"Are they at home so dear? Yet you have been with me a month now, Mitsos, and except only that you want to say good-bye to those at home before starting, I know not if you have father or mother. And it is bad manners," said she, with her nose in the air, "to ask for what one is not given." "But what is the news?" repeated Mitsos. "Good news only: the town is blockaded by land and sea, so that no Turk can go out or in. The Greek women and children with the men who do not serve--but there are few such--all left the town the night before the blockade began and have encamped on the mound of Tiryns. But in the spring the Turks will send a fresh army south, in time, they hope, to raise the siege." "Praise the Virgin!" said Mitsos; "but Nauplia will be starved out before that. I move, and my king goes as straight as a homing honey-bee into the mouth of the pigeon-livered. But there is no other way, oh, your Majesty!" The Capsina laughed. "Surely there has never been a lad yet so single of purpose," she said. "To him there is nothing in all the world but a little wooden king." "Even so, if only the news from Nauplia is good!" said Mitsos, smiling half to himself, "and if the little Turks will be kind and sail northward to us." "Yet still you do not tell me," said the girl, "and I will throw my manners away and ask. Have you a mother, Mitsos?" "No, nor father either," and he stopped, remembering what he and Suleima had said to each other as they walked beneath the stars down to the boat. "Then who is it who is so dear?" she asked, and with a sudden uprising of anxiety waited for the answer. "It is Suleima!" said Mitsos, "the little wife, and he the adorable, so she calls him, the littlest one." The Capsina stared a moment in silence. "So," she said, at length, "and you never told me that! Little Mitsos, why have you so greatly made a stranger of me?" She rose from where she sat, and with that the flame in her eyes was quenched, and they were appealing only as of a chidden dog. "Indeed, Capsina," and again "Indeed," he said; but the girl turned quickly from him and went out of the place, leaving her coffee untouched, into the dark and rain-ruled night.