Parthenon. Not far from the Porch, and immediately
before it, was a wooden bench. Already Rosamund and Dion had spent many
hours here, sometimes sitting on the bench, more often resting on the
warm ground in the sunshine, among the fragments of ruin and the speary,
silver-green grasses. Now Rosamund sat down and Dion stood by her side.

"Rosamund, those maidens are my ideal of womanhood shown in marble," he
said.

"They are almost miraculously beautiful. And one scarcely knows why. But
I know that every time I see them the mystery of their beauty seems more
ineffable to me, and the meaning of it seems more profound. How did men
get so much meaning into marble?"

"By caring so much for what is beautiful in womanhood, I suppose."

He sat down close beside her.

"I sometimes wonder whether women have any idea what some men, many men,
I believe, seek in women."

"What do they seek?"

"What do those maidens that hold up the Porch suggest to you?"

"All that's calm without a touch of coldness, and strong without a touch
of hardness, and noble without a touch of pride, and obedient without a
touch of servility."

"Brave sweetness, too, and protectiveness. They are wonderful, and so
are some women. When I saw you in the omnibus at Milan I thought of
these maidens immediately."

"How strange!"

"Why strange?"

"Isn't it?" she said, gazing at the six maidens in their flowering
draperies of marble, who, upon their uncovered heads, bore tranquillity
up the marble architrave. "How wonderfully simple and unpretending they
are!"

"Are not you?"

"I don't know. I don't believe I think about it."

"I do. Rosamund, sometimes I feel that I am an unique man--just think of
a fellow in a firm on the Stock Exchange being unique!--because I have
had an ideal, and I have attainted to it. When I was here alone, I
conceived for the first time an ideal of woman. I said to myself, 'In
the days of ancient Greece there must have been such women in the flesh
as these maidens in marble. If I could have lived and loved then!' And I
came away from Greece carrying a sort of romantic dream with me. And now
I sit here with you; I can't think why I, a quite ordinary man, should
be picked out for perfect happiness."

"Is it really perfect?" she asked, turning to him.

"I think so. In such a place with you!"

As the evening drew on, a little wind came and went over the rocky
height, but it had no breath of cold in it. Two Greek soldiers