“He’s gone,” said Dion at last.
Rosamund got up slowly.
“You think he’s taken away the child because of us?”
There was an almost pathetic sound in her voice, but there was a smile in it too.
“You remember my stupid remark?”
“Perhaps it wasn’t stupid. I think those who dare to have a child ought to keep very near to the world Hermes walks in. They mayn’t wear wings on their sandals, but the earth oughtn’t to hold their feet too fast. Hermes has taught me.”
“No one could ever want to take a child away from you,” he answered.
In the vestibule of the Emperors they bade good-by to the guardian of the Museum, and made him understand that on the morrow they would be gone.
As he looked at Dion’s gift he felt for a moment almost depressed. He was accustomed to his constant visitor. Surely he would miss her. She smiled on him with her warm and very human cordiality for the last time, and went away, with her companion, into the dimness towards the hill of Drouva. Then the guardian pulled the great door. It closed with a final sound. The key was turned. And Hermes was left untroubled in that world where wings grow out of the sandals.