“I think there’s a great deal that can only be learnt quite alone.”
Again, as sometimes before, Dion trod on the verges of mystery, felt as if something in Rosamund chided him, and was chilled for a moment.
“I dare say you are right,” he said. “But I believe I could learn any lesson more easily with you to help me.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Perhaps we shall know which is right, you or I, when we’ve been much longer together,” he said, with an effort to speak lightly.
“Yes.”
“Rosamund, sometimes you make me feel as if you thought I didn’t know you, I mean didn’t know you thoroughly.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
Again silence fell between them. As Dion listened once more to the persistent nightingale he felt that there was pain somewhere at the back of its ecstasy. He looked down at the soft lights of little Athens, and suddenly knew that much sorrow lay in the shadows of all the cities of the earth. There was surely a great reserve in the girl who had given herself to him. That was natural, perhaps. But to-night he felt that she was aware of this reserve and was consciously guarding it like a sacred thing. Presently they got up and went slowly down the hill.