The Mainats were to leave next morning, but Mitsos dreaded any hour spent in inaction, and he decided to go himself at once and again travel through the night. To stop here was only to talk of Nicholas, or to grow feverish again with the hopeless, impossible hope that Suleima was still somewhere in the town. With a good horse he could reach Nauplia next day soon after dawn, and he longed with the longing of a child in some distant land for the familiar places. Here all that spoke to him of Suleima spoke in words of blood and cruelty, which stabbed and stung him into a sense of maddened rage and regret. There, perhaps, with the thrill of home about him, his anguish would change to something less terrible, and not so discordant to the image his heart held of her. Even now, when so few hours had passed, he seemed to have lived with the sorrow for a lifetime, and realized that it was for a lifetime it would abide with him. The place where he had lost all he loved had a brooding horror over it; he could not think of her as he wished to think; but by the cool bay, the dark headlands, and that beach, with its whispering reeds, surely he would find an aspect of sorrow different to this, instinct with the bitterness of something which had once been infinitely sweet, instead of with the bitterness of horror and hatred. Above all, he dreaded the moment of waking next morning, and though many morrows stretched away before him, each with its cup of remembrance coming with the light at the end of sleep, yet it would be something over to get rid of this one, to have another four-and-twenty hours with his sorrow, which perhaps might help to prepare him for the pangs of that first moment of the waking to consciousness again, and the dead weight of grief which would have to be taken up anew. Then his father was there, and oh, how Mitsos longed for that quiet, protective presence. Here, it is true, were the dear clan; but the clan, though the best of companions, gave not the fellowship he wanted now. He wanted to be alone, and yet to have some one who loved him present with silent sympathy that needed no words. Even the companionship of Yanni, who followed him with the eyes of some dumb creature that knows its master is suffering, yet cannot console him, was irksome. None understood this better than poor Yanni himself; and though he tried to keep away he could not, and followed Mitsos, unable to say a word to him, and yet unable to leave him. Mitsos rose from where he had been sitting in Petrobey's room and walked across to him. "I think I shall go home at once," he said. "It will be better that I should be there." "But not to-night, dear lad," said Petrobey, "and not alone. We are all coming to set you on your way to-morrow." Poor Mitsos nearly broke down again at this. Somehow, a kindness reached the seat of tears, while his sorrow passed it by.