rom the city, scenes formed and reformed
by the lovely occupations of farm and vineyard and pasture. But the
lyric note so familiar to him in Italy seemed always overborne by
a deeper. Whether it was because of the noble modelling of the
fleshless mountains or because of an inner restraint in the minor
elements of the landscape, the mood generated by the beauty of the
Attic plain was always a grave one, delight swelling into reverence.

Now also, as his thoughts ceased whirling and he became conscious
again of what lay around him, his irritation died. All that was
trifling must be discarded when his eye could travel beyond wild
hyacinth and myrtle, past pines and olive groves and cypresses, past
the rosy soil of upturned fields, to the long, firm lines of Parnes's
purple ridge and to the snowy summit, a midday beacon, high-uplifted,
of distant Helicon.

To his relief, Paulus found that Gellius's monologue had given way
to general conversation. As he listened his heart grew hot within
him. These young men, of whom only Gellius and Servilianus had passed
out of their twenties, had lived in Athens for a year or longer, and
now, conscious of their approaching departure, they had fallen to
talking of the past months. A strange power Athens seemed to have
of exacting from aliens the intimate loyalty of sons. Here, Paulus
felt, was no miserly counting up of gains, but an inner concern with
art and history. Not as gluttonous travellers, but as those facing
a long exile, they talked of a city richer than Rome or Alexandria
or Antioch, richer than all the cities of the Empire taken together,
in masterpieces of architect and sculptor and painter; of a
country-side alive with memories of poets and thinkers and soldiers.
Taking with a catholic enthusiasm the hot winds and driving white
dust of summer, the deforming rains of winter, and the bright
splendour of sky and earth at the advent of spring, they had tramped
hither and yon, light-hearted in the vigour of youth, reverent in
the impulse of pilgrimage. Mountain fastnesses where the clarion
winds still trumpeted the victory of freedom and of Thrasybulus;
upland caves where Plato had been taken as a child to worship Pan;
long, white roads leading to the village homes of Euripides and
Demosthenes; the wind in the pine trees on Pentelicon, reminding them
of the wind in the groves of Tusculum; the autumn leaves on the plane
trees by the Ilissus; the silver moon seen from the water's