I was introduced to all the neighbours, to the visitors and the
natives, and of course invested with much importance as one who wrote
books, had no fear, who even intended pilgrimaging to Jerusalem.
"You sleep under the open sky--that means you have outlived fear,"
said Varvara Ilinitchna with some innocence.
Our next-door neighbour was a beautiful Greek girl, a veritable Helen,
for the sake of whose beauty one might give up all things. Young,
elegant, serpentine; clad in a single garment, a light cinnamon gown
clasped at the waist; no stockings, her legs bare and brown; on her
head a Persian scarf embroidered with red and gold tinsel; her face
white, with a delicate pink flush over it; hair and eyes black as
night, but also with a glitter of stars. Wherever she walked she was a
picture, and whether she was working about the house, or idling with
a cigarette on the verandah, or running over the sand to spank
mischievous boys who had been trespassing, she was delicately
graceful, something to watch and to remember. I shall remember
her chiefly in the setting of the night when the moon cast her
lemon-coloured beams over the sea.
"Very beautiful and very young," said my hostess, "but already she has
a history. She is only eighteen, but is married and has run away from
her husband.
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