Greece he had taken ship to Brindisi, and was now on his way home to
England.

What he had thought at the time to be an ill chance had sent him on his
way alone. Guy Daventry, his great friend, who was to go with him, had
been seized by an illness. It was too late then to find another man
free. So, reluctantly, and inclined to grumble a little at fate, Dion
had set off in solitude.

He knew now that his solitude had given him keen sensations, which
he could scarcely have felt with the best of friends. Never, in any
company, had he been so repelled, enticed, disgusted, deeply enchanted,
as on these lonely wanderings which were now a part of his life.

How he had hated Constantinople, and how he had loved Greece! His
expectation had been betrayed by the event. He had not known himself
when he left England, or the part of himself which he had known had been
the lesser part, and he had taken it for the greater. For he had set out
on his journey with his hopes mainly fixed on Constantinople. Its road
of wildness and tumult, its barbaric glitter, its crude mixture of
races, even its passions and crimes--a legend in history, a solid fact
of to-day--had allured his mind. The art of Greece had beckoned to him;
its ancient shrines had had their strong summons for his brain; but
he had scarcely expected to love the country. He had imagined it as
certainly beautiful but with an austere and desolate beauty that would
be, perhaps, almost repellent to his nature. He had conceived of it as
probably sad in its naked calm, a country weary with the weight of a
glorious past.

But he had been deceived, and he was glad of that. Because he had been