What was the secret of Olympia?

They had gone by train to Patras, slept there, and thence rode on horseback to Pyrgos through the vast vineyards of the Peloponnesus—­vineyards that stretched down to the sea and were dotted with sentinel cypresses.  The heat was much greater than it had been in Athens.  Enormous aloes hedged gardens from which came scents that seemed warm.  The sandy soil, turned up by the horses’ feet, was hot to the touch.  The air quivered, and was shot with a music of insects faint but pervasive.

Pyrgos was suffocating and noisy, but Rosamund was amused by democracy at close quarters, showing its naked love of liberty.  Her strong humanity rose to the occasion, and she gave herself with a smiling willingness to the streets, in which men, women, children and animals, with lungs of leather, sent forth their ultimate music.  Nevertheless, she was glad when she and Dion set out again, and followed the banks of the Alpheus, leaving the cries of the city behind them.  It seemed to her that they were traveling to some hidden treasure, secluded in the folds of a green valley where the feet of men seldom, if ever, came.  Dion’s eyes told her that they were drawing nearer and nearer to the secret he knew of, and was going to reveal to her.  She often caught him looking at her with an almost boyish expression of loving anticipation; and more than once he laughed happily when he saw her question, but he would not give her an answer.

Peasants worked in the vineyards, shoulder-high in the plants, brown and sweating in the glare.  Swarthy children, with intelligent eyes, often with delicate noses, and those pouting lips which are characteristic of many Greek statues, ran to stare at them, and sometimes followed them a little way, but without asking for alms.  Then the solitudes took them, and they wound on and on, with their guide as their only companion.

He was a gentle, even languid-looking youth, called Nicholas Agathoulos, who was a native of Patras, but who had lived a good deal in Athens, who spoke a few words of English and French, and who professed a deep passion for Lord Byron.  Nicholas rode on a mule, leading, or not leading as the case might be—­for he was a charmingly careless person—­a second mule on which was fastened Rosamund’s and Dion’s scanty luggage.  Rosamund, like a born vagabond, was content to travel in this glorious climate with scarcely any impedimenta.  When Nicholas was looked at he smiled peacefully under his quiet and unpretending black mustache.  When he was not looked at he seemed to sleep with open eyes.  He never sang or whistled, had no music at all in him; but he could quote stanzas from “Don Juan” in Greek, and, when he did that, he woke up, sparks of fire glowed in his eyes, and his employers realized that he shared to the full the patriotism of his countrymen.

Did he know the secret of Olympia which Dion was concealing so carefully, and enjoying so much, as the little train of pilgrims wound onwards among fruit trees and shrubs of arbutus, penetrating farther and ever farther into a region sweet and remote?  Of course he must know it.