She saw a dark, peaked tent pitched in the middle of the plateau.  Smoke from a fire curled up behind it.  Two or three figures moved near it.  Beyond, Nicholas was unloading the mules.

She dropped the cord by which she had been guiding her horse and slipped down to the ground.  Her legs were rather stiff from riding.  She held on to the saddle for a moment.

“A camp?” she said at last.

Dion was beside her.

“An awfully rough one.”

“How jolly!”

She said the words almost solemnly.

“Dion, you are a brick!” she added, after a pause.  “I’ve never stayed in camp before.  A real brick!  But you always are.”

“Aren’t you coming into the camp?”

She put her hand on his arm and kept him back.

“No—­wait!  What did you mean by shaking your head when I asked you if the secret was up here?”

“This isn’t the real secret.  It wasn’t because of this that I asked you suddenly on the Acropolis to say ‘farewell’ to the Parthenon.”

“There’s another secret?”

“There’s another reason, the real reason, why I hurried you to Olympia.  But I’m going to let you find it out for yourself.  I shan’t tell you anything.”

“But how shall I know when——?”

“You will know.”

“To-day?”

“Don’t you think we might stay on our hill-top till to-morrow?”

“Yes, all right.  It’s glorious here; I won’t be impatient.  But how could you manage to get the tent here before we came?”

“We’ve been two nights on the way, Patras and Pyrgos.  That gave plenty of time to the magician to work the spell.  Come along.”

This time she did not hold him back.  Her eagerness was as great as his.  Certainly it was a very ordinary camp, scarcely, in fact, a camp at all.  The tent was small and of the roughest kind, but there were two neat little camp-beds within it, with their toes planted on the short dry grass.  In the iron washhand stand were a shining white basin and a jug filled with clear water.  There was a cake of remarkable pink soap with a strange and piercing scent; there was a “tooth glass”; there was a straw mat.

“What isn’t there?” cried Rosamund, who was almost as delighted as a child.

A grave and very handsome gentleman from Athens, Achilles Stavros by name, received her congratulations with a classical smile of satisfaction.

“He’s even got a genuine Greek nose for the occasion!” Rosamund said delightedly to Dion, when Achilles retired for a moment to give some instructions about tea to the cook.  “Where did you find him?”

“That’s my secret.”

“I never realised how delicious a camp was before.  My wildest dreams are surpassed.”

As they looked at the two small, hard chairs with straw bottoms which were solemnly set out side by side facing the view, and upon which Achilles expected them to sink voluptuously for the ritual of tea, they broke into laughter at Rosamund’s exaggerated expressions of delight.  But directly she was able to stop laughing she affirmed with determination: