e
temple.

"I wonder how many thousands of people of all nations have learnt the
same lesson here," Rosamund said at last.

"The Doric lesson, you mean?"

"Yes, of strength, simplicity, endurance, calmness."

"And I wonder how many thousands have forgotten the lesson."

"Why do you say that, Dion?"

"I don't know. Great art is a moral teacher, I'm sure of that. But men
are very light-minded as a rule, I think. If they lived before these
columns they might learn a great deal, they might even develop in a
splendid direction, I believe. But an hour, even a few hours, is that
enough? Impressions fade very quickly in most people."

"Not in you. You never forget the Parthenon, and I shall never forget
it."

She stood for some minutes quite still gazing steadily up at the
temple, gaining--it seemed to her--her own stillness from its tremendous
immobility.

"The greatest strength is in silence," she thought. "The greatest power
is in motionlessness."

She thought of the raging of the great sea. But no! There was more of
the essence of strength, of the stern inwardness of power, in that which
confronted life and Time in absolute stillness; in a mountain, in
this temple. And the temple spoke to something far down within her; to
something which desired long silences and deep retirement, to something
mystic which she did not understand. The temple was Pagan and she knew
that. But that in her to which it spoke was not Pagan. Before she left
Athens she meant to realize that the soul of man, when it speaks through
mighty and pure effort, of whatever kind, always speaks to the same
Listener, to but one, though man may not know it.

"Doric!" she said at last. "I have always known that for me that would
be the greatest. The simplest thing is the most sublime thing. That
temple is like the Sermon on the Mount to me. Didn't you bring me here
because it meant so much to you?"

"Not entirely. No, Rosamund, I think I brought you here because I felt
that you belonged here."

"This satisfies me."

She sighed deeply, still gazing at the temple.

"You aren't only in Greece, you are of Greece. Come to the maidens."

As they went on slowly the acid voices of the little birds which fly
perpetually among the columns of the Parthenon followed them, bidding
them good night.

They descended over the uneven ground and came to the famous Porch of
the Caryatides, jutting out from the little Ionic temple which is the
handmaid of the