In the Wilderness | Page 3

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 shaking her head. No more "Paradiso," and she loved it so! A moment before she had been far away.
The book was lying open on the arm-chair in which she had been sitting. She went to close it and put it on a table. For an instant she looked down on