h of wild olive! If you only knew how it hurt me."

"Oh--that! But how could you know?"

She still looked at him with a sort of shining of anger in her eyes.

"I saw from the room of the Hermes. The doorway of the Museum is the
frame for such a picture of Elis! It's almost, in its way, as dream-like
and lovely as the distant country one sees through the temple door in
Raphael's 'Marriage of the Virgin' in Milan. And hanging partly across
it was that branch of wild olive. I was looking at it and loving it in
the room of the Hermes when a man's arm, your arm, was thrust into the
picture, and the poor branch was torn away."

She had spoken quite excitedly, still evidently under the impulse of
something like anger. Now she suddenly pulled herself up with a little
forced laugh.

"Of course you didn't know; you couldn't. I suppose I was dreaming,
and it--it looked like a sort of murder. But still I don't see why you
should tear the branch off, and all the leaves too."

"I'm sorry, I'm very sorry, Rosamund. It was idiotic. Of course I hadn't
an idea what you were doing, I mean, that you were looking at it. One
does senseless little things sometimes."

"It looked so angry."

"What did?"

"Your hand, your arm. You can have no idea how----"

She broke off again.

"Let me come in with you. Let's go to the Hermes."

"Oh no, not now."

She spoke with almost brusk decision.

"Very well, then, I'll just pay the man something, and we'll be off to
the ruins."

"Yes."

Dion went to pay the guardian, whom he found standing up among the Roman
Emperors in a dignified and receptive attitude. When he came back he
picked up the lunch-basket, slung it over his shoulder, and they walked
down the small hill and towards the ruins in silence. He felt involved
in a tragedy, pained and discomforted. Yet it was all rather absurd,
too. He did not know what to say, how to take it, and he looked straight
ahead, seeking instinctively for some diversion. When they were on the
river bank he found it in the fishermen who were wading in the shallows
with their nets.

"I wonder what they catch here," he said. "There's not much water."

Rosamund took up the remark with her usual readiness and sympathetic
cordiality, and soon they were chattering again much as usual.

The great heat of the hour after noontide found them lunching among the
ruins of Nero's house. By this time the spell of the place had fast
hold of them both. Nature had lo