[Illustration: "HALF CARELESSLY SHE THREW INTO THE BOAT THE ROSES SHE HAD PICKED"]
The boat had got under shelter of the wall, and drifted windlessly near. Mitsos was still looking at her; her eyes were still cast down. She sang the first verse through, and the first two lines of the second verse, and then apparently she recollected no more, for she stopped, and from the boat Mitsos sang very softly the two lines that followed. Still, without looking up, she sang them after him; he finished the verse, and she sang the whole through.
From the bay the sun had set, but the mountains on the east glowed rosier and rosier every moment. All that Mitsos saw was a girl's slender figure wrapped in a loose white cloak, with a gold band round the waist--a hand that held two rosebuds, a face veiled up to the eyes, eyes down-dropped, and eyelashes that swept the cheek.
Then she looked up, and her eyes smiled at him, and they were as black as shadows beneath the moon.
"I will learn that another night," she said, softly, "if it be you will teach me; and this is for your teaching. Go, now; others are coming."
Half carelessly she threw into the boat the roses she had picked, and turned away.
Mitsos waited a moment longer, and then, hearing voices in the garden behind the wall, rowed quickly away. His thoughts were a song; his mind, one sweet secret frenzy, that made the heart quick and the eye bright. All the common details of life were seen and taken in by him but dimly, as sounds come dimly to a sleeper, and are but the material out of which he weaves a golden vision; for the first splendor of love, hackneyed as a theme, but as an experience from generation to generation ever new, was dawning on him.
Maria was married next morning, and Mitsos went without emotion to the wedding. The bride and bridegroom appeared to him to be admirably suited to each other.
About four o'clock that afternoon the lad was just about to set off down to the shore when his father appeared.
"We'll finish with the wine this evening," he said. "Come and begin at once, Mitsos."
"I was just going sailing," he said. "Cannot it wait till to-morrow?"
"No; it had better be finished now. Besides, you can sail afterwards. Come, it won't take a couple of hours."