lovers, the friends, whom they had mourned for.

"What a lesson this is for me!" she murmured at last, after standing for
a long while wrapped in silence and contemplation.

"Why for you, specially?" he asked.

She looked up at him. There were tears in her eyes. He believed she
was hesitating, undecided whether to let him into a new chamber of her
being, or whether to close a half-opened door against him.

"It's very difficult to submit, I think, for some of us," she answered,
after a pause, slowly. "Those old Greeks must have known how to do it."

"To submit to sorrow?"

"Yes, to a great sorrow. Such a thing is like an attack in the dark. If
I am attacked I want to strike back and hurt."

"But whom could you reasonably hurt on account of a death that came in
the course of nature? That's what you mean, isn't it?"

"Yes."

After a slight hesitation she said:

"Do you mean that you don't think we can hurt God?"

"I wonder," Dion answered.

"I don't. I know we can."

She looked again at the tomb before which they were standing. It showed
a woman seated and stretching out her right arm, which a woman friend
was touching. In the background was another, contemplative, woman and
a man wearing a chaplet of leaves, his hand lifted to his face. For
epitaph there was one word cut in marble.

"It means farewell, doesn't it?" asked Rosamund.

"Yes."

"Perhaps you'll smile, but I think these tombs are the most beautiful
things I have seen in Greece. It's a miracle--their lack of violence.
What a noble thing grief could be. That little simple word. It's great
to be able to give up the dearest thing with that one little word. But I
couldn't--I couldn't."

"How do you know?"

"I know, because I didn't."

She said nothing more on the subject that morning, but when they were
on the Acropolis waiting, as so often before, for the approach of the
evening, she returned to it. Evidently it was haunting her that day.

"I believe giving up nobly is a much finer thing than attaining nobly,"
she said. "And yet attaining wins all the applause, and giving up, if it
gets anything, only gets that ugly thing--pity."

"But is pity an ugly thing?" said Dion.

He had a little stone in his hand, and, as he spoke, he threw it gently
towards the precipice, taking care not to send it over the edge.

"I think I would rather have anything on earth from people than their
pity."

"Suppose I were to pity you because I loved you?"