‘His life is my life. For I love him as my life.’ The words rang in my ears, seeming to echo again through the silence that followed them: they were answered in my heart by beats of living blood. ‘Was it true?’ flashed through my brain. Was it truth or stratagem, a noble falsehood or a more splendid boldness? I did not know. The words were strange, yet to me they were not incredible. Had we not lived through ages together in those brief full hours in the old grey house? And the parting in the quiet evening had united while it feigned to sever. I believe I shut my eyes, not to see the slender stately form that stood between death and me. When I looked again, Demetri and his angry comrades had fallen back and stood staring in awkward bewilderment, but the women had crowded in upon us with eager excited faces; one broad-browed kindly creature had run to Phroso and caught her round the waist, and was looking in her eyes, and stroking her hand, and murmuring soft woman’s comforting. Demetri took a step forward. ‘Come, if you dare!’ cried the woman, bold as a legion of men. ‘Is a dog like you to come near my Lady Euphrosyne?’ And Phroso turned her face away from the men and hid it in the woman’s bosom. Then came a cold rasping voice, charged with a bitter anger that masqueraded as amusement. ‘What is this comedy, cousin?’ asked Constantine. ‘You love this man? You, the Lady of the island--you who have pledged your troth to me?’ He turned to the people, spreading out his hands. ‘You all know,’ said he--‘you all know that we are plighted to one another.’ A murmuring assent greeted his words. ‘Yes, they are betrothed,’ I heard half-a-dozen mutter, as they directed curious glances at Phroso. ‘Yes, while the old lord lived they were betrothed.’ Then I thought it time for me to take a hand in the game; so I stepped forward, in spite of Kortes’s restraining arm. ‘Be careful,’ he whispered. ‘Be careful.’ I looked at him. His face was drawn and pale, like the face of a man in pain, but he smiled still in his friendly open fashion. ‘I must speak,’ I said. I walked up to within two yards of Constantine, the islanders giving way before me, and I said loudly and distinctly: ‘Was that same betrothal before you married your wife or afterwards?’ He sprang half-way up from his seat, as if to leap upon me, but he sank back again, his face convulsed with passion and his fingers picking furiously at the turf by his side. ‘His wife!’ went round the ring in amazed whisperings. ‘Yes, his wife,’ said I. ‘The wife who was with him when I saw him in my country; the wife who came with him here, who was in the cottage on the hill, whom Vlacho would have dragged by force to her death, who lay last night yonder in the guardhouse. Where is she, Constantine Stefanopoulos? Or is she dead now, and you free to wed the Lady Euphrosyne? Is she alive, or has she by now learnt the secret of the Stefanopouloi?’