Tom and she, being already fairly intimate, saw a good deal of each other. Maud, too, had experienced a quite peculiar pleasure in the sight of the Acropolis, and Tom’s presence by no means lessened it.
They were sitting one bright winter’s day on the steps of the little temple to Nike, which looks over the lower Attic plain, and across the narrow sea to Ægina and Salamis, and Tom was feeling a new-found joy in having some one to whom he could talk fully, being sure of sympathy. Though his artist’s nature had not yet insisted on the life-size Apollo, expression of some sort was becoming necessary to him.
He pointed towards Salamis.
“That’s where they smashed the Persian fleet,” he said, “and our Lady of Victory was standing here where you and I are sitting. She used to be a winged goddess, but when she saw that, she plucked off her wings, and became the Wingless Victory. At least, that is my version. And here they set her temple on high.”
Maud’s eyes sparkled, and she said nothing for a minute or two.
“I’m afraid I’m a pagan,” she remarked at length; “I believe in these gods and goddesses.”
“Why, of course you do,” said Tom. “These myths could never have been invented; they were a conviction. And a conviction is the only religion worth having.”
“But doesn’t it matter what the conviction is?”
“No, certainly not. One man’s conviction may not be the conviction of another man, or of any other man, but it is the true thing for him. A man’s conviction is that for which he was made.”
“But don’t you believe in a time when every one, dead or alive, will have the same conviction?”