Why should this impertinent suggestion of Aristides have shot the blood of anger and shame into my face? And yet it did, and the heat remained after the fellow had left me to my own reflections. I do not think that I am specially nervous or sensitive, but the shock of that idea touched me with a force that made me shrink as from a prophecy. I dreaded to meet Inarime, and almost resented her exile on my account. There may be something flattering to our masculine vanity in the fact that a beautiful girl has been sent into banishment on our account, but this balsam did not heal a certain dull ache of dismay and resentment.
In this unreasonable mood Selaka found me. He inquired after my health with measured courtliness, and suggested a variety of additions to my comfort. I was dressed now, and reclining on a sofa. Without hesitation I followed his advice to breathe the air of the terrace awhile. The broad sunshine and the open-air serenity of the scene soothed and calmed me, and I felt I could have been content to sit thus for hours watching the flapping shadows of the windmills upon the sunny hills, under the spell of the noon-day silence of nature. My host sat beside me, the inevitable cigarette between his fingers, with a sharp but kindly glance turned occasionally upon me. I imagine the question of my nationality was perplexing him, and he was, perhaps, seeking an occasion to elicit direct information from me on this point. But this did not conceal from me that the normal expression of his fine dark eyes showed the glow of an impersonal enthusiasm, doubtless lit by his long devotion to the ancients. By reason of his rough-hewn and unfinished features, he looked rather a simple good-natured peasant, removed from the sordid conflict and merely animal sensations of husbandry, than a learned pedagogue or an earth-removed philosopher; a man fond of questioning the stars and his own soul, but not indifferent to the delights of shepherd-life; capable of sparing a daisy and stepping out of the way of a burdened ant, when he walked abroad with Plato or Thucydides in his hand. It struck me that Inarime could be no vulgar glittering jewel to be thus carefully shielded from the irreverent gaze by this sage of Tenos.