‘Don’t worry’ – she laughed – ‘I shall not make any attempt on infinity today! Today is a day of little cats’ tongues!’

After that Kikitsa did something so extraordinary it was difficult to recall in detail, only as a scurry of bronze, of furred light, and the crackle of dried heather twigs.

‘See?’ Kikitsa breathed as soon as she had withdrawn. ‘A little, thin, cat’s tongue!’

Maro’s mouth had melted for a moment in the sun.

‘And you, chrysoula,’ murmured Kikitsa through her teeth, ‘are a kind of little, thin cat.’

For a second, locked together, their thighs had something of the duplicity, the elasticity, of softest cat-flesh bundled together in the sun.

At once the two girls sat up, and began to arrange their hair slightly.

Kikitsa had pointed out that it was perhaps a kilo to the convent at Ayia Varvara, where they might persuade a nun to give them milk.

Maro had followed drowsily.

But was now protesting, a middle-aged woman in a hat.

‘Ach, Ki-ki-tsa!’

Her heart was jumping alarmingly inside her Saks Fifth Avenue dress.

Then Maro Hajistavrou was shocked to find she had drawn blood on her friend Kikitsa Alexiou’s arm.

Kikitsa laughed, smoothing her mouth. Her eyes were positively fragmentary.

‘Lick it, Maro!’ she invited.

Mrs Hajistavrou had never been so horrified. While drawn to the beads of crimson blood in the golden down of Kyria Alexiou’s arm.

‘Are we crazy?’

‘Who shall answer?’

Just then Aleko Alexiou came in, the great man himself, with a considerable thickness of manuscript beneath his arm. Maro Hajistavrou did not remember to have seen him kempt, not to to say downright handsome before.

‘Oh,’ she said at once, ‘I have to congratulate you, Aleko, on your great success.’

‘Success of a kind,’ he replied with a nonchalance she did not associate with Aleko. ‘At least we have this apartment,’ he said.

‘May we offer you an ouzo?’ Kikitsa asked.

Maro did not think she would take an ouzo. She was drunk enough already. Her heart bumping. She could smell, she was convinced, the scent of Aleko Alexiou’s tweed. Or was it heather?

‘What does it feel like to be a successful man?’

She heard her voice begin to nicker foolishly.

But Aleko Alexiou had been prudent enough to leave the room, and all she could do was try to remember the details of his magnificent head. She had even failed to inquire which of the heroes of the Independence he was engaged in writing about.

‘Is it Capo d’Istria?’ she babbled.

Kikitsa was looking down the front of her dress.

‘It is not.’ She smiled.

Neither bothered. Mrs Hajistavrou was gathering up her gloves.

‘We must arrange,’ she said.

‘You may ring me now. We have a telephone.’

Kikitsa was smiling with the corners of her mouth.

‘Yes, I shall call you.’

Though, for the moment, she had not the slightest intention.

Kyria Alexiou took Mrs Hajistavrou across the apartment to the door. The sound of silk accompanied them.