"Our last day here!" she said to Dion. "One more night with the stars, only one! Dion, when you brought me here, you did a dangerous thing."

"Gave you opportunities for regret? D'you mean that?"

She nodded, still gazing towards Zante.

"Such opportunities!"

"It couldn't be helped. I had to bring you."

"Of course. I know. If you had let me leave Greece without coming here, and I had ever come to understand what I had missed, I don't believe I could have forgiven even you."

"I always meant to bring you here."

"But you had a sudden impulse, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Why exactly did it come?"

He hesitated. Suddenly he felt reserved; but he broke through his reserve and answered:

"I saw I had made you feel sad."

"Did you? Why was that?"

"Don't you remember?"

She was catching the dream of the plain, perhaps, for she replied, with an almost preoccupied air:

"I don't think so."

"I wanted to make you happy again, very happy, to give you a treat as quickly as possible. The idea of this"—he flung out a brown hand—"came to me suddenly. That's how it was. You—you don't know how I wish to keep every breath of sorrow out of your life."

"I know you do; I feel it. But you've put a sorrow in."

She spoke with a half-whimsical smile.

"Have I?"

"The sorrow of leaving all this, of leaving the Hermes. I didn't know it was possible to grow to care for a lifeless thing as I care for him. Sometimes I believe the marble has actually retained nothing of Praxiteles as a man. I mean as apart from a sculptor. But he must have been full of almost divine feelings and conceptions, or he could never have made my Hermes. No man can make the divine without having divinity in him. I've learnt more here in these few days than I have learnt in all my years."

"From the statue of a Pagan. Isn't that strange?"

"No, I don't think so. For I was able to see the Christianity in it. I know what Praxiteles was only able to feel mysteriously. Sometimes in London I've heard people—you know the sort of people I mean—regretting they didn't live in the old Greek world."

"I've regretted that."

"Have you? But not in their way. When I look at the Hermes I feel very thankful I have lived since."

"Tell me just why."

"Because I live in a world which has received definitely and finally the message the Hermes knew before it was sent down."

She took away her arm from the olive tree and sighed.

"Oh, Dion, I shall hate going away, leaving the tent and Drouva and him. But I believe whenever I think of Olympia I shall feel the peace that, thank God, doesn't pass all understanding."

They went down to the valley that day to pay their final visit to the Hermes. Twilight had not yet come, but was not very far off when, for the last time, they crossed the threshold of his chamber. More silent than ever, more benignly silent, did the hush about him seem to Dion; more profound were his peace and serenity. He and the child had surely withdrawn a little farther from all that was not intended, but that, for some inscrutable reason, had come to be. His winged sandals had carried him still farther away. As Dion looked at him he seemed to be afar.

"Rosamund!"

"Yes?"

"This evening I have a feeling about the Hermes I've never had before."

"What is it?"

"That he's taking the child away, quite away."

"But he's always been here, and not here. That's what I love so much."

"I don't mean quite that. It's as if he were taking the child farther and farther away, partly because of us."

"I don't like that. I don't feel that at all."

"We belong to this world, you see, and are subject to all its conditions. We are in it and of it."

"Well?"

"He belongs to such a different world."

"Yes, the released world, where no ugly passions can ever get in."

"The way he looks at Dionysos tells one that. He hasn't any fear for the boy's future when he grows up and comes to know things. It just strikes me that no human being who thinks could ever look at a human child like that. There would always be the fear behind—'What is life going to do to the child?'"

She looked at him, and her face was very grave.

"D'you think we should feel that?"

"Surely."

"Unless we got the serene courage of the Hermes."

"But he lived among gods, and we live among men."

"Not always."

"I don't understand."

"Perhaps some day you will," she answered.

Into her eyes there had come a strange look of withdrawal.

At that moment the atmosphere in the room of the Hermes seemed to Dion more full of peace even than before, but the peace was like something almost tangible. It troubled him a little because he felt that the Hermes, the child and Rosamund were of it, while he was not. They were surrounded by the atmosphere necessary to them, and to which they were mysteriously accustomed, while he was for the first time in such an atmosphere. He felt separated from Rosamund by a gulf, perhaps very narrow, but probably very deep.

Over Elis the twilight was falling, a green twilight sylvan and very ethereal, tremulous in its delicate beauty. It stole through the green doors, and down through the murmuring pine trees; it crossed the shallow river, and made its way to the garden of ruins where once the Hermes had stood between Doric Columns in the Heraeon. Through the colonnade of the echoes it passed, and under the arch of the Athletes. Over the crude and almost terrible strength of the ruins of the temple of Zeus it let its green garments trail down, as it felt its way softly but surely to the buried Stadium where once a boy of twelve had won the crown of wild olive. The sheep-bells were ringing softly; the flocks were going homeward from pasture. They were making their way up the valley now at the base of the Kronos Hill, and the chime of their little bells mingled with the wide whispering of the eternities among the summits of the pine trees. Music of earth mingled with the music from a distance that knew what the twilight knew.

The tall oblong of the Museum doorway on the hill framed a tiny picture of Elis, bathed in green and tremulous light; a small section of hillside, a fragment of empty, poetic country—Pan's world rather hinted at than revealed—a suggestion of evening sky, remote, with infinity lost in its distance. But there was no branch of wild olive flickering across the picture.

Rosamund missed it as she looked from the room of the Hermes out to the whispering evening and the quiet vale of Olympia. But she did not say so to Dion. He thought of it too, as he looked at her, and he tried to forget it. The picture framed by the doorway strangely grew dimmer and yet more full of greenish light; the country of Pan was fading in light. Presently details were entirely lost. Only an oblong of green, now almost emerald, light showed from the chamber of the Hermes. And in that chamber the two marble figures were gradually fading; the athletic, yet miraculously graceful, messenger of the gods with the winged sandals, the tiny child clinging to his shoulder with one little arm stretched out in an enchanting gesture of desire. Still the child nestled against Hermes, and still Hermes contemplated the child, with a celestial benignity, a half-smiling calmness of other worlds than this.

In the vestibule of the Emperors the guardian waited patiently. He was not accustomed to visitors who lingered on like these two English, when the light was failing, and surely it must be difficult, if not impossible, to see the statues properly. But Rosamund, with her usual lack of all effort, had captivated him. He had grown accustomed to her visits; he was even flattered by them. It pleased him subtly to have in his care a treasure such as the Hermes, to see which beautiful women, the Rosamunds of the world, traveled from far-off countries. Rosamund's perpetual, and prolonged, visits had made him feel more important than he had ever succeeded in feeling before. Let the night come, she might stay on there, if she chose. He took very little account of Dion. But Rosamund was beginning to assume a certain vital importance in his quiet life.

