Ah, the memories were terribly alive to-day; not even fifteen years in a new life, with new interests, had done anything but draw a thin curtain of silence over the unforgettable pain. Would anything ever ease it in reality? Had he for a moment believed that it would? Or had he always known, that just as surely as his hand had held the gun which killed her, so to his last breath the tragedy would cast a shadow over the whole of his life?
He might look out upon the world with quiet eyes and firm lips and fearless mien, but the gnawing ache would surely go with him to his grave.
And because of it he knew that he had grown somewhat churlish; that men who did not understand his unsociable ways and extreme reticence looked at him askance. But what of it? How little such things mattered! The tragedy was his and the silence was his, and he had never asked anyone to share either.
Only to-day, for just this one afternoon, fifteen years was as yesterday, and he seemed to realise thoroughly for the first time all that royal hand-clasp had meant, before he went to his voluntary exile in a far wilderness.
But after a time, when it grew cool enough to walk, he came out into the sunshine and started off towards the steep rock pathway that leads to the summit of the Acropolis Hill, following an impulse to seek comfort in the fresh hopefulness of a height, and to lessen the pain in his heart by looking out across a world still living and loving and striving. So he climbed on up the winding pathway, enfolded with mystery and romance concerning the feet that trod it in the far-off centuries, and made his way between the mighty natural boulders out on to the high platform, where eyes, all those long centuries ago, must have looked out even as his, across the lovely land.
Was it as lovely then?... Could it have been less so?...
How the quiet beauty soothed and caressed him! Surely there were moments when the wilderness, tamed at last, like a lovely, wayward mistress become entrancingly docile, fondles the hand, and ravishes the senses of the strong man who conquered it.
Is this one of the rich rewards Life holds in the palm of her hand for the path-finders?... This glorious sense of ownership. This winsome soothing of shy gratitude when the fierce first resistance to conquest is overpast. A man may call England his country because he was born there, and his father before him; but, perhaps, after all, that is a small thing compared to standing upon a high eminence, and looking across a quiet world which is your country because of all you yourself have given to it of hope and faith and steadfast purpose.
In some such spirit soothing came to the quiet man on the top of the Acropolis Hill, whispering to him that, after all, this was his country, and if the beloved dead did indeed seem so far away in fact, in spirit he was perhaps nearer to his Empire-builders than he had ever been before.
He turned his head at last, and his eyes rested upon the circular wall, four hundred feet below, that enclosed the temple ruins. Then for a moment a wave of depression swept over him, blotting out the landscape loveliness. Was it all, then, vanity, this building and striving?... The making of walls and fortifications for another race, centuries afterwards, to look upon with cold wonder and curiosity? Three thousand years ago perhaps another man had stood even there and mourned his king that was dead. And so soon ... so soon ... he also died, and the massive walls became ruins, and the dynasty, or empire, or era, passed away into oblivion. How soon might a similar fate overtake his own great Empire!... and the beloved King, Edward the Peacemaker, be perhaps but a legend to some strange new race.