Doric! Suddenly the word jumped up in his mind, and a vision of the Parthenon columns rose before his imagination, sternly glorious, almost with the strength of a menace. He set his teeth together and cursed himself for a fool and a backslider.
Rosamund and he were to be Doric. Well, this evening he didn’t know exactly what he was, but he certainly was not Doric.
Just then he heard the sound of a shot. He did not know what direction it came from, but, fantastically enough, it seemed to be a comment on his thought, a brusk, decisive exclamation flung at him from out of the silent evening. “Sentimentalist! Take that, and get out of your mush of feeling!” As he recognized it—he now forced himself to that sticking-point—to be a mush, the shot’s comment fell in, of course, with his own view of the matter.
He sat still for a moment, thinking of the shot, and probably expecting it to be repeated. It was not repeated. A great silence prevailed, the silence of the Hellenic wild held in the hand of evening. And abruptly, perhaps, from that large and pervasive silence, Dion caught a coldness of fear. All his perceptions rushed upon him, an acute crowd. He sprang up, put his hand to his revolver. Rosamund out alone somewhere in the loneliness of Greece—evening—a shot!
He was over the brow of the hill towards the west in a moment. All respect for Rosamund’s evening whim, all remembrance of his own proper pride, was gone from him.
“Rosamund!” he called; “Rosamund!”
“Here!” replied her strong voice from somewhere a little way below him.
And he saw her standing on the hillside and looking downwards. He thrust his revolver back into his pocket quickly. Already his pride was pushing its head up again. He stood still, looking down on her.
“It’s all right, it is?”
This time she lifted her head and turned her face up to him.