“Please go back to the foot of the hill,” she said to the Greek who was with her.

“But, Madame, I dare not leave you alone here.”

“I shall not be alone.”

The Greek looked surprised.

“Some one is waiting for me, up there, by that cypress—­a—­a friend.”

“Oh—­I see, Madame.”

With a look of intense comprehension he turned to go.

“At the foot of the hill, please!” said Rosamund.

“Certainly, Madame.”

The dragoman was smiling as he walked away.  Rosamund stood still watching him till he was out of sight.  Then she turned.  The figure of a man was still standing motionless under the old cypress tree among the graves.  She set her lips together and went towards it.  Now that she saw Dion, even though he was in the distance, she felt again intensely, as if in her flesh, the bodily wrong he had done to her.  She strove not to feel this.  She told herself that, after her sin against him, she had no right to feel it.  In her heart she knew that she was the greater sinner.  She realized now exactly the meaning of what she had done.  She had no more illusions about herself, about her conduct.  She condemned herself utterly.  She had come to that place of the dead absolutely resolved to ask forgiveness of Dion.  And yet now that she saw his body the sense of personal outrage woke in her, gripped her.  She grew hot, she tingled.  A fierce jealousy of the flesh tormented her.  And suddenly she was afraid of herself.  Was her body then more powerful than her soul?  Was she, who had always cared for the things of the soul hopelessly physical?  It seemed to her that even now she might succumb to what she supposed was an overwhelming personal pride, that even now she might be unable to do what she had come all the long way from England to do.  But she forced herself to go onward up the path.  She looked down; she would not see that body of a man which had belonged to her and to which she had belonged; but she made herself go towards it.

Presently she felt that she was drawing near to it; then that she was close to it.  Then she stopped.  Standing still for a moment she prayed.  She prayed that she might be able in this supreme crisis of her life to govern the baser part of herself, that she might be allowed, might be helped, to rise to those heights of which Father Robertson had spoken to her, that she might at last realize the finest possibilities of her nature, that she might be able to do the most difficult thing, to be humble, to forget any injury which had been inflicted upon herself, and to remember only the tremendous injury she had inflicted upon another.  When her prayer was finished she did not know whether it had been heard, whether, if it had been heard, it had been accepted and would be granted.  She did not know at all what she would be able to do.  But she looked up and saw Dion.  He was close to her, was standing just in front of her, with one