the woman of all the ages rather than the woman of an epoch subject to certain fashions.  As he looked at her now, resting on a block of warm marble above the precipice which is dominated by the little temple of Athena Nike, he wondered, with the concealed humility of the great lover, how it was that she had ever chosen to give herself to him.  He had sworn to marry her.  He had not been weak in his wooing, had not been one of those men who will linger on indefinitely at a woman’s feet, ready to submit to unnumbered refusals.  But now there rose up in the depths of him the cry, “What am I?” and the answer, “Only a man like thousands of other men, in no way remarkable, in no way more worthy than thousands of others of the gift of great happiness.”

Rosamund turned from the shining view.  There was in her eyes an unusual vagueness.

“Why did you?”

“Why did I marry you, Dion?”

“Yes.  When I found you with your ‘Paradise’ I don’t think you meant ever to marry me.”

“I always liked you.  But at first I didn’t think of you in that way.”

“But you had known for ages before Burstal——­”

“Yes, of course.  I knew the day I sang at Mr. Darlington’s, at that party he gave to introduce me as a singer.  I knew first from your mother.  She told me.”

“My mother?”

“By the look she gave me when you introduced me to her.”

“Was it an——­How d’you mean?”

“I can scarcely explain.  But it was a look that asked a great many questions.  And they wouldn’t have been asked if you hadn’t cared for me, and if she hadn’t known it.”

“What did you think when you knew?”

“That it was kind of you to care for me.”

“Kind?”

“Yes.  I always feel that about people who like me very much.”

“And did you just go on thinking me kind until that day at Burstal?”

“I suppose so.  But I felt very much at home with you.”

“I don’t know whether that’s a compliment to a man who’s still young, or not?”

“Nor do I. But that’s just how it was.”

He said nothing for a little while.  When he spoke again it was with some hesitation, and his manner was almost diffident.

“Rosamund, that day at Burstal, were you at all inclined to accept me?”

“Yes; I think, perhaps, I was.  Why?”

“Sometimes I have fancied there was a moment when——­”

He looked at her and then, for once, his eyes fell before hers almost guiltily.  They sat in silence for a moment.  Behind them, on a bench set in the shadow of a mighty wall, was a guardian of the Acropolis, a thin brown man with very large ears sticking out from his head.  He had been dozing, but now stirred, shuffled his feet, and suddenly cleared his throat.  Then he sighed heavily.

“And if there was, why did you think it came, Dion?” said Rosamund suddenly, with an almost startling swiftness of decision.