‘A picture would be nice for them to have,’ Maro decided.

‘Sure,’ Spiro said, and smiled.

Founded in early poverty, his teeth had always dazzled her.

‘Provataki, provataki ...’ Kikitsa sang, and suddenly transposed into the darker key of the midnight alleys: ‘To ga-ta-ki MOU!’

Then, with equal facility, she began to laugh, and said in her hoarser tone of voice:

‘You and Aleko have got together in such an ungainly group, chère Marouline. You are all elbows, all angles. Your legs make an ugly tripod.’

Suddenly Maro saw how Kikitsa’s eyes, looking from between the fat, were the eyes of the girl she herself had created, and feared as much as loved.

But at once Kikitsa was poured back into the channel of her own complacency.

‘I shall tell you about my cats,’ she announced.

Spiro was fitting up his little tripod. He was as totally absorbed as masculine men are able to become. If he was the least bit distracted, it was the rich man wondering whether those present could take him seriously enough, whether they would appreciate his expertise. In any case, his muscular, not yet aged hands managed the tripod masterfully.

‘I shall tell you about my cats,’ Kikitsa Alexiou repeated, sinking her chin to emphasize.

Spiro began to motion with his hands.

‘Come along now,’ his assistant ordered.

Playing this expensive, adult game, Maro, too, was expert in her way, at the same time sensible, for she realized the limits of her powers, the point at which she must give in. So now she said:

‘Aleko and I shall group ourselves around Kikitsa. Since she has made herself comfortable.’

Spiro was looking down into his camera. She could see his very accurate parting.

‘There is Hairy. He came first,’ Kikitsa was telling. ‘And I do not love Hairy. Not as I ought. But try. There is nothing so sad as a cat that isn’t loved.’

Maro felt she could begin to scream. She could feel the tic in her left eyelid.

Spiro had walked up and was taking a reading on the exposure meter. His subject might have been a heap of stones.

‘That devil, Ronron, she doesn’t count, she is herself, or seven others pulling at her teats. Epta, vre! And only one of them apricot!’

‘All his work is in Ektachrome,’ Maro whispered.

Spiro had walked back to the camera. There was tension in his shoulder-blades.

‘Do you want me to stop talking?’ Kikitsa asked. ‘But of course it’s different when they take a picture nowadays. They used to put your neck in a vice. Now you can do anything you like.’

A little boy had approached, and was offering them rose tomatoes the size of large cherries.

‘Vlepete!’ Kikitsa exclaimed. ‘A gift of the people! A true love-offering!.’

If her mind had not been otherwise involved, she might have enjoyed tears.

‘But Apricock,’ she said, ‘I had got to Apricock.’

This could have been the moment Spiro Hajistavros had waited for, to prove an unimpaired dexterity. There was no trace of elderliness in the stance of his rather springy legs.