The green light faded into a very dim primrose; the music of the sheep-bells drew near and died away among the small houses of the hamlet at the foot of the hill of Drouva; Elis withdrew itself into the obscurity that would last till the late coming of the waning moon. Of Hermes and Dionysos now only the attitudes could be seen faintly. But even they told of a golden age, an age from which everything ugly, everything violent, everything unseemly, everything insincere, everything cruel was blotted out—an age of serenity of body and soul, the age of the long peace.

"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.



BOOK II — ECHO



CHAPTER I

Robin, whose other name was Gabriel, arrived at the "little house," of which Rosamund had spoken to Dion upon the hill of Drouva, early in the following year, on the last night of February to be exact. For a long time before his coming his future home had been subtly permeated by an atmosphere of expectancy.

No. 5 Little Market Street was in Westminster, not far from the river and the Houses of Parliament, yet in a street which looked almost remote, and which was often very quiet although close to great arteries of life. Dion sometimes thought it almost too dusky a setting for his Rosamund, but it was she who had chosen it, and they had both become quickly fond of it. It was a house with white paneling, graceful ceilings and carved fireplaces, and a shallow staircase of oak. There was a tiny but welcoming hall, and the landing on the first floor suggested potpourri, chintz-covered settees, and little curtains of chintz moved by a country wind coming through open windows. There were, in fact, chintz-covered settees, and there was potpourri. Rosamund had taken care about that; she had also taken care about many other little things which most London housewives, perhaps, think unworthy of their attention. Every day, for instance, she burnt lavender about the house, and watched the sweet smoke in tiny wreaths curling up from the small shovel, as she gently moved it to and fro, with a half smile of what she called "rustic satisfaction." She laid lavender in the cupboards and in the chests of drawers, and, when she bought flowers, chose by preference cottage garden flowers, if she could get them, sweet williams, pansies, pinks, wallflowers, white violets, stocks, Canterbury bells. Sometimes she came home with wild flowers, and had once given a little dinner with foxgloves for a table decoration. An orchid, a gardenia, even a hyacinth, was never to be seen in the little house. Rosamund confessed that hyacinths had a lovely name, and that they suggested spring, but she added that they smelt as if they had always lived in hothouses, and were quite ready to be friends with gardenias.

She opened her windows. In this she was almost too rigorous for her maid-servants, who nevertheless adored her. "Plenty of warmth but plenty of air," was her prescription for a comfortable and healthy house, "and not too much or too many of anything." Dust, of course, was not to be known of in her dwelling, but "blacks" were accepted with a certain resignation as a natural chastening and a message from London. "They aren't our fault, Annie," she had been known to observe to the housemaid. "And dust can't be anything else, however you look at it, can it?" And Annie said, "Well, no, ma'am!" and, when she came to think of it, felt she had not been a liar in the moment of speaking.

Rosamund never "splashed," or tried to make a show in her house, and she was very careful never to exceed their sufficient, but not large, income; but the ordinary things, those things which of necessity come into the scheme of everyday life, were always of the very best when she provided them. Dion declared, and really believed, perhaps with reason, that no tea was so fragrant, no bread and butter so delicious, no toast so crisp, as theirs; no other linen felt so cool and fresh to the body as the linen on the beds of the little house; no other silver glittered so brightly as the silver on their round breakfast-table; no other little white window curtains in London managed to look so perennially fresh, and almost blithe, as the curtains which hung at their windows. Rosamund and Annie might have conversations together on the subject of "blacks," but Dion never saw any of these distressing visitants. The mere thought of Rosamund would surely keep them at a more than respectful distance.

She proved to be a mistress of detail, and a housekeeper whose enthusiasm was matched by her competence. At first Dion had been rather surprised when he followed from afar, as is becoming in a man, this development. Before they settled down in London he had seen in Rosamund the enthusiastic artist, the joyous traveler, the good comrade, the gay sportswoman touched with Amazonian glories; he had known in her the deep lover of pure beauty; he had divined in her something else, a little strange, a little remote, the girl to whom the "Paradiso" was a door opening into dreamland, the girl who escaped sometimes almost mysteriously into regions he knew nothing of; but he had not seen in her one capable of absolutely reveling in the humdrum. Evidently, then, he had not grasped the full meaning of a genuine joie de vivre.

To everything she did Rosamund brought zest. She kept house as she sang "The heart ever faithful," holding nothing back. Everything must be right if she could get it right; and the husband got the benefit, incidentally. Now and then Dion found himself mentally murmuring that word. A great love will do such things unreasonably. For Rosamund's joie de vivre, that gift of the gods, caused her to love and rejoice in a thing for the thing's own sake, as it seemed, rather than for the sake of some one, any one, who was eventually to gain by the thing. Thus she cared for her little house with a sort of joyous devotion and energy, but because it was "my little house" and deserved every care she could give it. Rather as she had spoken of the small olive tree on Drouva, of the Hermes of Olympia, even of Athens, she spoke of it, with a sort of protective affection, as if she thought of it as a living thing confided to her keeping. She possessed a faculty not very common in women, a delight in doing a thing for its own sake, rather than for the sake of some human being—perhaps a man. If she boiled an egg—she went to the kitchen and did this sometimes—she seemed personally interested in the egg, and keenly anxious to do the best by it; the boiling must be a pleasure to her, but also to the egg, and it must, if possible, be supremely well done. As the cook once said, after a culinary effort by Rosamund, "I never seen a lady care for cooking and all such-like as she done. If she as much as plucked a fowl, you'd swear she loved every feather of it. And as to a roast, she couldn't hardly seem to set more store by it if it was her own husband."

Such a spirit naturally made for comfort in a house, and Dion had never before been so comfortable. Nevertheless—and he knew it with a keen savoring of appreciation—there was a Spartan touch to be felt in the little house. Comfort walked hand in hand with Rosamund, but so did simplicity; she was what the maids called "particular," but she was not luxurious; she even disliked luxury, connecting it with superfluity, for which she had a feeling amounting almost to repulsion. "I detest the sensation of sinking down in things," was a favorite saying of hers; and the way she lived proved that she spoke the sheer truth.

