CHAPTER III

In the following spring, Rosamund and Dion were married, and Dion took
Rosamund “to the land of the early morning.”

They arrived in Greece at the beginning of May, when the rains were over and the heats of summer were at hand.  The bed of Ilissus was empty.  Dust lay white in the streets of Athens and along the road to Phaleron and the sea.  The low-lying tracts of country were desert-dry, and about Athens the world was arrayed in the garb of the East.  Nevertheless there was still a delicate freshness in the winds that blew to the little city from the purple Aegean or from the mountains of Argolis; stirring the dust into spiral dances among the pale houses upon which Lycabettos looks down; shaking the tiny leaves of the tressy pepper trees near the Royal Palace; whispering the antique secrets of the ages into the ears of the maidens who, unwearied and happily submissive, bear up the Porch of the Erechtheion; stealing across the vast spaces and between the mighty columns of the Parthenon.  The dawns and the twilights had not lost the pure savor of their almost frail vitality.  The deepness of slumber still came with the nights.

Greece was, perhaps, at her loveliest.  And Greece was almost deserted by travelers.  They had come and gone with the spring, leaving the land to its own, and to those two who had come there to drink deep at the wells of happiness.  And, a little selfish as lovers are, Rosamund and Dion took everything wonderful and beautiful as their possession.

The yellow-green pines near the convent of Daphni threw patches of shade on the warm earth because they wanted to rest there; the kingfisher rose in low and arrow-like flight from the banks of Khephissus to make a sweet diversion for them; they longed for brilliance, and the lagoons of Salamis were dyed with a wonder of emerald; they asked for twilight, and the deep and deserted glades of Academe gave it them in full measure.  All these possessions, and many others, they enjoyed almost as children enjoy a meadow full of flowers when they have climbed over the gate that bars it from the high road.  But the Acropolis was the stronghold of their joy.  Only when their feet pressed its silvery grasses, and trod its warm marble pavements, did they hold the world within their grasp.

For some days after their arrival in Greece they almost lived among the ruins.  The long-coated guardians smiled at them, at first with a sort of faint amusement, at last with a friendly pleasure.  And they smiled at themselves.  Each evening they said, “To-morrow we will do this—­or that,” and each morning they said nothing, just looked at each other after breakfast, read in each other’s eyes the repetition of desire, and set out on the dear dusty road with which they were already so familiar.

Had there ever before been a honeymoon bounded by the precipices of the Acropolis?  They sometimes discussed that important question, and always decided against the impertinent possibility.  “What we are doing has never been done before.”  Dion went further than this, to “What I am feeling has never been felt before.”  His youth asserted itself in silent, determined statements which seemed to him to ring with authentic truth.