“I shall ask Nicholas,” Rosamund said once to Dion, perversely.

“What?”

“You know perfectly well what.”

His face was a map of innocence as he touched his thin horse with the whip and rode forward a little faster.

“What is there to see at Olympia, Nicholas?” she said, speaking rather loudly in order that Dion might hear.

Nicholas woke up, and hastily, in a melodious voice, quoted some scraps of guide-book.  Rosamund did not find what she wanted among them.  She knew already about the ruins, about the Nike of Paeonius and the Hermes of Praxiteles.  So she left the young Greek to his waking dream, and possessed her soul in a patience that was not difficult.  She liked to dwell in anticipation.  And she felt that any secret this land was about to reveal to her would be, must be, beautiful.  She trusted Greece.

“We aren’t far off now,” said Dion presently, as they rode up the valley—­a valley secluded from the world, pastoral and remote, shaded by Judas trees.

“How peaceful and lovely it is.”

“And full of the echoes of the Pagan feet which once trod here.”

“I don’t hear them,” said Rosamund, “and I am listening.”

“Perhaps you could never hear Pagan echoes.  And yet you love Greece.”

“Yes.  But I have nothing Pagan in me.  I know that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.  “You are the ideal woman to be in Greece with.  If I don’t come back to Greece with you, I shall never come back.”

They rode on.  Her horse was following his along the windings of the river.  Presently she said: 

“Where are we going to sleep?  Surely there isn’t a possible inn in this remoteness?—­or have they build one for travelers who come here in winter and spring?”

“Our inn will be a little above Olympia.”

The green valley seemed closing about them, as if anxious to take them to itself, to keep them in its closest intimacy, with a gentle jealousy.  Rosamund had a sensation, almost voluptuous, of yielding to the pastoral greenness, to the warm stillness, to the hush of the delicate wilds.

“Elis!  Elis!” she whispered to herself.  “I am riding up into Elis, where once the processions passed to the games, where Nero built himself a mansion.  And there’s a secret here for me.”

Then suddenly there came into her mind the words in the “Paradiso” which she had been dreaming over in London on the foggy day when Dion had asked her to marry him.

The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence from warm love and living hope which conquereth the Divine will.