All through the house, and all through the way of life in it, there prevailed a "note" of simplicity, even of plainness. The odd thing, perhaps, was that it pleased almost every one who visited the young couple. A certain well-known man, noted as a Sybarite, clever, decadent and sought after, once got into the house, he pretended by stealth, and spent half an hour there in conversation with Rosamund. He came way "acutely conscious of my profound vulgarity," as he explained later to various friends. "Her house revealed to me the hideous fact that all the best houses in London smack of cocotte-try; the trail of cushions and liqueurs is over them all. Mrs. Leith's house is a vestal, and its lamp is always trimmed." Daventry's comment on this was: "Trimmed—yes, but trimmings—no!"

Even Esme Darlington highly approved of the "charming sobriety of No. 5 Little Market Street," although he had had no hand in its preparation, no voice in the deciding of its colors, its stuffs, its rugs, or its stair-rods. He was even heard to declare that "our dear Rosamund is almost the only woman I know who has the precious instinct of reticence; an instinct denied, by the way, even to that delightful and marvelous creature Elizabeth Browning—requiescat."

The "charming sobriety" was shown in various ways; in a lack of those enormous cushions which most women either love, or think necessary, in all sitting-rooms; in the comparative smallness of such sofas as were to be seen; in the moderation of depth in arm-chairs, and in the complete absence of footstools. Then the binding of the many books, scattered about here and there, and ranged on shelves, was "quiet"; there was no scarlet and gold, or bright blue and gold; pictures were good but few; not many rugs lay on the polished wooden floors, and there was no litter of ornaments or bibelots on cabinets or tables. A couple of small statuettes, copies of bronzes in the Naples Museum, and some bits of blue-and-white china made their pleasant effect the more easily because they had not to fight against an army of rivals. There was some good early English glass in the small dining-room, and a few fine specimens of luster ware made a quiet show in Dion's little den. Apart from the white curtains, and outer curtains of heavier material, which hung at all the windows, there were no "draperies." Overmantels, "cosy-corners," flung Indian shawls, "pieces" snatched from bazaars, and "carelessly" hung over pedestals and divans found no favor in Rosamund's eyes. There was a good deal of homely chintz about which lit up the rather old-fashioned rooms, and colors throughout the house were rather soft than hard, were never emphatic or designed to startle or impress.

Rosamund, indeed, was by far the most vivid thing in the house, and some people—not males—said she had taken care to supply for herself a background which would "throw her up." These people, if they believed what they said, did not know her.

She had on the first floor a little sitting-room all to herself; in this were now to be found the books which had been in her bedroom in Great Cumberland Place; the charwoman's black tray with the cabbage rose, the mug from Greenwich, the flesh-colored vase, the china cow, the toy trombone, and other souvenirs of her girlhood to which Rosamund "held." On the brass-railed shelf of the writing-table stood a fine photogravure of the Hermes of Olympia with little Dionysos on his arm. Very often, many times every day, Rosamund looked up at Hermes and the Child from account books, letters or notes, and then the green dream of Elis fell about her softly again; and sometimes she gazed beyond the Hermes, but instead of the wall of the chamber she saw, set in an oblong frame, and bathed in green twilight, a bit of the world of Pan, with a branch of wild olive flickering across the foreground; or, now and then, she saw a falling star, dropping from its place in the sky down towards a green wilderness, and carrying a wish from her with it, a wish that was surely soon to be granted. Her life in the little house had been a happy life hitherto, but—she looked again at the little Dionysos on the arm of Hermes, nestling against his shoulder—how much happier it was going to be, how much happier! She was not surprised, for deep in her heart she always expected happiness.

People had been delightful to her and to Dion. Indeed, they had flocked to the small green door (the Elis door) of 5 Little Market Street in almost embarrassing numbers. That was partly Mr. Darlington's fault. Naturally Rosamund's and Bruce Evelin's friends came; and of course Dion's relations and friends came. That would really have been enough. Rosamund enjoyed, but was not at all "mad about," society, and had no wish to give up the greater part of her time to paying calls. But Mr. Darlington could not forbear from kind efforts on behalf of his delightful young friends, that gifted and beautiful creature Rosamund Leith, and her pleasant young husband. He, who found time for everything, found time to give more than one "little party, just a few friends, no more," specially for them; and the end of it was that they found themselves acquainted with almost too many interesting and delightful people.

At first, too, Rosamund continued to sing at concerts, but at the end of July, after their return from Greece, when the London season closed, she gave up doing so for the time, and accepted no engagements for the autumn. Esme Darlington was rather distressed. He worked very hard in the arts himself, and, having "launched" Rosamund, he expected great things of her, and wished her to go forward from success to success. Besides "the money would surely come in very handy" to two young people as yet only moderately well off. He did not quite understand the situation. Of course he realized that in time young married people might have home interests, home claims upon them which might necessitate certain changes of procedure. The day might come—he sincerely hoped it would—when a new glory, possibly even more than one, would be added to the delightful Rosamund's crown; but in the meanwhile surely the autumn concerts need not be neglected. He had heard no hint as yet of any—h'm, ha! He stroked his carefully careless beard. But he had left town in August with his curiosity unsatisfied, leaving Rosamund and Dion behind him. They had had their holiday, and had stayed steadily on in Little Market Street through the summer, taking Saturday to Monday runs into the country; more than once to the seacoast of Kent, where Bruce Evelin and Beatrice were staying, and once to Worcestershire to Dion's mother, who had taken a cottage there close to the borders of Warwickshire. The autumn had brought people back to town, and it was in the autumn that Rosamund withdrew from all contact with the hurly-burly of London. She had no fears at all for her body, none of those sick terrors which some women have as their time draws near, no premonitions of disaster or presages of death, but she desired to "get ready," and her way of getting ready was to surround her life with a certain stillness, to build about it white walls of peace. Often when Dion was away in the City she went out alone and visited some church. Sometimes she spent an hour or two in Westminster Abbey; and on many dark afternoons she made her way to St. Paul's Cathedral where, sitting a long way from the choir, she listened to evensong. The beautiful and tenderly cool singing of the distant boys came to her like something she needed, something to which her soul was delicately attuned. One afternoon they and the men, who formed the deeply melodious background from which their crystalline voices seemed to float forward and upward, sang "The Wilderness" of Wesley. Rosamund listened to it, thankful that she was alone, and remembering many things, among them the green wilderness beneath the hill of Drouva.

