Was it the Kyria Alexiou, then, who suddenly sprang on the stump of one of the martyred trees? Her teeth glittered in the moonlight

Long, long moments, passed.

Then it was the Kyrios Alexious who sprang. The scents, the cold draughts of air were quite intoxicating. The Kyrios sprang as though he had been wound up for it. How his trouser-legs streamed black in his wake. As the Kyria Kikitsa leaped away, as white by moonlight as the stump from which the resin had run, Anthoula did not exactly see, but knew he had fastened his teeth in the nape of the white neck.

Beyond, where the moonlight was dappled with darkness, all was a wrestling of light with dark.

Did Kyria Alexiou shriek?

Kyra Photini began to pant

‘Did you see? Did you hear, Anthoula? What is happening?’

But Anthoula turned. She shuffled in her felt slippers.

‘What is it?’ Kyra Photini followed moaning. Tell, Anthoula mou! Why shouldn’t you tell?’

Kyra Photini’s buttocks went jiggle joggle as she ran to keep up.

But Anthoula laughed. She scuttled in her felt slippers.

‘How is a creature to know?’ Kyra Photini complained.

And her buttocks went plop plop.

Anthoula laughed and laughed.

‘Some people,’ she said, more for herself than her companion, ‘some people find the cat that suits them.’

There the two old women crossed the street, and the familiar doorway received them.

When the Hajistavri were ready to leave, their faces grew grave simultaneously.

‘Do you think we ought?’ Maro considered.

‘It is up to you, sugar.’

She frowned her husband’s distasteful endearment off, and the face in the mirror supported her. She had had her hair set that morning by a girl who had not yet learnt how.

‘Surely it is our duty to take our leave?’ Maro Hajistavrou persisted.

‘If that is how you feel, Maro, then have them call a cab. You know I am always with you. I just ask myself whether we shall make ourselves look ridiculous. The only occasion I personally set eyes on the Alexious during our present visit was way down a country road.’

Because Maro Hajistavrou had never been made to look ridiculous, they took a taxi out to the Alexious. (The second Cadillac had been shipped home in advance.) It was an hour when the traffic alone suggested the siesta had been slept out

‘Yes, the kyrii are above,’ the janitress answered, while looking down, while addressing the visitors as though they had been foreigners.

Greeks can be so very annoying.

‘Anthoula must be out,’ Maro remarked when nobody responded to the bell.

Her hair was simply maddening her.

‘Or everybody,’ she said at last, ‘everybody could be out.’

Spiro was holding his ear to the door.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Can you really hear?’

Because he couldn’t, he did not answer.

‘I’m gonna take a look,’ he said. ‘From the terrace.’

He began to walk across the roof.

‘Ah, no, Spiro! Spiro! It isn’t done to invade other people’s privacy!’