It was strange that the words should come to her just then.  She could not think why they came.  But, repeating them to herself, she felt how very far off she was from Paganism.  Yet she had within her warm love surely and living hope.  Could such things, as they were within her, ever do violence to the Kingdom of Heaven?  She looked between her horse’s perpetually moving ears at the hollow athletic back of her young husband.  If she had not married she would have given rein to deep impulses within her which now would never be indulged.  They would not have led her to Greece.  If she had been governed by them she would never have been drawn on by the secret of Olympia.  How strange it was that, within the compass of one human being, should be contained two widely differing characters.  Well, she had chosen, and henceforth she must live according to the choice she had made.  But how would she have been in the other life of which she had dreamed so often, and so deeply, in her hours of solitude?  She would never know that.  She had chosen the warm love and the living hope, but the Kingdom of Heaven should never suffer violence from anything she had chosen.  There are doubtless many ways of consecrating a life, of rendering service.

They came into a scattered and dingy hamlet.  Hills rose about it, but the narrowing valley still wound on.

“We are close to the ruins,” said Dion.

“Already!  Where are we going to sleep?”

“Up there!”

He pointed to a steep hill that was set sheer above the valley.

“Go on with the mules, Nicholas.”

Nicholas rode on, smiling.

“What’s that building on the hump?”

“The Museum.”

“I wonder why they put the inn so far away.”

“It isn’t really very far, not many minutes from here.  But the way’s pretty steep.  Now then, Rosamund!”

They set their horses to the task.  Nicholas and the mules were out of sight.  A bend of the little track had hidden them.

“Why, there’s a village up here!” said Rosamund, as they came to a small collection of houses with yards and rough gardens and scattered outbuildings.

“Yes—­Drouva.  Our inn is just beyond it, but quite separated from it.”

“I’m glad of that.  They don’t bother very much about cleanliness here, I should think.”

He was smiling at her now.  His lips were twitching under his mustache, and his eyes seemed trying not to tell something to her.

“Surely the secret isn’t up here?”

He shook his head, still smiling, almost laughing.

They were now beyond the village, and emerged on a plateau of rough short grass which seemed to dominate the world.

“This is the top of the hill of Drouva,” said Dion, with a ring of joy, and almost of pride, in his voice.  “And there’s our inn, the Inn of Drouva.”

Rosamund pulled up her horse.  She did not say a word.  She just looked, while her horse lowered his head and sniffed the air in through his twitching nostrils.  Then he sent forth a quivering neigh, his welcome to the Inn of Drouva.  The view was immense, but Rosamund was not looking at it.  A small dark object not far off in the foreground of this great picture held her eyes.  For the moment she saw little or nothing else.