Salamis were dyed with a wonder of emerald; they asked for twilight, and
the deep and deserted glades of Academe gave it them in full measure.
All these possessions, and many others, they enjoyed almost as children
enjoy a meadow full of flowers when they have climbed over the gate
that bars it from the high road. But the Acropolis was the stronghold
of their joy. Only when their feet pressed its silvery grasses, and trod
its warm marble pavements, did they hold the world within their grasp.

For some days after their arrival in Greece they almost lived among the
ruins. The long-coated guardians smiled at them, at first with a sort
of faint amusement, at last with a friendly pleasure. And they smiled
at themselves. Each evening they said, "To-morrow we will do this--or
that," and each morning they said nothing, just looked at each other
after breakfast, read in each other's eyes the repetition of desire, and
set out on the dear dusty road with which they were already so familiar.

Had there ever before been a honeymoon bounded by the precipices of the
Acropolis? They sometimes discussed that important question, and always
decided against the impertinent possibility. "What we are doing has
never been done before." Dion went further than this, to "What I am
feeling has never been felt before." His youth asserted itself in
silent, determined statements which seemed to him to ring with authentic
truth.

It was a far cry from the downs of Chilton to the summit of the
Acropolis. Dion remembered the crowd assembled to hear "Elijah"; he felt
the ugly heat, the press of humanity. And all that was but the prelude
to this! Even the voice crying "Woe unto them!" had been the prelude
to the wonderful silence of Greece. He felt marvelously changed. And
Rosamund often seemed to him changed, too, because she was his own. That