In the Wilderness | Page 3

to grumble a little at fate, Dion had
set off in solitude.
He knew now that his solitude had given him keen sensations, which he
could scarcely have felt with the best of friends. Never, in any company,
had he been so repelled, enticed, disgusted, deeply enchanted, as on
these lonely wanderings which were now a part of his life.
How he had hated Constantinople, and how he had loved Greece! His
expectation had been betrayed by the event. He had not known himself

when he left England, or the part of himself which he had known had
been the lesser part, and he had taken it for the greater. For he had set
out on his journey with his hopes mainly fixed on Constantinople. Its
road of wildness and tumult, its barbaric glitter, its crude mixture of
races, even its passions and crimes--a legend in history, a solid fact of
to-day--had allured his mind. The art of Greece had beckoned to him;
its ancient shrines had had their strong summons for his brain; but he
had scarcely expected to love the country. He had imagined it as
certainly beautiful but with an austere and desolate beauty that would
be, perhaps, almost repellent to his nature. He had conceived of it as
probably sad in its naked calm, a country weary with the weight of a
glorious past.
But he had been deceived, and he was glad of that. Because he had
been able to love Greece so much he felt a greater confidence in
himself. Without any ugly pride he said to himself: "Perhaps my nature
is a little bit better, a little bit purer than I had supposed."
As the breeze in the public garden touched his bare head, slightly
lifting his thick dark hair, he remembered the winds of Greece; he
remembered his secret name for Greece, "the land of the early
morning." It was good to be able to delight in the early morning-- pure,
delicate, marvelously fresh.
He at down on a bench under a chestnut tree. The children's voices had
died away. Silence seemed to be drawing near to the garden. He saw a
few moving figures in the shadows, but at a distance, fading towards
the city.
The line of the figure, the poise of the head of that girl with whom he
had driven from the station, came before Dion's eyes.

CHAPTER II
One winter day in 1895--it was a Sunday--when fog lay thickly over
London, Rosamund Everard sat alone in a house in Great Cumberland

Place, reading Dante's "Paradiso." Her sister, Beatrice, a pale, delicate
and sensitive shadow who adored her, and her guardian, Bruce Evelin,
a well-known Q.C. now retired from practice, had gone into the country
to visit some friends. Rosamund had also been invited, and much
wanted, for there was a party in the house, and her gaiety, her beauty,
and her fine singing made her a desirable guest; but she had "got out of
it." On this particular Sunday she specially wished to be in London. At
a church not far from Great Cumberland Place--St. Mary's, Welby
Street--a man was going to preach that evening whom she very much
wanted to hear. Her guardian's friend, Canon Wilton, had spoken to her
about him, and had said to her once, "I should particularly like /you/ to
hear him." And somehow the simple words had impressed themselves
upon her. So, when she heard that Mr. Robertson was coming from his
church in Liverpool to preach at St. Mary's, she gave up the country
visit to hear him.
Beatrice and Bruce Evelin had no scruples in leaving her alone for a
couple of days. They knew that she, who had such an exceptional
faculty for getting on with all sorts and conditions of men and women,
and who always shed sunshine around her, had within her a great love
of, sometimes almost a thirst for, solitude.
"I need to be alone now and then," they had heard her say; "it's like
drinking water to me."
Sitting quietly by the fire with her delightful edition of Dante, her left
hand under her head, her tall figure stretched out in a low chair,
Rosamund heard a bell ring below. It called her from the "Paradiso."
She sprang up, remembering that she had given the butler no orders
about not wishing to be disturbed. At lunch-time the fog had been so
dense that she had not thought about possible visitors; she hurried to
the head of the staircase.
"Lurby! Lurby! I'm not at--"
It was too late. The butler must have been in the hall. She heard the
street door open and a man's voice murmuring something. Then the
door shut and she heard steps. She retreated into the drawing-room,

pulling down her brows and