“Do you mean that you don’t think we can hurt God?”

“I wonder,” Dion answered.

“I don’t.  I know we can.”

She looked again at the tomb before which they were standing.  It showed a woman seated and stretching out her right arm, which a woman friend was touching.  In the background was another, contemplative, woman and a man wearing a chaplet of leaves, his hand lifted to his face.  For epitaph there was one word cut in marble.

“It means farewell, doesn’t it?” asked Rosamund.

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you’ll smile, but I think these tombs are the most beautiful things I have seen in Greece.  It’s a miracle—­their lack of violence.  What a noble thing grief could be.  That little simple word.  It’s great to be able to give up the dearest thing with that one little word.  But I couldn’t—­I couldn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I know, because I didn’t.”

She said nothing more on the subject that morning, but when they were on the Acropolis waiting, as so often before, for the approach of the evening, she returned to it.  Evidently it was haunting her that day.

“I believe giving up nobly is a much finer thing than attaining nobly,” she said.  “And yet attaining wins all the applause, and giving up, if it gets anything, only gets that ugly thing—­pity.”

“But is pity an ugly thing?” said Dion.

He had a little stone in his hand, and, as he spoke, he threw it gently towards the precipice, taking care not to send it over the edge.

“I think I would rather have anything on earth from people than their pity.”

“Suppose I were to pity you because I loved you?”

He picked up another stone and held it in his hand.

“I should hate it.”

He had lifted his hand for the throw, but he kept hold of the stone.

“What, pity that came straight out of love?”

“Any sort of pity.”

“You must be very proud—­much prouder than I am then.  If I were unhappy I should wish to have pity from you.”

“Perhaps you have never been really unhappy.”

Dion laid the stone down.  He thought hard for a moment.

“Without any hope at all of a change back to happiness—­no, actually I never have.”

“Ah, then you’ve never had to brace up and see if you could find a strong voice to utter your ’farewell’!”

She spoke with firmness, a firmness that rang like true metal struck with a hammer and giving back sincerity.

“That sounds tremendously Doric,” he said.

His lips were smiling, but there was an almost surprised expression in his eyes.

“Dion, do you know you’re intuitive to-day?”

“Ah, your training—­your training!”

“Didn’t you say we should have to be Doric ourselves if——?”

“Come, Rosamund, it’s time for the Parthenon.”

Once more they went over the uneven ground to stand before its solemn splendor.