"Then let us do so now. It is thus: I do not want it, for it was not for that I came, and I would rather that you gave it to the war fund." The Capsina turned a little away and played with the end of a rope lying near her. "Then why was it you came?" she asked, unable not to give Mitsos the opportunity her heart knew he would not take. He frowned. "Why? Why?" he repeated. "Was there not reason enough, and are not the reasons justified? Or"--and he smiled--"or shall I make pretty speeches to you?" "The Virgin defend me!" said the Capsina, with leaden calmness, again shrinking from what she had encouraged. "But you are absurd, little Mitsos. Are you to go home to--what is her name?--to Suleima empty-handed, and have no fairing for her and the baby?" "Oh, Suleima wants no presents," said he. "You mean she will be so happy when she sees you that--Oh, saints in heaven!" she broke off. Then, as Mitsos stared at her with the quiet, habitual wonder with which he regarded her sudden outbursts as common phenomena: "You think she will be so pleased to see you she will have no thought for aught else?" Mitsos blew out a great blue cloud of smoke before he replied. "It is thus," he said. "Had Suleima been away all this time, what, think you, should I have cared what she brought me so long as she brought herself? And I think--yes, I think it is not different with her." "Oh, you men-folk make me mad!" she cried. "Little Mitsos, you are just exactly like my cousin Christos, and that, I may tell you, is no compliment from my lips. He could not understand, his mind was simply not able to appreciate how it was that I preferred the sea, and the brig, and--and Michael, to marrying him. 'What more can the girl want,' says he to himself, 'than to have a husband such as me?' And, indeed, you think, like Christos, that a woman has no other wish. Is a woman not a human thing? Because Suleima is so fortunate a girl as to have this great, fine Mitsos for her husband, is there nothing else in the world she can desire?" The Capsina brought the words out like hammer-blows on an anvil. Then she went on hurriedly, reverting to the main topic. "About the money," she said; "if you won't take it as prize-money, take it as wages, for, indeed, I think you are worth your pay, though lazy and given to tobacco, and I am not dissatisfied with you. Not--not as wages, for the Mavromichales, you say, have never accepted wages. The more fools they. Take it as a present from me. Does that offend you? I see it does, for you make a moon-crescent of your mouth. Then give it to Suleima as a present from me. It offends you still, for though you make your mouth straight, your nose is in the air. But, before God, little Mitsos, you are the queerest and the proudest lad I have ever seen. You should have been of the clan of Capsas."