“I know.  But you made it sound—­to me, I mean—­almost as if you were rejoicing personally at the thought of the destruction, as if you were longing almost eagerly for it to overwhelm the faithless.”

“I see.  That is what you meant by fanatical?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

After a long pause she said: 

“Nobody has told me that till now.”

“Perhaps others didn’t feel it as I did.”

“I don’t know.  What does one know about other people?  Not even my guardian said anything.  I never could understand——­”

She broke off, then continued steadily: 

“So you think I repelled people that day?”

“It seems impossible that you—­”

But she interrupted him.

“No, Dion, it isn’t at all impossible.  I think if we are absolutely sincere we repel people very often.”

“But you are the most sincere person I have ever seen, and you must know how beloved you are, how popular you are wherever you go.”

“When I’m being sincere with the part of me that’s feeling kind or affectionate.  Let us go to the Parthenon.”

She got up, opened her white sun-umbrella and turned round, keeping her hat in her left hand.  As she stood there in that setting of marble, with the sun caught in her hair, and the mighty view below and beyond her, she looked wonderfully beautiful, Dion thought, but almost stern.  He feared perhaps he had hurt her.  But was it his fault?  She had told him to speak.

Rosamund did not return to the subject of her debut at Burstal, but in the late afternoon of that day she spoke of her singing, and of the place it might have in their married life.  Dion believed she did this because of their conversation near the Temple of Nike.

They had spent most of the day on the Acropolis.  Both had brought books:  she, Mahaffy’s “History of Greek Literature”; he, a volume of poems written by a young diplomat who loved Greece and knew her well.  Neither of them had read many pages, but as the strong radiance began to soften about them on the height, and the breeze from the Saronic Gulf came to them with a more feathery warmth and freshness over the smiling bareness of the Attic Plain, Dion, who had been half-dreamily turning the leaves of his little book, said: 

“Rosamund.”

“Yes?”

“Look at the sea and the mountains of Trigania, those far-off mountains”—­he pointed—­“and the outpost of Hydra.”

She looked and said nothing.  Then he read to her these lines of the young diplomat-poet: 

     “A crescent sail upon the sea,
     So calm and fair and ripple free
     You wonder storms can ever be;

     A shore with deep indented bays,
     And o’er the gleaming water-ways
     A glimpse of Islands in the haze;

     A face bronzed dark to red and gold,
     With mountain eyes that seem to hold
     The freshness of the world of old;