“You committed a crime this morning. Nature’s taken possession of Olympia, and you struck at her.”
“D’you know why I did that?”
“No.”
But she did not again ask him why, and he never told her. When the heat had lessened a little, they wandered once more through that garden of ruins, where scarcely a column is standing, where convulsions of nature have helped the hands of man to overthrow man’s work, and where nature has healed every wound, and made every scar tender and beautiful. And presently Rosamund said:
“I want to know exactly where Hermes was found.”
“Come, and I’ll show you.”
He led her on among the wild flowers and the grasses, till they came to the clearly marked base of the Heraeon, the most ancient known temple of Greece. Two of its columns were standing, tremendously massive Doric columns of a warm golden-brown color.
“The Hermes was found in this temple. It stood between two of the columns, but I believe it was lying down when it was found.”
“It’s difficult to imagine him between such columns as these.”
“Yet you love Doric.”