“Did they know what is hidden _here_!” she exclaimed, as she alluded to this new lover, pressing her small hand over her heart while she spoke; “Could they guess the tale which I have confided to no ear save your’s—But you are weeping—your tears are bright in the moonlight—GOD forgive me! but I did not think that you knew how to weep.” “Mariaritza!” I whispered reproachfully. “Pardon! pardon!” murmured the wayward girl, winding her arm about my neck; “Our Lady have mercy on me! It is my fate ever to pain those I love. But I will talk of myself no more—Let us speak of Greece—my own beautiful Greece!—or, listen—I will sing to you a song that I ought long to have forgotten, for _he_ wrote it—Did I tell you that he, too, was an Athenian?” And without waiting for a reply, she warbled to a plaintive melody some Greek stanzas, of which the following is a free translation: THE GREEK GIRL’S SONG. My own bright Greece! My sunny land! Nurse of the brave and free! How bound the chords beneath my hand Whene’er I sing of thee— The myrtle branches wave above my brow, And glorious memories throng around me now! Thy very name was once a spell,— A watchword in the earth— With thee the Arts first deigned to dwell— And o’er thy gentle hearth The social spirit spread her gleaming wings; And made it the glad home of pure and lovely things. The snowy marble sprang to life ’Neath thy Promethean touch; The breeze with sunny song was rife: (Where now awakens such?) All that was brightest, best, with thee was found, And thy sons trod in pride thy classic ground. The burning eloquence which dips Its torch in living fire, Flowed, like a lava-tide, from lips That, from the funeral-pyre Of by-past ages plucked a burning brand, To shed new light o’er thee, thou bright and glorious land. They tell me thou art nothing now— I spurn the unholy thought! The beam is yet upon thy brow Which erst from Heaven it caught— Let then the baneful, blighting mockery cease! Still art thou beautiful, my own fair Greece! Firm hearts and glowing souls remain To love thee, glorious one! And though no hand may clasp again Thy once celestial zone, Better to worship at thy ruined shrine, Than bend the knee at one less proud and pure than thine! But the wild-eyed Mariaritza has betrayed me into a digression in which I thought not to indulge when I commenced this chapter; and I must lead back my reader to the opening sentences, wherein I was noting the sweet season-changes that we had witnessed in the East. The summer, with its luxury of leaves and flowers, had passed away; and we saw the bright green of the Asian woods grow into gold beneath the touch of autumn. Our days of pilgrimage were numbered; and Stamboul, with its mosques and its minarets, its domes and its palaces, was soon to be only a gorgeous memory.