Very seldom she spoke to Dion about these excursions of hers. There was something in her feeling for religion which loved reserve rather than expression; she who was so forthcoming in many moments of her life, who was genial and gay, who enjoyed laughter and was always at home with humanity, knew very well how to be silent. There was a saying she cared for, "God speaks to man in the silence;" perhaps she felt there was a suspicion of irreverence in talking to any one, even to Dion, about her aspiration to God. If, on his return home, he asked her how she had passed the day, she often said only, "I've been very happy." Then he said to himself, "What more can I want? I'm able to make her happy."

One windy evening in January, when an icy sleet was driving over the town, as he came into the little hall, he found Rosamund at the foot of the staircase, with a piece of mother's work in her hand, about to go into the drawing-room which was on the ground floor of the house.

"Rose," he said, looking down at the little white something she was holding, "do you think we shall both feel ever so much older in March? It will be in March, won't it?"

"I think so," she answered, with a sort of deeply tranquil gravity.

"In March when we are parents?"

"Are you worrying about that?" she asked him, smiling now, but with, in her voice, a hint of reproach.

"Worrying—no. But do you?"

"Let us go into the drawing-room," she said.

When they were there she answered him:

"Absolutely different, but not necessarily older. Feeling older must be very like feeling old, I think—and I can't imagine feeling old."

"Because probably you never will."

"Have you had tea, Dion?"

"Yes, at the Greville. I promised I'd meet Guy there to-day. He spoke about Beattie."

"Yes?"

"Do you think Beattie would marry him if he asked her?"

"I don't know."

She sat down in the firelight near the hearth, and bent a little over her work on the tiny garment, which looked as if it were intended for the use of a fairy. Dion looked at her head with its pale hair. As he leaned forward he could see all the top of her head. The firelight made some of her hair look quite golden, gave a sort of soft sparkle to the curve of it about her broad, pure forehead.

"Guy's getting desperate," he said. "But he's afraid to put his fortune to the test. He thinks even uncertainty is better than knowledge of the worst."

"Of one thing I'm certain, Dion. Beattie doesn't love Guy Daventry."

"Oh well, then, it's all up."

Rosamund looked up from the little garment.

"I didn't say that."

"But if Beattie—but Beattie's the soul of sincerity."

"Yes, I know; but I think she might consent to marry Guy Daventry."

"But why?"

"I don't know exactly. She never told me. I just feel it."

"Oh, if you feel it, I'm sure it is so. But how awfully odd. Isn't it?"

"Yes, it really is rather odd in Beattie. Do you want Beattie to marry Guy Daventry?"

"Of course I do. Don't you?"

"Dear Beattie! I want her to be happy. But I think it's very difficult, even when one knows some one very, very well, to know just how she can get happiness, through just what."

"Rose, have I made you happy?"

"Yes."

"As happy as you could be?"

"I think, perhaps, you will have—soon."

"Oh, you mean——?"

"Yes."

She went on stitching quietly. Her hands looked very contented. Dion drew up a little nearer to the fire with a movement that was rather brusk. It just struck him that his walk home in the driving sleet had decidedly chilled his body.

"I believe I know what you mean about Beattie," he said, after a pause, looking into the fire. "But do you think that would be fair to Guy?"

"I'm not quite sure myself what I mean, honestly, Dion."

"Well, let's suppose it. If it were so, would it be fair?"

"I think Beattie's so really good that Mr. Daventry, as he loves her, could scarcely be unhappy with her."

Dion thought for a moment, then he said:

"Perhaps with Guy it wouldn't be unfair, but, you know, Rose, that sort of thing wouldn't do with some men. Some men could never stand being married for anything but the one great reason."

He did not explain what that reason was, and Rosamund did not ask. There was a sort of wide and sweet tranquillity about her that evening. Dion noticed that it seemed to increase upon her, and about her, as the days passed by. She showed no sign of nervousness, had evidently no dread at all of bodily pain. Either she trusted in her splendid health, or she was so wrapped up in the thought of the joy of being a mother that the darkness to be passed through did not trouble her; or perhaps—he wondered about this—she was all the time schooling herself, looking up, in memory, to the columns of the Parthenon. He was much more strung up, much more restless and excitable than she was, but she did not seem to notice it. Always singularly unconscious of herself she seemed at this period to be also unobservant of those about her. He felt that she was being deliberately egoistic for a great reason, that she was caring for herself, soul and body, with a sort of deep and quiet intensity because of the child.

"She is right," he said to himself, and he strove in all ways in his power to aid her beautiful selfishness; nevertheless sometimes he felt shut out; sometimes he felt as if already the unseen was playing truant over the seen. He was conscious of the child's presence in the little house through Rosamund's way of being before he saw the child. He wondered what other women were like in such periods, whether Rosamund was instinctively conforming to an ancient tradition of her sex, or whether she was, as usual, strongly individualistic. In many ways she was surely not like other women, but perhaps in these wholly natural crises every woman resembled all her sisters who were traveling towards the same sacred condition. He longed to satisfy himself whether this was so or not, and one Saturday afternoon, when Rosamund was resting in her little sitting-room with a book, and the Hermes watching over her, he bicycled to Jenkins's gymnasium in the Harrow Road, resolved to put in forty minutes' hard work, and then to visit his mother. Mrs. Leith and Rosamund seemed to be excellent friends, but Dion never discussed his wife with his mother. There was no reason why he should do so. On this day, however, instinctively he turned to his mother; he thought that she might help him towards a clearer knowledge of Rosamund.

Rosamund had long ago been formally made known to Bob Jenkins, Jim's boxing "coach," who enthusiastically approved of her, though he had never ventured to put his opinion quite in that form to Dion. Even Jenkins, perhaps, had his subtleties, those which a really good heart cannot rid itself of. Rosamund, in return, had made Dion known to her extraordinary friend, Mr. Thrush of Abingdon Buildings, John's Court, near the Edgware Road, the old gentleman who went to fetch his sin every evening, and, it is to be feared, at various other times also, in a jug from the "Daniel Lambert." Dion had often laughed over Rosamund's "cult" for Mr. Thrush, which he scarcely pretended to understand, but Rosamund rejoiced in Dion's cult for the stalwart Jenkins.

"I like that man," she said. "Perhaps some day——" She stopped there, but her face was eloquent.

In his peculiar way Jenkins was undoubtedly Doric, and therefore deserving of Rosamund's respect. Of Mr. Thrush so much could hardly be said with truth. In him there were to be found neither the stern majesty and strength of the Doric, nor the lightness and grace of the Ionic. As an art product he stood alone, always wearing the top hat, a figure Degas might have immortalized but had unfortunately never seen. Dion knew that Mr. Thrush had once rescued Rosamund in a fog and had conveyed her home, and he put the rest of the Thrush matter down to Rosamund's genial kindness towards downtrodden and unfortunate people. He loved her for it, but could not help being amused by it.

