ver
beautiful, in any land of the earth. Nowhere else could the Hermes have
been so serenely tender, so exquisitely benign in its contemplation; and
no other valley could have kept it safe with such gentle watchfulness,
such tranquilly unwearied patience. Surely each loved the other, and so
each gained something from the other.

Through all the months since his visit, Dion had remembered the unique
quality of the peace of Olympia, like no other peace, and the strange
and exquisite hush which greeted the pilgrim at the threshold of the
chamber in which the Hermes stood. He had remembered, but now he felt.
Again the silence seemed to come out of the marble to greet him, a
remembered pilgrim who had returned to his worship bringing another
pilgrim. He entered once more into the peace of the Hermes, and now
Rosamund shared that peace. As he looked at her for a moment, he knew he
had made a complete atonement; he had sent the shadow away.

How could any shadow stand in the presence of the Hermes? The divine
calm within this chamber had a power which was akin to the power of
nature in the twilight of a windless evening, or of a beautiful soul at
ease in its own simplicity. It purified. Dion could not imagine any
man being able to look at the Hermes and feel the attraction of sin.
Rosamund was right, he thought. Surely men have to go and fetch their
sins. Their goodness is given to them. The mother holds it, and is aware
of it, when her baby is put into her arms for the first time.

For a long while these two watched Hermes and the child in the silence
of Elis, bound together by an almost perfect sympathy. And they
understood as never before the beauty of calm--calm of the nerves, calm
of the body, calm of the mind, the heart and the soul; peace physical,
intellectual and moral. In looking at the Hermes they saw, or seemed to
themselves to see, the goal, what struggling humanity is meant for--the
perfect poise, all faculties under effortless control, and so peace.

"We must be meant for that," Dion said to himself. "Shall we reach that
goal, and take a child with us?"

Then he looked down at Rosamund, saw her pale yellow hair, the back of
her neck, in which, somehow, purity was manifested, and thought:

"I might perhaps get there through her, but only through her."

She turned round, looked at him and smiled.

"Isn't he divine? And the child's attitude!"

Dion moved and sat down beside her.

"If this is Paganism," s