She would, of course, be beautiful in old age, with a perhaps more spiritual beauty than she had even now.  He shut his eyes, tried to imagine her, to see her before him with snow-white hair, a face perhaps etherealized by knowledge of life and suffering; once he even called up the most perfect picture of old age he knew of—­the portrait of Whistler’s mother, calm, dignified, gentle, at peace, with folded hands; but his efforts were in vain; he simply could not see his Rosamund old.  And so, because of that, he could only see their child as a very young boy, wearing a boy’s crown of wild olive, such as had once been won by the boy of twelve in the games at Olympia.

The last day of their visit to the green wilds and the hilltops dawned, still, cloudless and very hot.  There was a light haze over Zante, and the great plain held a look of sleep—­not the sleep of night but of the siesta, when the dreams come out of the sun, and descend through the deep-blue corridors to visit those who are weary in the gold.  Rosamund, bareheaded, stood on the hill of Drouva and gazed towards the sea; her arm was round her olive tree; she looked marvelously well, lithe and strong, but her face was grave, held even a hint of sadness.

“Our last day here!” she said to Dion.  “One more night with the stars, only one!  Dion, when you brought me here, you did a dangerous thing.”

“Gave you opportunities for regret?  D’you mean that?”

She nodded, still gazing towards Zante.

“Such opportunities!”

“It couldn’t be helped.  I had to bring you.”

“Of course.  I know.  If you had let me leave Greece without coming here, and I had ever come to understand what I had missed, I don’t believe I could have forgiven even you.”

“I always meant to bring you here.”

“But you had a sudden impulse, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why exactly did it come?”

He hesitated.  Suddenly he felt reserved; but he broke through his reserve and answered: 

“I saw I had made you feel sad.”

“Did you?  Why was that?”

“Don’t you remember?”

She was catching the dream of the plain, perhaps, for she replied, with an almost preoccupied air: 

“I don’t think so.”

“I wanted to make you happy again, very happy, to give you a treat as quickly as possible.  The idea of this”—­he flung out a brown hand—­“came to me suddenly.  That’s how it was.  You—­you don’t know how I wish to keep every breath of sorrow out of your life.”

“I know you do; I feel it.  But you’ve put a sorrow in.”

She spoke with a half-whimsical smile.

“Have I?”

“The sorrow of leaving all this, of leaving the Hermes.  I didn’t know it was possible to grow to care for a lifeless thing as I care for him.  Sometimes I believe the marble has actually retained nothing of Praxiteles as a man.  I mean as apart from a sculptor.  But he must have been full of almost divine feelings and conceptions, or he could never have made my Hermes.  No man can make the divine without having divinity in him.  I’ve learnt more here in these few days than I have learnt in all my years.”