ty reigned over
her spirit, as she gazed upon the immense pastoral bounded by mountains
and the sea; a green wilderness threaded by a serpentine river of
silver--a far-flung river which lingered on its way, journeying hither
and thither, making great curves as if it loved the wilderness
and wished to know it well, to know all of it before being merged
irrevocably with the sea.

"Those are the valleys of the Kladeos and the Alpheios."

"Yes."

"And that far-off Isle is the Island of Zante."

"Of Zante," she repeated.

After a long pause she said:

"You know those words somewhere in the Bible--'the wilderness and the
solitary places'?"

"Yes."

"I've always loved them, just those words. Even when I was quite a
child I liked to say them. And I remember once, when I was staying at
Sherrington, we drove over to the cathedral. Canon Wilton took us into
the stalls. It was a week-day and there were very few people. The anthem
was Wesley's 'The Wilderness.' I had never heard it before, and when I
heard those words--my words--being sung, I had such a queer thrill. I
wanted to cry and I was startled. To most people, I suppose, the word
wilderness suggests something dreary and parched, ugly desolation."

"Yes. The scapegoat was driven out into the wilderness."

"I think I'd rather take _my_ sin into the wilderness than anywhere
else. Purification might be found there."

"_Your_ sin!" he said. "As if----" He was silent.

Zante seemed sleeping in the distance of the Ionian Sea, far away as
the dream from which one has waked, touched with a dream's mystic
remoteness. The great plain, stretching to mountains and sea, vast and
green and lonely--but with the loneliness that smiles, desiring nothing
else--seemed uninhabited. Perhaps there were men in it, laboring among
the vineyards or toiling among the crops, women bending over the earth
by which they lived, or washing clothes on the banks of the river.
Rosamund did not look for them and did not see them. In the green
landscape, over which from a distance the mountains kept their quiet and
deeply reserved watch, she detected no movement. Even the silver of
the river seemed immobile, as if its journeyings were now stilled by an
afternoon spell.

"It's as empty as the plain of Marathon, but how much greater!" she said
at last.

"At Marathon there was the child."

"Yes, and here there's not even a child."

She sighed.

"I wonder what one would learn to be if one live