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intimation of another, final departure in the future, and suddenly cursed myself for putting in jeopardy all this heartrending beauty to which I was heir. Then the engine came alive, a great bubble of white foam boiled up astern, a girl giggled, and we were off under the wild sky of stars.
    ‘I hope it will not be rough,’ Erik’s voice said with some apprehension at my ear.
    ‘Rough? How could it be rough? It’s like a mirror, look.’
    His long gawky form leaned out over the bulwark.
    ‘It’s very dark tonight,’ he murmured.
    We sat down on the deck with our backs against a huge coil of rope. I lit a cigarette, and in the brief yellow flare of the match saw the flash of Erik’s eyes as he turned them toward me.
    ‘I think it’s time for us to talk,’ I said.
    He made a noncommittal sound. Someone walked past us, and for a second the flame of my cigarette was reproduced in duplicate on a pair of lenses.
    ‘I want to know what this little thing, this little document is,’ I said.
    There was a long silence. Erik’s answer, when it came, had the mechanical sound of something oft-repeated.
    ‘It is a document containing certain signatures, which, if we make it public at the right time, would help our cause very much. Or it might be used to put those certain people in our power. Do you see?’
    I considered this for a while, and then laughed loud and long.
    ‘Erik, you sound the perfect villain. Vich if vee make —’
    ‘But I am not the villain. I am the hero.’
    There was the faintest touch of sadness in his voice. I smoked my cigarette and watched the dark bulk of the island sliding past. Someone began to sing, and someone ordered the singer to be quiet. There was an air of apprehension aboard, though what there was to fear I could not say, unless it was the wrath of god.
    Delos received us into its little harbour. The other boats, deserted now, were moored in a line along the pier. The other passengers shuffled off into the darkness, while Erik and I stood on the sacred earth and looked about us. The brave stone lions stood outlined against the stars, and below them and around them the levelled town brooded in utter silence on its former glory, the ancient gods, the priests and princes who had been its first sons. I saw the dark handsome men, the women with their heavy tresses, the beggars and athletes, the children crowned with careless leaves, saw them all in the town miraculously rebuilt, moving through the streets with a dignity and elegance never achieved before or since, at ease in the knowledge that the god of all beauty was their protector; and standing there in that darkness, I felt one second of the deepest grief I had ever known, mourning the lost dead world. Then the bandy-legged captain passed us by, and called to us, and Erik said,
    ‘Everything is not lost.’
    I do not know what he was thinking about, but perhaps he was also mourning the barren island, and he was right, for all was not completely lost, and never could be lost. We left the harbour and the ruins, and climbed the hill. Secret winds wentwith us, and the voice of the sea was at our ears like lost music. I watched Erik’s dark form blunder over the stones ahead of me, and I realized that I loved him. I had known him for little more than a day, and in that time he had given me no cause for love, none for hatred, and yet … and yet.
    ‘Erik. Erik.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    At last we found the place, lighted, a wide shingled plateau with three plane trees and some sparse dry grass. The sea lay below us now, and on its dark distance the lights of the other island glistened, a fallen nest of stars. Above us, the hill ascended into the night. A fire was being prepared, and the lamps in the trees shed a flickering light on figures moving to and fro with bundles of kindling and dry branches. I stopped for a moment on the edge of the hill and listened to the murmur of voices, and the music of a little pipe. All was not lost.