say. She could not have said anything else. And her soul
had said it as well as her lips.

"Forgive me! Forgive me!" she repeated.

She went up to Dion, took his poor tortured temples, from which the
hair, once so thick, had retreated, in her hands, and whispered again in
the midst of her tears:

"Forgive me!"

"I've been false to you," he said huskily. "I've broken my vow to you.
I've lived with another woman--for months. I've been a beast. I've
wallowed. I've gone right down. Everything horrible--I've--I've done
it. Only last night I meant to--to--I only broke away from it all last
night. I heard you were here and then I--I----"

"Forgive me!"

She felt as if God were speaking in her, through her. She felt as if
in that moment God had taken complete possession of her, as if for
the first time in her life she was just an instrument, formed for the
carrying out of His tremendous purposes, able to carry them out. Awe
was upon her. But she felt a strange joy, and even a wonderful sense of
peace.

"But you don't hear what I tell you. I have been false to you. I have
sinned against you for months and months."

"Hush! It was my sin."

"Yours? Oh, Rosamund!"

She was still holding his temples. He put his hands on her shoulders.

"Yes, it was my sin. I understand now how you love me. I never
understood till to-day."

"Yes, I love you."

"Then," she said, very simply. "I know you will be able to forgive me.
Don't tell me any more ever about what you have done. It's blotted out.
Just forgive me--and let us begin again."

She took away her hands from his temples. He did not kiss her, but
he took one of her hands, and they stood side by side looking towards
Stamboul, towards the City of the Unknown God. His eyes and hers were on
the minarets, those minarets which seem to say to those who have come to
them from afar, and whose souls are restless:

"In the East thou shalt find me if thou hast not found me in the West."

After a long silence Rosamund pressed Dion's hand, and it seemed to him
that never, in the former days of their union--not even in Greece--had
she pressed it with such tenderness, with such pulse-stirring intimacy
and trust in him. Then, still with her eyes upon the minarets, she said
in a low voice:

"I think Robin knows."

CHAPTER XVII

Not many days later, when the green valley of Olympia was wrapped in the
peace of a sunlit afternoon, and a faint breeze drew from the pine trees
on t