but did not speak so freely about them as before.

"Your brother knows a good deal more about these things than I do, Mrs.
Baske," he remarked. "He shall give us the benefit of his Latin."

Miriam resolutely kept her eyes alike from Reuben and from Cecily.
Hitherto her attention to the ruins had been intermittent, but
occasionally she had forgotten herself so far as to look and ponder;
now she saw nothing. Her mind was gravely troubled; she wished only
that the day were over.

As for Elgar, he seemed to the Bradshaws singularly quiet, modest,
inoffensive. If he ventured a suggestion or a remark, it was in a
subdued voice and with the most pleasant manner possible. He walked for
a time with Mrs. Bradshaw, and accommodated himself with much tact to
her way of regarding foreign things, whether ancient or modern. In a
short time all went smoothly again.

Not since they shook hands had Elgar and Cecily encountered each
other's glance. They looked at each other often, very often, but only
when the look could not be returned; they exchanged not a syllable. Yet
both knew that at some approaching moment, for them the supreme moment
of this day, their eyes must meet. Not yet; not casually, and whilst
others regarded them. The old ruins would be kind.

It was in the house of Meleager. They had walked among the coloured
columns, and had visited the inner chamber, where upon the wall is
painted the Judgment of Paris. Mr. Bradshaw passed out through the
narrow doorway, and his voice was dulled; Miriam passed with him, and,
close after her, Mrs. Bradshaw. Reuben seemed to draw aside for Cecily,
but she saw his hand extended towards her--it held a spray of
maidenhair that he had just gathered. She took it, or would have taken
it, but her hand was closed in his.

"I have stayed only to see you again," came panting from his lips. "I
could not go till I had seen you again!"

And before the winged syllables had ceased, their eyes met; nor their
eyes alone, for upon both was the constraint of passion that leaps like
flame to its desire--mouth to mouth and heart to heart for one instant
that concentrated all the joy of being.

What hand, centuries ago crumbled into indistinguishable dust, painted
that parable of the youth making his award to Love? What eyes gazed
upon it, when this was a home of man and woman warm with life,
listening all day long to the music of uttered thoughts? Dark-buried
whilst so many ages of history went by,