As he looked at her now, resting on a block of warm marble above the
precipice which is dominated by the little temple of Athena Nike, he
wondered, with the concealed humility of the great lover, how it was
that she had ever chosen to give herself to him. He had sworn to marry
her. He had not been weak in his wooing, had not been one of those men
who will linger on indefinitely at a woman's feet, ready to submit to
unnumbered refusals. But now there rose up in the depths of him the cry,
"What am I?" and the answer, "Only a man like thousands of other men, in
no way remarkable, in no way more worthy than thousands of others of the
gift of great happiness."

Rosamund turned from the shining view. There was in her eyes an unusual
vagueness.

"Why did you?"

"Why did I marry you, Dion?"

"Yes. When I found you with your 'Paradise' I don't think you meant ever
to marry me."

"I always liked you. But at first I didn't think of you in that way."

"But you had known for ages before Burstal----"

"Yes, of course. I knew the day I sang at Mr. Darlington's, at that
party he gave to introduce me as a singer. I knew first from your
mother. She told me."

"My mother?"