“They are beautiful by day, but at night they are adorable,” said Rosamund.

“Don’t you know why I thought of them when I met you?” he whispered.

She got up slowly.  The Greek soldiers moved, turned, and went down the slope towards the Propylae.  Their quick voices were heard again.  Then there was the sound of a bell.

“Time to go,” said Rosamund.

As they followed the soldiers she again put her arm through her young husband’s.

“Dion,” she said, “I think I’m a little afraid of your ideals.  I understand them.  I have ideals too.  But I think perhaps mine are less in danger of ever being shattered than yours are.”

“Why?  But I know mine are not in danger.”

“How can you say that?”

“It’s no use trying to frighten me.  But what about your ideals?  What is the nature of the difference between yours and mine, which makes yours so much less vulnerable than mine?”

But she only said: 

“I don’t believe I could explain it.  But I feel it, and I shall go on feeling it.”

They went down the steep marble steps, gave the guardian at the foot of them good night, and walked almost in silence to Athens.

CHAPTER IV

After that day Rosamund and Dion often talked of the child who might eventually come into their lives to change them.  Rosamund indeed, now that such a possibility had been discussed between them, returned to it with an eagerness which she did not seek to conceal.  She was wonderfully frank, and her frankness seemed to belong naturally to her transparent purity, to be an essential part of it.  Dion’s momentary depression that evening on the Acropolis had evidently stirred something in her which would not let her rest until it had expressed itself.  She had detected for the first time in her husband a hint of something connected with his love for her which seemed to her morbid.  She could not forget it and she was resolved to destroy it if possible.  When they next stood together on their beloved height she said to him: 

“Dion, don’t you hate anything morbid?”

“Yes, loathe it!” he answered, with hearty conviction.  “But surely you know that.  Why d’you ask me such a thing?  How dare you?”

And he turned to her his brown face, bright this morning with good spirits, his dark eyes sparkling with hopefulness and energy.

It was a pale morning, such as often comes to Athens even at the edge of the summer.  They were standing on the little terrace near to the Acropolis Museum, looking down over the city and to helmet-shaped Lycabettos.  The wind, too fond of the Attic Plain, was blowing, not wildly, but with sufficient force to send the dust whirling in light clouds over the pale houses and the little Byzantine churches.  Long and narrow rivulets of dust marked the positions of the few roads which stretched out along the plain.  The darkness