Page:The vintage; a romance of the Greek war of independence (IA vintageromanceof00bensrich).pdf/25

 as others. You have brought disgrace on me, and on our dead, and on our living, and I would sooner have seen you dead yourself than hear this from your lips!"

"They were six to one," said Andrea, "and they left me for dead. Would to God they had killed me."

"Would to God they had killed you," said his father, "and her too."

"The fault was not mine. Will you forgive me?"

"Yes, when the fault is wiped out by the death of Theodora."

"Of Theodora? What has she done?"

"She will grow up in shame, and mate with devils. Go!"

Five years passed before they met again. But one day Andréa's father, left lonely in his house, moved by some vague desire which he hardly understood himself, saddled his mule and went to Nauplia, whither Andréa had gone. He was very old and very feeble in body, and perhaps he felt that death could not be far from him and to Andréa's cry of welcome and wonder—"I have come to you, my son," said the old man, "for otherwise we are both alone, and—and I am very old."

Day by day he used to sit looking up and down the road for Theodora. There was a bend in it some quarter of a mile farther up, and sometimes, when the spring days were warm to his bones, he would hobble up to the corner and sit waiting for her there, where he could command a longer stretch of country. But Theodora came not, and one evening, when he came back, he sank into a chair without strength and called Andréa to him.

"I am dying," he said, "and this is no season to waste idle words. When Theodora comes back"—he