the mysterious third person in the house. I decided that a weakminded wife was the most likely answer; it would explain the seclusion, the taciturn servants. I tried to make up my mind about Conchis too. I was far from sure that he was not just a homosexual; that would explain Mitford's inadequate warning, though not very flatteringly to me. The old man's nervous intensity, that jerking from one place to another, one subject to another, his jaunty walk, the gnomic answers and mystifications, the weird ffinging-up of his arms when I left--all his mannerisms suggested, were calculated to suggest, that he wanted to seem younger and more vital than he was. There remained the peculiar business of the poetry book, which he must have had ready to puzzle me. I had been swimming a long time that first Sunday, far out in the bay, and he could easily have slipped the things onto the Bourani end of the beach while I was in the water. But it seemed an oddly devious means of introduction. Then what did my "being elect" mean--our "having much to discover"? In itself it could mean nothing; in regard to him it could mean only that he was mad. And _Some would say I lived alone_: I remembered the scarcely concealed contempt with which he had said that. I found a large-scale map of the island in the school library. The boundaries of the Bourani estate were marked. I saw it was bigger, especially to the east, than I had realised: six or seven hectares, some fifteen acres. Again and again I thought of it, perched on its lonely promontory, during the weary hours of plodding through Eckersley's purgatorial English Course. I enjoyed conversation classes, I enjoyed doing more advanced work with what was known as the Philologic Sixth, a small group of eighteen-year-old duds who were doing languages only because they were hopeless at science, but the endless business of "drilling" the beginners bored me into stone. _What am I doing? I am raising my arm. What is he doing? He is raising his arm. What are they doing? They are raising their arms. Have they raised their arms? They have raised their arms._ It was like being a champion at tennis, and condemned to play with rabbits, as well as having always to get their wretched balls out of the net for them. I would look out of the window at the blue sky and the cypresses and the sea, and pray for the day's end, when I could retire to the masters' wing, lie back on my bed and sip an _ouzo_. Bourani seemed greenly remote from all that; so far, and yet so near; its small mysteries, which grew smaller as the week passed, no more than an added tang in its other promise of civilised pleasure.
15
This time he was waiting for me at the table. I dumped my dufflebag by the wall and he called for Maria to bring the tea. He was much less eccentric, perhaps because he had transparently determined to pump me. We talked about the school, about Oxford, my family, about teaching English to foreigners, about why I had come to Greece. Though he kept asking questions, I still felt that he had no real interest in what I was saying. What interested him was something else, some specificness I exhibited, some category I filled. I was not interesting in myself, but only as an example. I tried once or twice to reverse our roles, but he again made it clear that he did not want to talk about himself. I said nothing about the glove. Only once did he seem really surprised. He had asked me about my unusual name. "French. My ancestors were Huguenots." "Ah." "There's a writer called Honor�'Urf�-" He gave me a swift look. "He is an ancestor of yours?" "It's just a family tradition. No one's ever traced it. As far as I know." Poor old d'Urf�I had used him before to suggest centuries of high culture lay in my blood. Conchis's smile was genuinely warm, almost radiant, and I smiled back. "That makes a difference?" "It is amusing." "It's probably all rubbish." "No, no, I believe it. And have you read _L'Astree_?" "For my pains. Terrible bore." "_Oui, un peu fade. Mais pa. s tout a fait sans charmes._" Impeccable accent; he could not stop smiling.