“From the statue of a Pagan.  Isn’t that strange?”

“No, I don’t think so.  For I was able to see the Christianity in it.  I know what Praxiteles was only able to feel mysteriously.  Sometimes in London I’ve heard people—­you know the sort of people I mean—­regretting they didn’t live in the old Greek world.”

“I’ve regretted that.”

“Have you?  But not in their way.  When I look at the Hermes I feel very thankful I have lived since.”

“Tell me just why.”

“Because I live in a world which has received definitely and finally the message the Hermes knew before it was sent down.”

She took away her arm from the olive tree and sighed.

“Oh, Dion, I shall hate going away, leaving the tent and Drouva and him.  But I believe whenever I think of Olympia I shall feel the peace that, thank God, doesn’t pass all understanding.”

They went down to the valley that day to pay their final visit to the Hermes.  Twilight had not yet come, but was not very far off when, for the last time, they crossed the threshold of his chamber.  More silent than ever, more benignly silent, did the hush about him seem to Dion; more profound were his peace and serenity.  He and the child had surely withdrawn a little farther from all that was not intended, but that, for some inscrutable reason, had come to be.  His winged sandals had carried him still farther away.  As Dion looked at him he seemed to be afar.

“Rosamund!”

“Yes?”

“This evening I have a feeling about the Hermes I’ve never had before.”

“What is it?”

“That he’s taking the child away, quite away.”

“But he’s always been here, and not here.  That’s what I love so much.”

“I don’t mean quite that.  It’s as if he were taking the child farther and farther away, partly because of us.”

“I don’t like that.  I don’t feel that at all.”

“We belong to this world, you see, and are subject to all its conditions.  We are in it and of it.”

“Well?”

“He belongs to such a different world.”

“Yes, the released world, where no ugly passions can ever get in.”

“The way he looks at Dionysos tells one that.  He hasn’t any fear for the boy’s future when he grows up and comes to know things.  It just strikes me that no human being who thinks could ever look at a human child like that.  There would always be the fear behind—­’What is life going to do to the child?’”

She looked at him, and her face was very grave.

“D’you think we should feel that?”

“Surely.”

“Unless we got the serene courage of the Hermes.”

“But he lived among gods, and we live among men.”

“Not always.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Perhaps some day you will,” she answered.

Into her eyes there had come a strange look of withdrawal.