When Dion arrived at the gymnasium, Jenkins was giving a lesson to a small boy of perhaps twelve years old, whose mother was looking eagerly on. The boy, clad in a white "sweater," was flushed with the ardor of his endeavors to punch the ball, to raise himself up on the bar till his chin was between his hands, to vault the horse neatly, and to turn somersaults on the rings. The primrose-colored hair on his small round head was all ruffled up, perspiration streamed over his pink rosy cheeks, his eyes shone with determination, and his little white teeth were gritted as, with all the solemn intensity of childhood, he strove to obey on the instant Jenkins's loud words of command. It was obvious that he looked to Jenkins as a savage looks to his Tribal God. His anxious but admiring mother was forgotten; the world was forgotten; Jenkins and the small boy were alone in a universe of grip dumb-bells, heavy weights, "exercisers," boxing-gloves, horizontal bars, swinging balls and wooden "horses." Dion stood in the doorway and looked on till the lesson was finished. It ended with a heavy clap on the small boy's shoulders from the mighty paw of Jenkins, and a stentorian, "You're getting along and no mistake, Master Tim!"

The face of Master Tim at this moment was a study. All the flags of triumph and joy were hung out in it and floated on the breeze; a soul appeared at the two windows shining with perfect happiness; and, mysteriously, in all the little figure, from the ruffled primrose-colored feathers of hair to the feet in the white shoes, the pride of manhood looked forth through the glowing rapture of a child.

"What a jolly boy!" said Dion to Jenkins, when Master Tim and his mother had departed. "It must be good to have a boy like that."

"I hope you'll have one some day, sir," said Jenkins, speaking heartily in his powerful voice, but looking, for the moment, unusually severe.

He and Bert, his wife, had had one child, a girl, which had died of quinsy, and they had never had another.

"Now I'm ready for you, sir!" he added, with a sort of outburst of recovery. "I should like a round with the gloves to-day, if it's all the same to you."

It was all the same to Dion, and, when he reached Queen Anne's Mansions in the darkness of evening, he was still glowing from the exercise; the blood sang through his veins, and his heart was almost as light as his step.

Marion, the parlor-maid, let him in, and told him his mother was at home. Dion put his hand to his lips, stole across the hall noiselessly, softly opened the drawing-room door, and caught his mother unawares.

Whenever he came into the well-known flat alone, he had a moment of retrogression, went back to his unmarried time, and was again, as for so many years, in the intimate life of his mother. But to-day, as he opened the door, he was abruptly thrust out of his moment. His mother was in her usual place on the high-backed sofa near the fire. She was doing nothing, was just sitting with her hands, in their wrinkled gloves, folded in her lap, and her large, round blue eyes looking. Dion thought of them as looking because they were wide open, but they were strangely emptied of expression. All of his mother seemed to him for just the one instant which followed on his entrance to be emptied, as if the woman he had always known—loving, satirical, clever, kind, observant—had been poured away. The effect upon him was one of indescribable, almost of horrible, dreariness. Omar Khayyam, his mother's black pug, was not in the room as usual, stretched out before the fire.

Even as Dion realized this, his mother was poured back into the round face and plump figure beside the fire, and greeted him with the usual almost saccharine sweet smile, and:

"Dee-ar, I wasn't expecting you to-day. How is the beloved one?"

"The beloved one" was Mrs. Leith's rendering of Rosamund.

"How particularly spry you look," she added. "I'm certain it's the Jenkins paragon. You've been standing up to him. Now, haven't you?"

Dion acknowledged that he had, and added:

"But you, mother? How are you?"

"Quite wickedly well. I ought to be down with influenza like all well-bred people,—Esme Darlington has it badly,—but I cannot compass even one sneeze."

"Where's Omar?"

Mrs. Leith looked grave.

"Poor little chap, we must turn down an empty glass for him."

"What—you don't mean——?"

"Run over yesterday just outside the Mansions, and by a four-wheeler. I'm sure he never expected that the angel of death would come for him in a growler, poor little fellow."

"I say! Little Omar dead! What a beastly shame! Mother, I am sorry."

He sat down beside her; he was beset by a sensation of calamity. Oddly enough the hammer of fate had never yet struck on him so definitely as now with the death of a dog. But, without quite realizing it, he was considering poor black Omar as an important element in his mother's life, now abruptly withdrawn. Omar had been in truth a rather greedy, self-seeking animal, but he had also been a companion, an adherent, a friend.

"You must get another dog," Dion added quickly. "I'll find you one."

"Good of you, dee-ar boy! But I'm too old to begin on a new dog."

"What nonsense!"

"It isn't. I feel I'm losing my nameless fascination for dogs. A poodle barked at me this afternoon in Victoria Street. One can't expect one's day to last for ever, though, really, some Englishwomen seem to. But, tell me, how is the beloved one?"

"Oh—to be sure! I wanted to talk to you about Rose."

The smile became very sweet and welcoming on Mrs. Leith's handsome round face.

"There's nothing wrong, I'm sure. Your Rosamund sheds confidence in her dear self like a light all round her."

"Nothing wrong—no. I didn't mean that."

Dion paused. Now he was with his mother he did not know how to explain himself; his reason for coming began to seem, even to himself, a little vague.

"It's a little difficult," he began at last, "but I've been wondering rather about women who are as Rosamund is just now. D'you think all women become a good deal alike at such times?"

"In spirit, do you mean?"

"Well—yes, of course."

"I scarcely know."

"I mean do they concentrate on the child a long while before it comes."

"Many smart women certainly don't."

"Oh, smart women! I mean women."

"A good definition, dee-ar. Well, lots of poor women don't concentrate on the child either. They have far too much to do and worry about. They are 'seeing to' things up till the very last moment."

"Then we must rule them out. Let's say the good women who have the time."

"I expect a great many of them do, if the husband lets them."

"Ah!" said Dion rather sharply.

"There are a few husbands, you see, who get fidgety directly the pedestal on which number one thinks himself firmly established begins to shake."

"Stupid fools!"

"Eminently human stupid fools."

"Are they?"

"Don't you think so?"

"Perhaps. But then humanity's contemptible."

"Extra-humanity, or the attempt at it, can be dangerous."

"What do you mean exactly by that, mater?"

"Only that we have to be as we are, and can never really be, can only seem to be, as we aren't."

