Malliakas was fascinated by the glass which had survived.

‘That Russian,’ Philippides told, ‘at Konya, would give receptions for me, with vodka, and many mezedes – both hot and cold – and afterwards tea from a big silver samovar.’ He paused, and confided: ‘Constantia was jealous of this Russian. She was jealous of Kyria Assimina, who had fine eyes, certainly, but a hairy mole just above her dress.’

The evening was darkening. On the slatey sky an aeroplane had begun to write something which might have been in code.

‘I remember a storm was brewing the night Kyria Assimina broke the Sèvres dishes. A shutter kept on banging. Constantia was ailing. It was her time of life. Though she was always quick-tempered, I can tell you! She said she would go away to Athens. And stay. Well, she went. When she came back – as I knew she would – she brought a girl. A young peasant from Lemnos. Aglaia, too, broke one of the glasses, but that was later.’

‘With such competition to kill you,’ Malliakas could not resist, ‘you have been very fortunate.’

Philippides loved that.

‘Oh, I will tell you everything,’ he promised, ‘if you will have the patience. It was a wonder Constantia did not kill me. From love.’

Philippides coughed. Then he said, with sudden sweet innocence: ‘People are like that, you know.’

Malliakas leaned forward. He heard the shutter banging. In Chios. Or was it inside Constantia’s head? It was most important that he should hear, see, all. And as he sipped his tea out of the opalescent cup, Philippides wove the muslin gauzes, only too willingly. Stirring his dead glass.

Later on, as he sensed he would, Malliakas became so obsessed by Constantia that he wrote her story, finished it too, and almost felt pleased. But this was still only the beginning of the affair, in the garden-house at Cologny, as he sat forward in the iron chair, and heard what he must expect, and waited quite fearfully for the return of Mrs Philippides.

In the beginning the family in Frankish Street had been unwilling to confer the daughter they valued so highly on a young man of modest breeding and uncertain means. Constantia was doubtful, too, whether to accept a lover a head shorter than herself. She would look down from under her eyelids while dismantling a pomegranate flower. Whole mornings she would spend copying extracts from Dante and Goethe into leather note-books, or dabbling in water-colour landscapes, the English landscapes she had never seen. But listening for the steely step of the small, undesirable, muscular man. Her sisters would lean out of windows and tell her when to expect. She was furious then.

She said, still looking down – she had a perfect nose: ‘Don’t you find the difference in height makes us look ridiculous?’

‘I had never thought about it,’ he replied.

‘Oh, but please don’t touch me! I hate to be touched,’ she confessed, ‘by someone who means so little to me. Even my sisters, of whom I am fond, respect my feelings.’