“You may laugh,” said I, “but I’m not angry; and I shall pull this house down—­or dig it up—­in cold blood, in perfectly cold blood.”

“You are angry,” said Euphrosyne, “and you say you’re not.  You are like my father.  He would stamp his foot furiously like that and say, ’I am not angry, I am not angry, Phroso.’”

Phroso!  I had forgotten that diminutive of my guest’s classical name.  It rather pleased me, and I repeated it gently after her, “Phroso, Phroso,” and I’m afraid I eyed the little foot that had stamped so bravely.

“He always called me Phroso.  Oh, I wish he were alive!  Then Constantine—­”

“Since he isn’t,” said I, sitting by Phroso (I must write it, it’s a deal shorter)—­by Phroso’s elbow—­“since he isn’t, I’ll look after Constantine.  It would be a pity to spoil the house, wouldn’t it?”

“I’ve sworn,” said Phroso.

“Circumstances alter oaths,” said I, bending till I was very near Phroso’s ear.

“Ah,” said Phroso, reproachfully, “that’s what lovers say when they find another more beautiful than their old love.”

I shot away from Phroso’s ear with a sudden backward start.  Her remark, somehow, came home to me with a very remarkable force.  I got off the table, and stood opposite to her, in an awkward and stiff attitude.

“I am compelled to ask you for the last time if you will tell me the secret,” said I, in the coldest of tones.

She looked up with surprise.  My altered manner may well have amazed her.  She did not know the reason of it.

“You asked me kindly and—­and pleasantly, and I would not.  Now you ask me as if you threatened,” she said.  “Is it likely I should tell you now?”

Well, I was angry with myself, and with her because she had made me angry with myself; and, the next minute, I became furiously angry with Denny, whom I found standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen, with a grin of intense amusement on his face.

“What are you grinning at?” I demanded fiercely.

“Oh, nothing,” said Denny, and his face strove to assume a prudent gravity.

“Bring a pickaxe,” said I.

Denny’s face wandered toward Phroso.  “Is she as annoying as that?” he seemed to ask.  “A pickaxe?” he repeated in surprised tones.

“Yes, two pickaxes!  I’m going to have this floor up, and see if I can find out the great Stefanopoulos secret.”  I spoke with an accent of intense scorn.

Again Phroso laughed; her hands beat very softly against one another.  Heavens, what did she do that for when Denny was there, watching everything with those shrewd eyes of his?

“The pickaxes!” I roared.

Denny turned and fled; a moment elapsed; I did not know what to do, how to look at Phroso, or how not to look at her.  I took refuge in flight.  I rushed into the kitchen on pretence of aiding or hastening Denny’s search.  I found him taking up an old pick that stood near the door leading to the compound.  I seized it from his hand.