ke an animal, half-fascinated
and half-suspicious. The voice died away and was followed by a sound of
pouring water. Then Dirmikis accepted two ten-lepta pieces and picked up
the quail. Dion introduced him to the cook, and it was understood that
he should be fed in the camp, and that the quail should form part of the
evening meal.

Very good they proved to be, cooked in leaves with the addition of
some fried slices of fat ham. Rosamund exulted again as she ate them,
recognizing the birds she had shot "by the taste."

"This is one! Aren't mine different from Dirmikis's?" she exclaimed. "So
much more succulent!"

"Naturally, you great baby!"

"Life is glorious!" she exclaimed resonantly. "To eat one's own bag on
the top of Drouva under the moon! Oh!"

She looked at the moon, then bent over her plate of metal-ware which
was set on the tiny folding-table. In her joy she was exactly like a big
child.

"I wonder how many I shall get to-morrow. I got my eye in at the very
start. Really, Dion, you know, I'm a gifted creature. It isn't every
one----"

And she ran on, laughing at herself, reveling in her whimsical pretense
of conceit till dinner was over.

"Now a cigarette! Never have I enjoyed any meal so much as this! It's
only out of doors that one gets hold of the real _joie de vivre_."

"You're never without it, thank God," returned Dion, striking a match
for her.

So still was the evening that the flame burned steadily even upon that
height facing immensities. Rosamund leaned to it with the cigarette
between her lips. Her face was browned to the sun. She looked rather
like a splendid blonde gipsy, with loose yellow hair and the careless
eyes of those who dwell under smiling heavens. She sent out a puff of
cigarette smoke, directing it with ardor to the moon which now rode high
above them.

"I'd like to catch up nature in my arms to-night," she said. "Come,
Dion, let's go a little way."

She was up, and put her arm through his like a comrade. He squeezed her
arm against his side and, strolling there in the night on the edge of
the hill, she talked at first with almost tumultuous energy, with an
energy as of an Amazon who cared for the things of the soul as much as
for the things of the body. To-night her body and soul seemed on the
same high level of intensity.

At first she talked of the present, of their life in Greece and of what
it had meant to her, what it had done for her; and then, always with her
a