"That you might treat me as you treated the cousin Christos, to whom I am so like? The words are from your own mouth, Capsina, not from my moon-crescent, as you are pleased to call that where I put my food." The Capsina flushed ever so slightly. "Ah, you talk nonsense," she said, quickly. "I do, too, being a woman; I know it; but that is no excuse for you." Mitsos took the pipe out of his mouth and made a mock bow. "What the Capsina does is good enough for me to do," he said. The girl smiled back at him, her heart beating a little quicker than its wont, and sat for a moment silent, watching him as he lounged lazily with down-dropped eyes, stirring up the live charcoal which burned in the bowl of his narghile. "Oh, it is a queer people the good God has made," she said. "I am of the clan of Capsas, you of the Mainats, and never have Mainats and Capsiots gone hunting together before. Why are we made so--you a Mainat, I a Capsiot? For, indeed, little Mitsos, you are more like the clan than Christos. Think if I had married Christos! I should have been, like the others, long before this day counting the eggs the hens have laid instead of the Turks that I have killed, and cooking the supper, and talking like one of a company of silly sparrows in a bush. Why is it that one thing happens to me, and not another? Why did you meet Suleima? Why--" And her voice was a little raised and tremulous, and she stopped abruptly, though her silence half strangled her. She seemed unable to exchange an ordinary word with him without letting her sex obtrude itself. If she was never to be aught but a comrade to Mitsos, it would be something, at any rate, to make him know how much more he was to her. Her fierce, full-blooded nature, accustomed to impose its will on others and to exercise no control on itself, if baffled in the first respect might at least realize the other. She was hurt; each day of her life hurt her; at least, she could cry aloud. But the mood passed in a moment: Mitsos was full of the thought of Suleima, whom he would see that evening. He would think her mad, or worse; and still, he would not care. She would cease even to be a comrade to him. Mitsos had not noticed the raised voice nor the abrupt breaking off. He was dimly suspicious that the Capsina was making metaphysical remarks to which politeness required an answer, and he frowned and shook his head hopelessly to himself, there being no subject of which he knew less. But the sudden introduction of Suleima into the question made things clearer. "Suleima?" he said. "Why did I meet her? Oh, Capsina, how could it have been otherwise? Tell me that. For I could not be myself without her. Oh, I cannot explain, for God, in His wisdom, made me a fool!" he cried, and he puffed away at his pipe. "And tobacco is always tobacco," remarked the Capsina, justly enough.