‘Nay, he did nothing,’ said she. ‘He talked with Vlacho awhile, and then they went away, and he bade me tend my lord, and went himself to seek the Lady Euphrosyne. Presently he came back with her; her eyes were red, and she wept afresh when she saw my poor lord; for she loved him. She sat by him till Constantine came and told her that you would not go, and that you and your friends would be killed if you did not go. Then, weeping to leave my lord, she went, praying heaven she might find him alive when she returned. “I must go,” she said to me, “for though it is a shameful thing that the island should have been sold, yet these men must be persuaded to go away and not meet death. Kiss him for me if he awakes.” Thus she went and left me with my lord, and I fear he will die.’ She ended in a burst of sobbing. For a moment there was silence. Then I said again: ‘Who struck the blow, woman? Who struck the blow?’ She shrank from me as though I had struck her. ‘I do not know; I do not know,’ she moaned. But the question she dared not answer was to find an answer. The stricken man opened his eyes, his lips moved, and he groaned, ‘Constantine! You, Constantine!’ The old woman’s eyes met mine for a moment and fell to the ground again. ‘Why, why, Constantine?’ moaned the wounded man. ‘I had yielded, I had yielded, Constantine. I would have sent them--’ His words ceased, his eyes closed, his lips met again, but met only to part. A moment later his jaw dropped. The old lord of Neopalia was dead. Then I, carried away by anger and by hatred of the man who, for a reason I did not yet understand, had struck so foul a blow against his kinsman and an old man, did a thing so rash that it seems to me now, when I consider it in the cold light of memory, a mad deed. Yet then I could do nothing else; and Denny’s face, ay, and the eyes of the others too told me that they were with me. ‘Compose this old man’s body,’ I said, ‘and we will watch it. But do you go and tell this Constantine Stefanopoulos that I know his crime, that I know who struck that blow, that what I know all men shall know, and that I will not rest day or night until he has paid the penalty of this murder. Tell him I swore this on the honour of an English gentleman.’ ‘And say I swore it too!’ cried Denny; and Hogvardt and Watkins, not making bold to speak, ranged up close to me; I knew that they also meant what I meant. The old woman looked at me with searching eyes. ‘You are a bold man, my lord,’ said she. ‘I see nothing to be afraid of up to now,’ said I. ‘Such courage as is needed to tell a scoundrel what I think of him I believe I can claim.’ ‘But he will never let you go now. You would go to Rhodes, and tell his--tell what you say of him.’ ‘Yes, and further than Rhodes, if need be. He shall die for it as sure as I live.’ A thousand men might have tried in vain to persuade me; the treachery of Constantine had fired my heart and driven out all opposing motives.