"What a whipping I'm giving to myself just now!" was her thought, as she finished speaking.

"Oh—yes, of course. That's true. I think—I think Rosamund's concentrating on the child, in a sort of quiet, big way."

"There's something fine in that. But her doings are often touched with fineness."

"Yes, aren't they? She doesn't seem at all afraid."

"I don't think she need be. She has such splendid health."

"But she may suffer very much."

"Yes, but something will carry her gloriously through all that, I expect."

"And you think it's very natural, very usual, her—her sort of living alone with the child before it is born?"

Mrs. Leith saw in her son's eyes an unmistakably wistful look at this moment. It was very hard for her not to take him in her arms just then, not to say, "My son, d'you suppose I don't understand it all—all?" But she never moved, her hands lay still in her lap, and she replied:

"Very natural, quite natural, Dion. Your Rosamund is just being herself."

"You think she's able to live with the child already?"

Mrs. Leith hesitated for a moment. In that moment certainly she felt a strong, even an almost terrible inclination to tell a lie to her son. But she answered:

"Yes, I do."

"That must be very strange," was all that Dion said just then; but a little later on—he stayed with his mother longer than usual that day because poor little Omar was dead—he remarked:

"D'you know, mater, I believe it's the right thing to be what's called a thorough-paced egoist at certain moments, in certain situations."

"Perhaps it is," said his mother incuriously.

"I fancy there's a good deal of rot talked about egoism and that sort of thing."

"There's a good deal of rot talked about most things."

"Yes, isn't there? And besides, how is one to know? Very often what seems like egoism may not be egoism at all. As I grow older I often feel how important it is to search out the real reasons for things."

"Sometimes they're difficult to find," returned his mother, with an unusual simplicity of manner.

"Yes, but still——Well, I must be off."

He stood up and looked at the Indian rug in front of the hearth.

"When are you coming to see us?" he asked.

"Almost directly, dee-ar."

"That's right. Rosamund likes seeing you. Naturally she depends upon you at such——" He broke off. "I mean, do come as often as you can."

He bent down and kissed his mother.

"By the way," he added, almost awkwardly, "about that dog?"

"What dog, dee-ar?"

"The dog I want to give you."

"We must think about it. Give me time. After a black pug one doesn't know all in a moment what type would be the proper successor. You remember your poor Aunt Binn?"

"Aunt Binn! Why, what did she do?"

"Gave Uncle Binn a hairless thing like a note of interrogation, that had to sleep in a coating of vaseline, when his enormous sheep-dog died who couldn't see for hair. She believed in the value of contrast, but Uncle Binn didn't. It would have led to a separation but for the hectic efforts of your aunt's friend, Miss Vine. When I've decided what type of dog, I'll tell you."

Dion understood the negative and, in spite of his feeling of fitness, went away rather uncomfortably. He couldn't forget the strange appearance of that emptied woman whom he had taken unawares by the fireside. If only his mother would let him give her another dog!

When he got home he found Beatrice sitting with Rosamund.

Dion had grown very fond of Beatrice. He had always been rather touched and attracted by her plaintive charm, but since she had become his sister-in-law he had learnt to appreciate also her rare sincerity and delicacy of mind. She could not grip life, perhaps, could not mold it to her purpose and desire, but she could do a very sweet and very feminine thing, she could live, without ever being intrusive, in the life of another. It was impossible not to see how "wrapped up" she was in Rosamund. Dion had come to feel sure that it was natural to Beatrice to lead her life in another's, and he believed that Rosamund realized this and often let Beatrice do little things for her which, full of vigor and "go" as she was, she would have preferred to do for herself.

"I've been boxing and then to see mother," he said, as he took Beatrice's long narrow hand in his. "She sent her best love to you, Rosamund."

"The dear mother!" said Rosamund gently.

Dion sat down by Beatrice.

"I'm quite upset by something that's happened," he continued. "You know poor little Omar, Beattie?"

"Yes. Is he ill?"

"Dead. He was run over yesterday by a four-wheeler."

"Oh!" said Beatrice.

"Poor little dog," Rosamund said, again gently.

"When they picked him up—are you going, Rose?"

"Only for a few minutes. I am sorry. I'll write to the dear mother."

She went quietly out of the room. Dion sprang up to open the door for her, but she had been sitting nearer to the door than he, and he was too late; he shut it, however, and came slowly back to Beatrice.

"I wonder——" He looked at Beatrice's pale face and earnest dark eyes. "D'you think Rosamund disliked my mentioning poor Omar's being killed?"

"No."

"But didn't she leave us rather abruptly?"

"I think perhaps she didn't want to hear any details. You were just beginning to—"

"How stupid of me!"

"You see, Rosamund has the child to live for now."

"Yes—yes. What blunderers we men are, however much we try—"

"That's not a blame you ought to take," Beatrice interrupted, with earnest gentleness. "You are the most thoughtful man I know—for a woman, I mean."

Dion flushed.

"Am I? I try to be. If I am it's because—well, Beattie, you know what Rose is to me."

"Yes, I know."

"Dearer and dearer every day. But nobody——Mother thinks a lot of her."

"Who doesn't? There aren't many Roses like ours."

"None. Poor mother! Beattie, d'you think she feels very lonely? You know she's got heaps of friends—heaps."

"Yes."

"It isn't as if she knew very few people, or lived alone in the country."

"No but I'm very sorry her little dog's dead."

"I want to give her another."

"It would be no use."

"But why not?"

"You see, little Omar was always there when you were living there."

"Well?"

"He was part of her life with you."

"Oh—yes."

Dion looked rather hard at Beatrice. In that moment he began to realize how much of the intelligence of the heart she possessed, and how widely she applied it. His application of his intelligence of the heart was, he feared, much less widespread than hers.

"Go to see mother when you can, will you?" he said. "She's very fond of you, I think."

"I'll go. I like going to her."

"And, Beattie, may I say something rather intimate? I'm your brother now."

"Yes."

She was sitting opposite to him near the fire on a low chair. There was a large shaded lamp in the room, but it was on a rather distant table. He saw Beatrice's face by the firelight and her narrow thoroughbred figure in a dark dress. And the firelight, he thought, gave to both face and figure a sort of strange beauty that was sad, and that had something of the strangeness and the beauty of those gold and red castles children see in the fire. They glow—and that evening there was a sort of glow in Beatrice; they crumble—and then there was a pathetic something in Beatrice, too, which suggested wistful desires, perhaps faint hopes and an ending of ashes.

