“Shall we have learnt before we go?” said Dion.

“It’s strange, but I think the tombs teach me more.  They’re more within my reach.  This is so tremendous that it’s remote.  Perhaps a man, or—­or a boy——­”

She looked at him.

“A boy?”

“Yes.”

He drew her down.  She clasped her hands, that looked to him so capable and so pure, round her knees.

“A boy?  Go on, Rose.”

“He might learn his lesson here, with a man to help him.  The Parthenon’s tremendously masculine.  Perhaps women have to learn from the gentleness of those dear tombs.”

Never before had she seemed to him so soft, so utterly soft of nature.

“You’ve been thinking a great deal to-day of our boy, haven’t you?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Suppose we did have a boy and lost him?”

“Lost him?”

Her voice sounded suddenly almost hostile.

“Such a thing has happened to parents.  It might happen to us.”

“I don’t believe it would happen to me,” Rosamund said, with a sort of curious, almost cold decision.

“But why not?”

“What made you think of such a thing?”

“I don’t know.  Perhaps it was because of what you said this morning about grief, and then about bracing up and finding a firm voice to utter one’s ‘farewell.’”

“You don’t understand what a woman would feel who lost her child.”

“Are you sure that you do?”

“Partly.  Quite enough to——­Don’t let us speak about it any more.”

“No.  There’s nothing more futile than imagining horrors that are never coming upon us.”

“I never do it,” she said, with resolute cheerfulness.  “But we shall very soon have to say one ‘farewell.’”

“To the Parthenon?”

“Yes.”

“Say it to-night!”

She turned round to face him.

“To-night?  Why?”

“For a little while.”

A sudden happy idea had come to him.  A shadow had fallen over her for a moment.  He wanted to drive it away, to set her again in the full sunshine for which she was born, and in which, if he could have his will, she should always dwell.

“You wanted to take me away somewhere.”

“Yes.  You must see a little more of Greece before we go home.  Say your ‘farewell,’ Rosamund.”

She did not know what was in his mind, but she obeyed him, and, looking up at the great marble columns, glowing with honey-color and gold in the afternoon light, she murmured: 

“Farewell.”

On the following day they left Athens and set out on the journey to Olympia.

CHAPTER V

“Why are you bringing me to Olympia?”

That question, unuttered by her lips, was often in Rosamund’s eyes as they drew near to the green wilds of Elis.  Of course they had always meant to visit Olympia before they sailed away to England, but she knew very well that Dion had some special purpose in his mind, and that it was closely connected with his great love of her.  She had understood that on the Acropolis, and her “farewell” had been an act of submission to his will not wholly unselfish.  Her curiosity was awake.