Rosamund had wanted to love Greece, and from the first moment of seeing the land she had loved it.

In the beginning of their stay she had scarcely been able to believe that she was really in Athens.  A great name had aroused in her imagination a conception of a great city.  The soft familiarity, the almost rustic simplicity and intimacy, the absolutely unpretentious brightness and homely cheerfulness of the small capital of this unique land had surprised, had almost confused her.

“Is this really Athens?” she had said, wondering, as they had driven into what seemed a village set in bright bareness, sparsely shaded here and there by small pepper-trees.

And the question had persisted in her mind, had almost trembled upon her lips, for two or three days.  But then had come a mysterious change, brought about, perhaps, by affection.  Quickly she had learnt to love Athens, and then she had the feeling that if it had been in any way different from what it was she could not have loved it.  Its very smallness delighted her, and she would not permit its faults to be mentioned in her presence.  Once, when Dion said that it was a great pity the Athenians did not plant more trees, and a greater pity they so often lopped off branches from the few trees they had, she exclaimed: 

“You mustn’t run down my Athens.  It likes to give itself to the sun generously.  It’s grateful, as it well may be, for all the sun has done for it.  Look at the color of that marble.”

And Dion looked at the honey color, and the wonderful reddish-gold, and, laughing, said: 

“Athens is the one faultless city, and the dogs tell us so every night and all night long.”

“Dogs always bark when the moon is up,” she answered, with a semi-humorous gravity.

“As they bark in Athens?” he queried.

“Yes, of course.”

“If I am ever criticized,” he asked, “will you be my defender?”

“I shan’t hear you criticized.”

“How do you know that?”

“I do know it,” she said, looking at him with her honest brown eyes; “nobody will criticize you when I am there.”

He caught hold of her hand.

“And you?  Don’t you often criticize me silently?  I’m sure you do.  Why did you marry me, Rosamund?”

They were sitting on the Acropolis when he put that question.  It was a shining day.  The far-off seas gleamed.  There was a golden pathway to Aegina.  The brilliant clearness, not European but Eastern, did not make the great view spread out beneath and around them hard.  Greece lay wrapped in a mystery of sunlight, different from, yet scarcely less magical than, the mystery of shadows and the moon.  Rosamund looked out on the glory.  She had taken off her hat, and given her yellow hair to the sunlight.  Without any head-covering she always looked more beautiful, and, to Dion, more Greek than when her hair was concealed.  He saw in her then more clearly than at other times