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By Root 10684 0

I assumed that it would explain why Conchis had had to go. But then I had the third shock in three minutes. I saw the name at the end. It read: BACK NEXT FRIDAY STOP THREE DAYS FREE STOP AIRPORT SIX EVENING STOP PLEASE COME ALISON. It had been sent on Saturday afternoon. I looked up at Maria and Hermes. Their eyes were blank, simply watching. "When did you bring this?" Hermes answered. "_Proi proi_." Early that morning. "Who gave it to you to bring?" It was addressed to the school. A professor. At Sarantopoulos's, the last evening. "Why didn't you give it to me before?" He shrugged and looked at Maria, and she shrugged. They seemed to imply that it had been given to Conchis. It was his fault. I read it again. Hermes asked me if I wanted to send an answer; he was going back to the village. I said, no, no reply. I stared at Hermes. His wall eye gave little hope. But I demanded, "Have you seen the two young ladies this morning?" He looked at Maria. She said, Which girls? There are no girls here. I looked at Hermes again. "You?" "_Ochi_." His head went back. Maria said, "_Ah, katalava, katalava_." She told Hermes I meant the little girls from the cottages. They do not come here, she said to me. I muttered sarcastically, "Of course." And left them. I returned to the beach. All the time I had been watching the place where the path came up. Down there I went straight to the cave. No sign of her. A couple of minutes convinced me that she was not hiding anywhere among the rocks and trees. I looked up the little gulley. It might have been just possible to scramble up it and to get away to the east, but I found it difficult to believe. I climbed up some way to see if she was crouching behind a rock. But there was no one.

32

Lying in the sun, I tried to clear my mind about the two Lilys. The idea was clear. One twin came close to me, talked to me. She had a scar on her left wrist. The other did the doppelganger effects. I would never get close to her. I would see her on the terrace, in the starlight; but always at a distance. Twins--it was extraordinary, but I had begun to realise enough about Conchis to see that it was predictable. If one was very rich... why not the rarest? Why anything but the strangest and the rarest? I tried to clear my mind about the Lily I knew, the scar-Lily, and myself. This morning, even last night, she had set out to make herself attractive to me; and if she was really simply Conchis's mistress, I couldn't imagine why he should allow it, and so obviously leave us alone together, unless he was much more profoundly perverted than I could bring myself seriously to suspect. In so many ways, it seemed all no more than a game. Lily gave strongly the impression that she was playing with me--amusing herself as much as acting a role at Conchis's command. But all games, even the most literal, between a man and a woman are implicitly sexual; and I was clearly meant to feel that. If it was her job to seduce me, I should be seduced. I couldn't do anything about it. I was a sensualist. I wanted to be seduced, to drink the wave. Then Alison. Her telegram was like grit in the eye when one particularly wants to see clearly. I could guess what had happened. My letter of the Monday before would have arrived on Friday or Saturday in London, she would have been on a flight out of England that day, perhaps feeling fed up, half an hour to kill at Ellenikon--on impulse, a telegram. But it came like an intrusion--of dispensable reality into pleasure, of now artificial duty into instinct. I couldn't leave the island, I couldn't waste three days in Athens. I read the wretched thing again. Conchis must have read it too--there was no envelope. Demetriades would have opened it when it was first delivered at the school. So Conchis would know I was invited to Athens--and would guess that this was the girl I had spoken about, the girl I must "swim towards." Perhaps that was why he had had to go away. There might be arrangements to cancel for the next weekend. I had assumed that he would invite me again, give me the whole four days of half-term;