He looked towards the doorway of the Museum, hesitating.  He was devoured by impatience.  Nevertheless he did not wish to step out of that path, the beginning of which he had seen in the night.  Determined not to seek Rosamund, yet driven by restlessness, he did one of those meaningless things which, bringing hurt to nature, are expected by man to bring him at least a momentary solace.  His eyes happened to rest on the olive tree which stood not far from the Museum.  One branch of it was stretched out beyond the others.  He walked up to the tree, pulled at the branch, and finally snapped it off, stripped it of its leaves and threw it on the ground.

As he finished this stupid and useless act, Rosamund came out of the Museum, looking almost angry.

“Oh, Dion, was it you?” she asked.  “What could make you do such a thing?”

“But—­what do you mean?” he asked.

She looked down at the massacred branch at his feet.

“A branch of wild olive!  If you only knew how it hurt me.”

“Oh—­that!  But how could you know?”

She still looked at him with a sort of shining of anger in her eyes.

“I saw from the room of the Hermes.  The doorway of the Museum is the frame for such a picture of Elis!  It’s almost, in its way, as dream-like and lovely as the distant country one sees through the temple door in Raphael’s ‘Marriage of the Virgin’ in Milan.  And hanging partly across it was that branch of wild olive.  I was looking at it and loving it in the room of the Hermes when a man’s arm, your arm, was thrust into the picture, and the poor branch was torn away.”

She had spoken quite excitedly, still evidently under the impulse of something like anger.  Now she suddenly pulled herself up with a little forced laugh.

“Of course you didn’t know; you couldn’t.  I suppose I was dreaming, and it—­it looked like a sort of murder.  But still I don’t see why you should tear the branch off, and all the leaves too.”

“I’m sorry, I’m very sorry, Rosamund.  It was idiotic.  Of course I hadn’t an idea what you were doing, I mean, that you were looking at it.  One does senseless little things sometimes.”

“It looked so angry.”

“What did?”

“Your hand, your arm.  You can have no idea how——­”

She broke off again.

“Let me come in with you.  Let’s go to the Hermes.”

“Oh no, not now.”

She spoke with almost brusk decision.

“Very well, then, I’ll just pay the man something, and we’ll be off to the ruins.”

“Yes.”

Dion went to pay the guardian, whom he found standing up among the Roman Emperors in a dignified and receptive attitude.  When he came back he picked up the lunch-basket, slung it over his shoulder, and they walked down the small hill and towards the ruins in silence.  He felt involved in a tragedy, pained and discomforted.  Yet it was all rather absurd, too.  He did not know what to say, how to take it, and he looked straight ahead, seeking instinctively for some diversion.  When they were on the river bank he found it in the fishermen who were wading in the shallows with their nets.