How shall I tell the thoughts that crowded upon me as, lying on my back, I listened to this amazing harmony! The beginning reminded me of one of Palestrina's masses and transported me to a Christmas midnight at the church of St. Gervais; but as soon as the intention of the strain became clear to me, I felt that it belonged to the open air, to the eternal spaces, to the new-mown hay, to my radiant companions. The merriment of it, its complexity, its wholesomeness, the delight it gave--all brought to a focus and intensified the interest that was growing within me for Lydia. But the whole party rose now to begin work on another hillside and Lydia turned to me with: "Why do you stay with us? Why not go to the Hall? You will find the Pater there; we call him the Pater because he is the father of the settlement. He will want to talk to you, and you _need_ to talk to him." She put an arch little emphasis on the word "need." Evidently she did not want me to be loitering among them. I pretended to adopt her suggestion with alacrity although in my heart I wished nothing but to remain with her. "Yes," I said, "I shall never get out of my bewilderment unless I talk to some one who can understand my point of view." "And you will probably find Chairo there," she added, with a provoking smile. "He was to arrive to-day." Ariston pricked his ear: "Ah!" he said. "You will enjoy meeting Chairo; he is the leader of our Radical party; he is in favor of all sorts of Radical measures--such as the destruction of the Cult--" the women looked at one another--"the respect of private property----" "What! Do you call the respect of private property Radical?" asked I. "It was the shibboleth of the Conservatives in my time; they called it the 'sacredness of private property.'" "Just as the Demetrians speak of the 'sacredness' of the Cult to-day," said Ariston. "Whenever Hypocrisy wants to preserve an abuse she calls it Sacred," said a strong voice at my elbow. I turned and saw that a new companion had been added to us, and I guessed at once that it was Chairo. He was a splendid man; nothing was wanting to him--stature, nor beauty, nor strength. He was remarkable, too, by the fact that his face was clean shaved, whereas all the other men I had met wore beards; but his face bore a likeness so striking to that of Augustus that to have hidden it by a beard would have been a desecration. And he was strong enough in mind as well as in muscle to bear being exceptional. It would have been impossible for him to be other than exceptional. Lydia blushed as she recognized him, and the blush suggested what I most feared to know. Chairo went to her and without a shadow of affectation took her hand, knelt on one knee, and kissed it. There could have been no clearer confession of his love. I could not help contrasting the frankness of this act and the superb humility of it with the reticence, hypocrisy, and pride that characterized our twentieth-century love-making.