“Well—I do feel better, though. It was so soothing—being here, sitting on your sofa, drinking tea—”

Reaping havoc, Mrs. Fanshaw added to herself, passing through the hallway behind them.

“Yes,” said Morgan, leaning over the banister once more as she went, far too quickly, down his long flight of steps. “You look quite restored.”

OUT OF ITEA

The road from Delphi to the sea is one of the safest roads in Greece—that is to say, it is possible, even on its worst bends, for two cars to pass without one of them necessarily falling into the ravine. It is a well-surfaced, well-traveled road, bounded by rocks, shrubs, and pastures, which descends first to a brief plain of olive groves and finally to the little harbor of Itea where a ferry departs every so often for Patras in the Peloponnesus. By car, the road from Delphi to Itea takes about twenty minutes; by bicycle at least twice as long.

In spring the olive groves are drenched with their pale, prolific flowering, and the port of Itea—which consists of a cluster of sun-colored, flat-roofed cubes—is as busy as its temperament will permit it to become. The handful of cars lined up to take the ferry have interesting number plates and their foreign owners sit under the thatch awning of the waterfront café awaiting their turn to drive aboard. They may have quite a while to wait—for the boat, in accordance with the Greek nautical tradition, is not likely to leave on time. However, they need not be bored and do not seem to be—they have only to look to be entertained. The café looks on the tiny port and the tiny port looks on the sea; and the sea, on all sides, reflects capes and mountains, rocky or grassed, wild or cultivated, all with that legendary significance that in Greece seems to be not merely in the eye of the beholder but some knowledge possessed by the landscape itself. Behind Itea, if they turn their backs on the sea, the waiting tourists can look up at Parnassos or at the peaks above Amphissa, or retrace with their eyes that road that winds back up to Delphi.