THE VINEYARD
"Dig we deep around the vines,
Give the sweet spring showers a home,
Else the fairest sun that shines
Sends no sparkle to our wines,
Lights no lustre in the foam."
He could not see the singer; all he saw was the circle of black night, the faint lines of his boat a shade blacker against it, and just ahead the white glimmer of tho wall. The voice, low and sweet, came out of the darkness like a bird flying through a desert—a living thing amid death. Mitsos stood perfectly still, strangely and bewilderingly excited. Then he took up his oar and turned the boat's head round, rowed a few strokes out, and waited again. But the voice had ceased.
He felt somehow unaccountably shy, as if he had intruded into another's privacy; but having intruded, he was determined to make his presence known. So just as the sail caught the wind again he stood up in the stern, and in his boyish voice answered the unseen singer with the second verse:
"Dig we deep, the summer's here;
Saw we not among the eaves
Summer's messenger appear,
Swallows flitting here and there,
Through the budding almond leaves?"
The boat bent over to the wind, the white line streaked the water, and he hissed off into the night again.
He sat down, let go of the tiller, and let the boat run on by itself. He had never known that that common country song was beautiful till he had heard a voice out of the darkness siug it—a voice low, sweet, soft, which might have been the darkness itself made audible. Who was this woman? How did she, a Greek, come to be in
79