"Would you marry old Guy if he asked you? Don't be angry with me."

"I'm not."

"Of course, we've all known for ages how much he cares for you. He spoke to me about it to-day. He's desperately afraid of your refusing him. He daren't put his fate to the test. Beattie—would you?"

A slow red crept over Beatrice's face. She put up one hand to guard herself from the glow of the fire. For a moment she looked at Dion, and he thought, "What a strange expression firelight can give to a face!" Then she said:

"I can't tell you."

Her voice was husky.

"Beattie, you've got a cold!"

"Have I?"

She got up.

"I must go, Dion. I'll just see Rosamund for a minute."

As she left the room, she said:

"I'll go and see your mother to-morrow."

The door shut. Dion stood with one elbow resting on the mantelpiece and looked down into the fire. He saw his mother sitting alone, a strange, emptied figure; he saw Beatrice. And fire, which beautifies, or makes romantic and sad everything gave to Beatrice the look of his mother. For a moment his soul was full of questions about the two women.



CHAPTER II

"I've joined the Artists' Rifles," Dion said to Rosamund one day.

He spoke almost bruskly. Of late he had begun to develop a manner which had just a hint of roughness in it sometimes. This manner was the expression of a strong inward effort he was making. If, as his mother believed, already Rosamund was able to live with the child, Dion's solitary possession of the woman he loved was definitely over, probably forever. Something within him which, perhaps, foolishly, rebelled against this fact had driven him to seek a diversion; he had found it in beginning to try to live for the child in the man's way. He intended to put the old life behind him, and to march vigorously on to the new. He called up Master Tim before him in the little white "sweater," with the primrose-colored ruffled feathers of hair, the gritted white teeth, small almost as the teeth of a mouse, the moist, ardent cheeks, and the glowing eyes looking steadfastly to the Tribal God. He must be the Tribal God to his little son, if the child were a son.

Rosamund did not seem surprised by Dion's abrupt statement, though he had never spoken of an intention to join any Volunteer Corps. She knew he was fond of shooting, and had been in camp sometimes when he was at a public school.

"What's that?" she asked. "I've heard of it, but I thought it was a corps for men who are painters, sculptors, writers and musicians."

"It was founded, nearly forty years ago, I believe, for fellows working in the Arts, but all sorts of business men are let in now."

"Will it take up much time?"

"No; I shall have to drill a certain amount, and in summer I shall go into camp for a bit, and of course, if a big war ever came, I could be of some use."

"I'm glad you've joined."

"I thought you would be. I shall see a little less of you, I suppose, but, after all, a husband can't be perpetually hanging about the house, can he?"

Rosamund looked at him and smiled, then laughed gently.

"Dion, how absurd you are! In some ways you are only a boy still."

"Why, what to you mean?"

"A man who sticks to business as you do, hanging about the house!"

"You wouldn't like it if I did."

"No, because I should know it was doing you harm."

"And besides—do you realize how independent you are?"

"Am I?"

"For a woman I think you are extraordinarily independent."

She sat still for a minute, looking straight before her in an almost curious stillness.

"I believe I know why perhaps I seem so," she said at length.

And then she quietly, and very naturally, turned the conversation into another channel; she was a quieter Rosamund in those days of waiting than the Rosamund unaffected by motherhood. That Rosamund had been vigorous and joyous; this Rosamund was strongly serene. In all she was and did at this time Dion felt strength; but it was shown chiefly in stillness. She worked sometimes; she read a great deal sitting upstairs in her own little room. One day Dion found her with a volume of Tennyson; another day she was reading Shakespeare's "Henry the Fifth"; she had the "Paradiso" in hand, too, and the Greek Testament with the English text in parallel columns. In the room there was a cottage piano, and one evening, when Dion had been drilling and came back late, he heard her singing. He stood still in the hall, after shutting softly the door of the lobby, and listened to the warm and powerful voice of the woman he loved. He could hear the words of the song, which was a setting of "Lead, kindly Light." Rosamund had only just begun singing it when he came into the hall; the first words he caught were, "The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead thou me on." He thrust his hands into the pockets of the black jacket he was wearing and did not move. He had never before heard Rosamund sing any piece of music through without seeing her while she was doing it; her voice seemed to him now different from the voice he knew so well; perhaps because he was uninfluenced by her appearance. That counted for much in the effect Rosamund created when she sang to people. The thought went through Dion's mind, "Am I really the husband of this voice?" It was beautiful, it was fervent, but it was strange, or seemed strange to him as it came down through the quiet house on this winter evening. For the first time, listening thus, he was able imaginatively to realize something of what it must be like to be a mystic, or rather, perhaps, to have within one a definite tendency towards mysticism, a definite and ceaseless and governing aspiration towards harmony with the transcendental order. When this voice which he heard above him sang "The night is dark, and I am far from home," he felt a sort of sharp comprehension of the real meaning of homeless wandering such as he had certainly never experienced before. He felt, too, that the spirit from which this voice proceeded could never be at home in the ordinary way of ordinary people, could not be at home even as he himself could be at home. The spirit behind this voice needed something of which, till now, he had not consciously felt the need; something peculiar, out of the way and remote—something very different from human love and human comfort. Although he was musical, and could be critical about a composition according to its lights, Dion did not think about the music of this song qua music—could not have said how good he considered it to be. He knew only that this was not poor or insincere music. But music sung in this peculiar way was only a means by which the under part of a human being, that which has its existence deep down under layers and layers of the things which commonly appear and are known of, rose to the surface and announced itself.

The Artists' Rifles—and this!

When the voice was silent, Dion went slowly upstairs. The door of Rosamund's little room was shut. He paused outside it, and stood looking at it, the movable barrier of dark shining wood which divided him from the voice. When he was ascending the stairs he had meant to go in to Rosamund. But now he hesitated, and presently he turned away. He felt that a greater barrier than the door was between them. He might open the door easily enough, but the other barrier would remain. The life of the body seemed to him just then an antagonist to the life of the soul.

"I'm on the lower plane," said Dion to himself that evening. "If it's a boy, I shall have to look after his body; she'll take care of the rest. Perhaps mothers always do, but not as she could and will."

From this moment he devoted himself as much as possible to his body, almost, indeed, with the ardor of one possessed by a sort of mania. The Artists' Corps took up part of his time; Jenkins another part; he practised rifle shooting as diligently almost as if he expected to have to take his place almost immediately in the field; he began to learn fencing. Rosamund saw very little of him, but she made no comment. He explained to her what he was doing.

