“I wonder how many thousands of people of all nations have learnt the same lesson here,” Rosamund said at last.

“The Doric lesson, you mean?”

“Yes, of strength, simplicity, endurance, calmness.”

“And I wonder how many thousands have forgotten the lesson.”

“Why do you say that, Dion?”

“I don’t know.  Great art is a moral teacher, I’m sure of that.  But men are very light-minded as a rule, I think.  If they lived before these columns they might learn a great deal, they might even develop in a splendid direction, I believe.  But an hour, even a few hours, is that enough?  Impressions fade very quickly in most people.”

“Not in you.  You never forget the Parthenon, and I shall never forget it.”

She stood for some minutes quite still gazing steadily up at the temple, gaining—­it seemed to her—­her own stillness from its tremendous immobility.

“The greatest strength is in silence,” she thought.  “The greatest power is in motionlessness.”

She thought of the raging of the great sea.  But no!  There was more of the essence of strength, of the stern inwardness of power, in that which confronted life and Time in absolute stillness; in a mountain, in this temple.  And the temple spoke to something far down within her; to something which desired long silences and deep retirement, to something mystic which she did not understand.  The temple was Pagan and she knew that.  But that in her to which it spoke was not Pagan.  Before she left Athens she meant to realize that the soul of man, when it speaks through mighty and pure effort, of whatever kind, always speaks to the same Listener, to but one, though man may not know it.

“Doric!” she said at last.  “I have always known that for me that would be the greatest.  The simplest thing is the most sublime thing.  That temple is like the Sermon on the Mount to me.  Didn’t you bring me here because it meant so much to you?”

“Not entirely.  No, Rosamund, I think I brought you here because I felt that you belonged here.”

“This satisfies me.”

She sighed deeply, still gazing at the temple.

“You aren’t only in Greece, you are of Greece.  Come to the maidens.”

As they went on slowly the acid voices of the little birds which fly perpetually among the columns of the Parthenon followed them, bidding them good night.

They descended over the uneven ground and came to the famous Porch of the Caryatides, jutting out from the little Ionic temple which is the handmaid of the Parthenon.  Not far from the Porch, and immediately before it, was a wooden bench.  Already Rosamund and Dion had spent many hours here, sometimes sitting on the bench, more often resting on the warm ground in the sunshine, among the fragments of ruin and the speary, silver-green grasses.  Now Rosamund sat down and Dion stood by her side.

“Rosamund, those maidens are my ideal of womanhood shown in marble,” he said.