thickly and fell upon her face. She put out a hand to
Dion. He clasped it closely.

"God took him away, and perhaps because of us. I think it may have
been to teach us, you and me. Perhaps we needed a great sorrow. Perhaps
nothing else could have taught us something we had to learn."

"It may be so," he almost whispered.

She got up and leaned against his shoulder.

"Whatever happens to me in the future," she said, "I don't think I shall
ever distrust God again."

He put his arm round her and, for the first time since their reunion, he
kissed her, and she returned his kiss.

Over Elis the twilight was falling, a green twilight, sylvan and very
ethereal, tremulous in its delicate beauty. It stole through the green
doors, and down through the murmuring pine trees. The sheep-bells were
ringing softly; the flocks were going homeward from pasture; and the
chime of their little bells mingled with the wide whispering of the
eternities among the summits of the pine trees. Music of earth mingled
with the music from a distance that knew what the twilight knew.

Presently the two marble figures in the chamber of the Hermes began to
fade away gradually, as if deliberately withdrawing themselves from the
gaze of men. At last only their outlines were visible to Rosamund and to
Dion. But even these told of the Golden Age, of the age of long peace.

"FAREWELL!"

Some one had said it within that chamber, and a second voice had echoed
it.

As the guardian of the Hermes watched the two pilgrims walking slowly
away down the valley he noticed that the man's right arm clasped the
woman's waist. And, so, they passed from his sight and were taken by the
green twilight of Elis.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Wilderness, by Robert Hichens

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