‘Seeing they’re here, we can hardly avoid them.’ Spiro was always so right, it hurt her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Certainly they are there!’

An aeroplane flew into the sky. It wrote in vapour, advertising Nescafe for Greeks.

‘Is it our move?’ Alexiou asked.

‘I have lost count!’ his wife laughed.

‘We may come if we are called.’

‘If we are called, we shall make up our minds.’

Suddenly the great car gave an unexpected toot, for the driver’s hand had made unintentional contact with the horn.

‘Oh, Spiro! You do embarrass me!’ Maro cried; she had to blame someone.

The Alexious were actually laughing, or so their mouths seemed to suggest by their long, lazy lines.

The car’s enormous glass and metal shell should have offered some protection, but the Hajistavri had their doubts. Only America was certain.

‘I guess these Alexious are nobody’s yardstick after all,’ Spiro Hajistavros said.

He began to turn, in a vast, though jerky sweep. The rear wheels bit into a ditch.

‘No. Oh, no!’ Maro cried, and bumped. They were never that, were they? Or were they? As I see it, one can’t bear to reject the past. Even the hateful parts of it.’

Spiro Hajistavros would ignore his wife when she opened up in that strain. Now he carried on. Already the great car was driving in the direction of America. Maro Hajistavrou’s eyes were watering with annoyance and pain.

The Alexious returned home before the rain began. Only a scurry, but it belted at the windows of the elevated flat, and in at those which were half-open. The smell of rain was overpowering, for it was the cold kind which blows through sticky shoots and opening buds.

‘Aleko,’ she said, ‘let us go out.’

‘We have just come in.’

But her bare arms were so compelling he no longer gave his objections a thought. Just as her softly beshawled arms completed the act of blandishment It seemed only natural to obey and follow.

When they went down Anthoula and Kyra Photini were standing as almost always in the doorway, and squeezed against the frame to allow their gentry to pass. The old women looked at, or down upon them, with a sly, caressing possessiveness. Kyria Kikitsa, they saw, had sleeked down her hair to the point where it reflected the light.

‘Rejoice!’ the fat janitress mumbled conventionally as they passed.

It had stopped raining, though the pine-wood was still tingling with its load of drops. The air smelled of resin, moisture, and a goat’s dung. Beyond the straggle of tomato vines the lights of human habitation did not interfere with darkness.

Were the gentry discussing? There was a drizzle of voices. Or could it have been a distant traffic.

The night was such that the two old women were driven to follow. Their slippers were silent in the wet needles.

‘My God,’ protested Kyra Photini, ‘we shall catch our deaths!’

But Anthoula did not have time to consider.

The moon, the clouds were tearing at space through the branches of the trees. The goat called. Darkness chafed the skin with a roughness of bark.