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 able to love Greece so much he felt a greater confidence in himself. Without any ugly pride he said to himself: "Perhaps my nature is a little bit better, a little bit purer than I had supposed."

As the breeze in the public garden touched his bare head, slightly lifting his thick dark hair, he remembered the winds of Greece; he remembered his secret name for Greece, "the land of the early morning." It was good to be able to delight in the early morning—pure, delicate, marvelously fresh.

He at down on a bench under a chestnut tree. The children's voices had died away. Silence seemed to be drawing near to the garden. He saw a few moving figures in the shadows, but at a distance, fading towards the city.

The line of the figure, the poise of the head of that girl with whom he had driven from the station, came before Dion's eyes.

CHAPTER II

One winter day in 1895—it was a Sunday—when fog lay thickly over London, Rosamund Everard sat alone in a house in Great Cumberland Place, reading Dante's "Paradiso." Her sister, Beatrice, a pale, delicate and sensitive shadow who adored her, and her guardian, Bruce Evelin, a well-known Q.C. now retired from practice, had gone into the country to visit some friends. Rosamund had also been invited, and much wanted, for there was a party in the house, and her gaiety, her beauty, and her fine singing made her a desirable guest; but she had "got out of it." On this particular Sunday she specially wished to be in London. At a church not far from Great Cumberland Place—St. Mary's, Welby Street—a man was going to preach that evening whom she very much wanted to hear. Her guardian's friend, Canon Wilton, had spoken to her about him, and had said to her once, "I should particularly like you to hear him." And somehow the simple words had impressed themselves upon her. So, when she heard that Mr. Robertson was coming from his church in Liverpool to preach at St. Mary's, she gave up the country visit to hear him.

Beatrice and Bruce Evelin had no scruples in leaving her alone for a couple of days. They knew that she, who had such an exceptional faculty for getting on with all sorts and conditions of men and women, and who always shed sunshine around her, had within her a great love of, sometimes almost a thirst for, solitude.

"I need to be alone now and then," they had heard her say; "it's like drinking water to me."

Sitting quietly by the fire with her delightful edition of Dante, her left hand under her head, her tall figure stretched out in a low chair, Rosamund heard a bell ring below. It called her from the "Paradiso." She sprang up, remembering that she had given the butler no orders about not wishing to be disturbed. At lunch-time the fog had been so dense that she had not thought about possible visitors; she hurried to the head of the staircase.

"Lurby! Lurby! I'm not at—"

It was too late. The butler must have been in the hall. She heard the street door open and a man's voice murmuring something. Then the door shut and she heard steps. She retreated into the drawing-room, pulling down her brows and shaking her head. No more "Paradiso," and she loved it so! A moment before she had been far away.

The book was lying open on the arm-chair in which she had been sitting. She went to close it and put it on a table. For an instant she looked down on the page, and immediately her dream returned. Then Lurby's dry, soft voice said behind her:

"Mr. Leith, ma'am."

"Oh!" She turned, leaving the book.

Directly she looked at Dion Leith she knew why he had come.

"I'm all alone," Rosamund said. "I stayed here, instead of going to Sherrington with Beattie and my guardian, because I wanted to hear a sermon this evening. Come and sit down by the fire."

"What church are you going to?"

"St. Mary's, Welby Street."

"Shall I go with you?"

Rosamund had taken up the "Paradiso" and was shutting it.

"I think I'll go alone," she said gently but quite firmly.

"What are you reading?"

"Dante's 'Paradiso.'"

She put the book down on a table at her elbow.

"I don't believe you meant me to be let in," he said bluntly.

"I didn't know it was you. How could I know?"

"And if you had known?"

She hesitated. His brows contracted till he looked almost fierce.

"I'm not sure. Honestly I'm not sure. I've been quite alone since Friday, when they went. And I'd got it into my head that I wasn't going to see any one till to-morrow, except, of course, at the church."

Dion felt chilled almost to the bone.

"I can't understand," he almost burst out, in an uncontrolled way that surprised himself. "Are you completely self-sufficing then? But it isn't natural. Could you live alone?"

"I didn't say that."

She looked at him steadily and calmly, without a hint of anger.

"But could you?"

"I don't know. Probably not. I've never tried."

"But you don't hate the idea?"

His voice was almost violent.

"No; if—if I were living in a certain way."

"What way?"

But she did not answer his question.

"I dare say I might dislike living alone. I've never done such a thing, therefore I can't tell."

"You're an enigma," he exclaimed. "And you seem so—so—you have this extraordinary, this abnormal power of attracting people to you. You are friends with everybody."

"Indeed I'm not."

"I mean you're so cordial, so friendly with everybody. Don't you care for anybody?"

"I care very much for some people."

"And yet you could live alone! Shut in here for days with a book"—at that moment he was positively jealous of old Dante, gone to his rest five hundred and seventy-four years ago—"you're perfectly happy."

"The 'Paradiso' isn't an ordinary book," she said, very gently, and looking at him with a kind, almost beaming expression in her yellow-brown eyes.

"I don't believe you ever read an ordinary book."

"I like to feed on fine things. I'm half afraid of the second-rate."

"I love you for that. Oh, Rosamund, I love you for so many things!"

He got up and stood by the fire, turning his back to her for a moment. When he swung round his face was earnest but he looked calmer. She saw that he was making a strong effort to hold himself in, that he was reaching out after self-control.

"I can't tell you all the things I love you for," he said, "but your independence of spirit frightens me. From the very first, from that evening when I saw you in the omnibus at the Milan Station over a year ago, I felt your independence."

"Did I manifest it in the omnibus to poor Beattie and my guardian?" she asked, smiling, and in a lighter tone.

"I don't know," he said gravely. "But when I saw you the same evening walking with your sister in the public garden I felt it more strongly. Even the way you held your head and moved—you reminded me of the maidens of the Porch on the Acropolis. I connected you with Greece and all my—my dreams of Greece."

"Perhaps if you hadn't just come from Greece—"

"Wasn't it strange," he said, interrupting her but quite unconscious that he did so, "that almost the first words I heard you speak were about Greece?