t quite new."

"How?"

"It sounded fanatical when you sang it. I never heard it sound like that
before."

"Fanatical?" she said, and her voice was rather cold.

"Rosamund," he said, quickly and anxiously, "you asked me to tell you
exactly what I meant, what I felt, that is----"

"Yes, I know. Go on, Dion. Well? It sounded fanatical----"

"To me. I'm only telling you my impression. When I've heard 'Woe unto
them' before it has always sounded sad, piteous if you like, a sort of
wailing. When you sang it, somehow it was like a curse, a tremendous
summoning of vengeance."

"Why not? Are not the words 'Destruction shall fall upon them'?"

"I know. But you made it sound--to me, I mean--almost as if you were
rejoicing personally at the thought of the destruction, as if you were
longing almost eagerly for it to overwhelm the faithless."

"I see. That is what you meant by fanatical?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

After a long pause she said:

"Nobody has told me that till now."

"Perhaps others didn't feel it as I did."

"I don't know. What does one know about other people? Not even my
guardian said anything. I never could understand----"

She broke off, then continued steadily:

"So you think I repelled people that day?"

"It seems impossible that you--"

But she interrupted him.

"No, Dion, it isn't at all impossible. I think if we are absolutely
sincere we repel people very often."

"But you are the most sincere person I have ever seen, and you must know
how beloved you are, how popular you are wherever you go."

"When I'm being sincere with the part of me that's feeling kind or
affectionate. Let us go to the Parthenon."

She got up, opened her white sun-umbrella and turned round, keeping her
hat in her left hand. As she stood there in that setting of marble, with
the sun caught in her hair, and the mighty view below and beyond her,
she looked wonderfully beautiful, Dion thought, but almost stern. He
feared perhaps he had hurt her. But was it his fault? She had told him
to speak.

Rosamund did not return to the subject of her debut at Burstal, but
in the late afternoon of that day she spoke of her singing, and of the
place it might have in their married life. Dion believed she did this
because of their conversation near the Temple of Nike.

They had spent most of the day on the Acropolis. Both had brought books:
she, Mahaffy's "History of Greek Literature"; he, a volume of poems
written by a young dip