“You see, that’s the picture-frame,” Rosamund whispered, when they were inside, pointing to the doorway.  “The branch came just there in my picture.”

She had lifted her hand.  He took her by the wrist and gently pulled her hand down.

“You mustn’t show me that.”

“Don’t let us wake him.”

A fly buzzed outside on the sunny threshold of the door, making a sleepy sound like the winding of a rustic horn in the golden stillness, as they went forward on tiptoe between the dull red walls of the hall of the Victory, and came into the room beyond, where the Hermes stood alone but for the little Dionysos on his arm.

There a greater silence seemed to reign—­the silence of the harmony which lies beyond music, as a blue background of the atmosphere lies beyond the verges of the vastest stretch of land that man’s eyes have power to see; he sees the blue, but almost as if with his soul, and in like manner hears the harmony.  Both Rosamund and Dion felt the difference in the silence directly they entered that sacred room.

There was no room beyond it.  Not very large, it was lighted by three windows set in a row under a handsome roof of wood.  The walls were dull red like the walls in the hall of the Victory.  On the mosaic pavement were placed two chairs.  Rosamund went straight up to one of them, and sat down in front of the statue, which was raised on a high pedestal, and set facing the right-hand wall of the chamber.  Dion remained standing a little way behind her.

He remembered quite well his first visit to Olympia, his first sight of the Hermes.  He had realized then very clearly the tragedy of large Museums in which statues stand together in throngs, enclosed within roaring cities.  From its situation, hidden in the green breast of this valley in Elis, the Hermes seemed to receive a sort of consecration, a blessing from its shrine; and the valley received surely from the Hermes a gracious benediction, making it unlike any other valley, however beautiful, in any land of the earth.  Nowhere else could the Hermes have been so serenely tender, so exquisitely benign in its contemplation; and no other valley could have kept it safe with such gentle watchfulness, such tranquilly unwearied patience.  Surely each loved the other, and so each gained something from the other.

Through all the months since his visit, Dion had remembered the unique quality of the peace of Olympia, like no other peace, and the strange and exquisite hush which greeted the pilgrim at the threshold of the chamber in which the Hermes stood.  He had remembered, but now he felt.  Again the silence seemed to come out of the marble to greet him, a remembered pilgrim who had returned to his worship bringing another pilgrim.  He entered once more into the peace of the Hermes, and now Rosamund shared that peace.  As he looked at her for a moment, he knew he had made a complete atonement; he had sent the shadow away.