He came softly into the tent which was full of the whiteness of the moon.  Sleeping thus with Rosamund in the bosom of nature was very wonderful to him.  It was like a sort of re-marriage.  The moon and the stars looking in made his relation to her quite new and more beautiful.

“I shall never forget Olympia,” he whispered, leaning over her.

He kissed her very gently, not with any passion.  He had the feeling that she would almost resent passion just then.

He got into his bed and lay with his arm crooked, his cheek in his hand.  Part of the Milky Way was visible to him, that dust of little stars powdering the deep of the sky.  If he, too, should see a falling star to-night, dropping down towards the hidden sea, vanishing below the line of the hill!  Would he echo her wish?

“Are you sleepy, Rosamund?” he asked presently.

“No I don’t want to sleep.  It would make me miss all the stars.”

“And if you’re tired to-morrow?”

“I shan’t be.  I shan’t be tired while we are in camp.  I should like never to go to bed in a room again.  I should like always to dwell in the wilderness.”

He longed for the addition of just two words.  They did not come.  But of course they were to be understood.  There is no need to state things known.  The fact that she had let him bring her to the wilderness was enough.  The last words he heard Rosamund say that night were these, almost whispered slowly to herself and to the stars: 

“The wilderness—­and—­the solitary places.”

Very early in the morning she awoke while Dion was sleeping.  She slipped softly out of the little camp-bed, wrapped a cloak around her, and went out to gaze at the dawn.

When they sat at breakfast she said: 

“And now are you going to tell me the secret?”

“No.  I’m going to let you find it out for yourself.”

“But if I can’t?”

“You will.”

They set off, about ten, down the hill on foot.  The morning was very still and already very hot.  As they descended towards the basin in which lies Olympia, heat ascended to meet them and to give them a welcome—­a soft and almost enticing heat like a breath from some green fastness where strange marvels were secluded.

“Elis even smells remote,” Rosamund said.

“Are you sorry to leave the hill-top?” he asked.

“I was, but already I’m beginning to feel drawn on.  There’s something here—­what is it?”

She looked at him.

“Something for you.”

“Specially for me?”

“Specially for you.”

“Hidden in the folds of the green.  Where are we going first?”

“To the ruins.”

He was carrying their lunch in a straw pannier slung over his shoulder.

“We’ll lunch in the house of Nero, and rest there.”

“That sounds rather dreadful, Dion.”

“Wait till you see it.”