‘Welcome,’ said Anthoula, directing that virginal smile from above her razed beard onto the returned traveller. The kyria, she said, and pointed, was at home and on the terrace.

There, indeed, was Kikitsa, leaning out over the parapet.

Maro approached her through the white light of marble, still not a glare, for it was only spring.

‘ . . . beside the rose-coloured ramparts, under a pomegranate tree, looking seawards. . .’ Maro quoted from memory.

‘What a disease alliteration used to be!’

The two friends embraced with a formal tenderness. Maro was surprised to encounter the bones of Kikitsa Alexiou’s cheek.

‘This time one can see Hymettus,’ the visitor remarked.

‘Hymettus? Everything! Everything! Just like before.’

She led Maro across the marble tesserae, everywhere, everywhere.

‘It is nice?’

Maro realized she was still holding Kikitsa’s hand.

Then when they had gone in, into the little saloni, like a cabin on board the ship of the world, and Anthoula had brought cold water and green figs, and the two women had seated themselves on a coarse-covered, intimate sofa, Kikitsa said:

‘So you see it is the same. Only different.’

She was certainly thinner, almost young, almost lithe.

‘It is certainly more complicated than that,’ Maro Hajistavrou replied.

‘It is quite a mosaic,’ Kikitsa said. ‘First – you will remember I had taken a job – the amiable old creature died, and left me a little something.’ She blushed. ‘Virtuous relationships are always the most difficult to explain. But there it is. Or was. At the same time Aleko wrote his book, his great work which he had always been planning, which he had started already while you were here, his Sacrifices to Independence. The War of Independence, you know, told strictly from our point of view.’ Here, at least, Kikitsa lowered her eyes, and closed one of the many meticulous pleats in her raw-silk skirt. ‘So, putting one thing and another together, we were able to take this apartment. Here we are!’

She laughed. Rather sadly.

‘It is lovely!’ Maro said, and laughed.

‘More convenient. Much more space.’

‘And Aleko is out?’

‘Aleko is at the library. He is writing somebody’s life. Oh, some Greek. Something historic. There will be others. It pays.’

‘Then Aleko is successful!’

‘Yes. You must not think that because it has happened, he has given up any of his ideals. His style has remained perfect. The purest of all popular Greek.’

‘And do they understand?’

‘Well, anyone is at liberty to put his own interpretation on the written word.’

Maro had discovered a fig seed between her teeth.

‘And the cats?’ she asked, because she ought to.

‘There are no cats.’

‘No cats!’

‘Aleko refused to let me keep my cats.’

It was Kikitsa who discovered the half-built apartment block on the edge of the city. A winter sunshine flowered for a moment on the empty shelves, and fluttered to earth amongst the marble chips. She had run about the roof with the ungainly, little-girl’s action she affected under the influence of emotion. From under their dusting of marble the workmen had laughed at the crazy thing.