"Let him come here? Now?" asked Marinina, her laughing, smoke-grey eyes looking with mockery into Juliet's. Then she gave a little jerk of her shoulders. "All right, as you wish. But for him it is a rare one!" She opened her mouth in a laugh of noiseless joy. Then she pointed down to the child, who was heaping lemons against his little chest. "Look how beautiful the child is! That, certainly, will please him, poor thing. Then I'll bring him." "Bring him," said Juliet. The old woman scrambled rapidly up the track again. Maurice was standing grey-faced, in his grey felt hat and his dark grey suit, at a loss among the vine terraces. He looked pathetically out of place, in that resplendent sunshine and the grace of the old Greek world; like a blot of ink on the pale, sun-glowing slope. "Come!" said Marinina to him. "She is down here." And swiftly she led the way, striding with a rapid stride, making her way through the grasses. Suddenly she stopped on the brow of the slope. The tops of the lemon trees were dark, away below. "You, you go down here," she said to him, and he thanked her, looking up at her swiftly. He was a man of forty, clean-shaven, grey faced, very quiet and really shy. He managed his own business carefully, without startling success, but efficiently. And he confided in nobody. The old woman of Magna Græcia saw him at a glance: he is good, she said to herself, but not a man, poor thing. "Down there is the Signora!" said Marinina, pointing like one of the Fates. And again he said "Thank you! Thank you!" without a twinkle, and stepped carefully into the track. Marinina lifted her chin with a joyful wickedness. Then she strode off towards the house. Maurice was watching his step, through the tangle of Mediterranean herbage, so he did not catch sight of his wife till he came round a little bend, quite near her. She was standing erect and nude by the jutting rock, glistening with the sun and with warm life. Her breasts seemed to be lifting up, alert, to listen, her thighs looked brown and fleet. Her glance on him, as he came like ink on blotting-paper, was swift and nervous. Maurice, poor fellow, hesitated, and glanced away from her. He turned his face aside. "Hello, Julie!" he said, with a little nervous cough--"Splendid! Splendid!" He advanced with his face averted, shooting further glances at her, as she stood with the peculiar satiny gleam of the sun on her tanned skin. Somehow she did not seem so terribly naked. It was the golden-rose tan of the sun that clothed her. "Hello, Maurice!" she said, hanging back from him. "I wasn't expecting you so soon." "No," he said, "No! I managed to slip away a little earlier." And again he coughed awkwardly. They stood several yards away from one another, and there was silence. "Well!" he said, "er--this is splendid, splendid! You are--er--splendid! Where is the boy?"