncle Julian, I'm sure so should I--if any one had the sense to talk to me like that, low and in my ear (that tickles anyway) and in an unknown tongue." "But you see the point was that the tongue was not unknown to her. She was a Greek girl and--" "But what, after all, _did_ it mean? She told you afterwards, of course." "Well," said Uncle Julian, meditating, "not exactly. I found out. I had said, '_Zoe_ mine, I love you!" "But what does '_Zoe_' mean?" "My life!" "Life of mine, I love you!" Patsy repeated, trying various tones. "Uncle Julian, you must have made love like an archangel. Without knowing it, you had said about all that there was to say, and changing your voice like that--oh, I do wish I had been that girl. I don't wonder you don't want to give me the yellow sandals. I should not even have lent them for five minutes. You must not. I shall bring them back to you. It would be a sacrilege!" "No," said Uncle Julian, "you are the brightest thing in my world, the likest the Greek girl and all the young things I once loved. It is your turn now, you small, black-headed Pictish woman!" "I am not 'small.' I am taller than you, Uncle Julian!" "I daresay, but you are slim as a willow branch. I could take you up between my finger and thumb." "If you could catch me, Uncle Julian; but, see--you could not!" With a swift spring she threw herself out of the low French window and stood on the lawn, ready poised for flight.