"You see, Rose," he said to her once, "if it's a boy it will be my job eventually to train him up to be first-class in the distinctively man's part of life. No woman can ever do that. I mustn't let myself get slack."

"You never would, I'm sure."

"I hope not. Still, lots of business men do. And I'm sitting about three-quarters of my time. One does get soft, and the softer a chap gets the less inclined he is to make the effort required of him, if he wants to get hard. If I ever am to be the father of a growing-up son—when they get to about sixteen, you know, they get awfully critical about games and athletics, sport, everything of that kind—I should like to be able to keep my end up thoroughly well with him. He'd respect me far more then. I know exactly the type of fellow real boys look up to. It isn't the intelligent softy, however brainy he may be; it's the man who can do all the ordinary things superlatively well."

She smiled at him with her now curiously tranquil yellow-brown eyes, and he thought he saw in them approval.

"I think few men would prepare as you do," she said.

"And how many women would prepare as you do?" he returned.

"I couldn't do anything else. But now I feel as if we were working together, in a way."

He squeezed her hand. She let it lie motionless in his.

"But if it weren't a boy?" he said, struck by a sudden reaction of doubt.

And the thought went, like an arrow, through him:

"What chance should I have then?"

"I know it will be a boy," she answered.

"Why? Not because you sleep north and south!" he exclaimed, with a laughing allusion to the assertion of Herrick.

"I don't."

"I always thought the bed——"

"No, it's east and west."

"Fishermen say the dead sleep east and west."

"Are you superstitious?"

"I don't know. Perhaps, where you are concerned."

"Don't be. Superstition seems to me the opposite of belief. Just wait, and remember, I know it will be a boy."

One evening Dion went to Great Cumberland Place to dine with Bruce Evelin and Beatrice, leaving Rosamund apparently in her usual health. She was going to have "something on a tray" in her sitting-room, and he went in there to say good-by to her just before he started. He found her sitting by the fire, and looking at Hermes and the Child with steady eyes. They were lit up rather faintly by a couple of wax candles placed on the writing-table. The light from these candles and from the fire made a delicate and soothing radiance in the room, which was plainly furnished, and almost somber in color. A very dim and cloudy purple-blue pervaded it, a very beautiful hue, but austere, and somehow suggestive of things ecclesiastical. On a small, black oak table at Rosamund's elbow two or three books were lying beside a bowl of dim blue glass which had opalescent lights in it. This bowl was nearly full of water upon which a water-lily floated. The fire on the hearth was small, but glowing with red and gold. Dark curtains were drawn across the one window which looked out at the back of the house. It was a frosty night and windless.

Dion stood still for a moment on the threshold of the room after he had opened the door.

"How quiet you are in here!" he said.

"This little room is always quiet."

"Yes, but to-night it's like a room to which some one has just said 'Hush!'"

He came in and shut the door quietly behind him.

"I've just a minute."

He came up to the fire.

"And so you were looking at him, our Messenger with winged sandals. Oh, Rosamund, how wonderful it was at Olympia! I wonder whether you and I shall ever see the Hermes together again. I suppose all the chances are against it."

"I hope we shall."

"Do you? And yet—I don't know. It would be terrible to see him together again—if things were much altered; if, for instance, one was less happy and remembered——"

He broke off, came to the settee at right angles to the fire on which she was sitting, and sat down beside her. At this moment—he did not know why—the great and always growing love he had for her seemed to surge forward abruptly like a tidal wave, and he was conscious of sadness and almost of fear. He looked at Rosamund as if he were just going to part from her, anxiously, and with a sort of greed of detail.

"Alone I would never go back to Elis," he said. "Never. What a power things have if they are connected in our hearts with people. It's—it's awful."

A clock chimed faintly.

"I must go."

He got up and stood for a moment looking down at the dear head loved so much, at her brow.

"I don't know why it is," he said, "but this evening I hate leaving you."

"But it's only for a little while."

There was a tap at the door.

"Ah! here's my tray."

The maid came in carrying a woman's meal, and Dion's strange moment was over.

When he got to Great Cumberland Place, Daventry, who was to make a fourth, had just arrived, and was taking off his coat in the hall. He looked unusually excited, alert in an almost feverish way, which was surprising in him.

"I'm in a case," he said, "a quite big case. Bruce Evelin's got it for me. I'm going to be junior to Addington; Lewis & Lewis instruct me. What d'you think of that?"

Dion clapped him on the shoulder.

"The way of salvation!"

"Where will it lead me?"

"To Salvation, of course."

"I'll walk home with you to-night, old Dion. I must yap across the Park with you to Hyde Park Corner, and tell you all about the woman from Constantinople."

They were going upstairs.

"The woman——?"

"My client, my client. My dear boy, this is no ordinary case"—he waved a small hand ceremoniously—"it's a cause celebre or I shouldn't have bothered myself with it."

Lurby opened the drawing-room door.

"How's Rosamund?" was Beatrice's first question to Dion, as they shook hands.

"All right. I left her just going to feed from a tray in her little room."

"Rosamund always loved having a meal on a tray," said Bruce Evelin. "She's a big child still. But enthusiasts never really grow up, luckily for them."

"Dinner is served, sir."

"Daventry, will you take Beatrice?"

As Dion followed with Bruce Evelin, he said:

"So you've got Daventry a case!"

"Yes."

Bruce Evelin lowered his voice.

"He's a good fellow and a clever fellow, but he's got to work. He's been slacking for years."

Dion understood. Bruce Evelin wished Beatrice to marry Daventry.

"He respects you tremendously, sir. If any one can make him work, you can."

"I'm going to," returned Bruce Evelin, with his quiet force. "He's got remarkable ability, and the slacker—well——"

He looked at Dion with his dark, informed eyes, in which knowledge of the world and of men always seemed sitting.

"I can bear with bad energy almost more easily and comfortably than with slackness."

During dinner, without seeming to, Dion observed and considered Beatrice and Daventry, imagining them wife and husband. He felt sure Daventry would be very happy. As to Beatrice, he could not tell. There was always in Beatrice's atmosphere, or nearly always, a faint suggestion of sadness which, curiously, was not disagreeable but attractive. Dion doubted whether Daventry could banish it. Perhaps no one could, and Daventry had, perhaps, that love which does not wish to alter, which says, "I love you with your little sadness—keep it."

Daventry was exceptionally animated at dinner. The prospect of actually appearing in court as counsel in a case had evidently worked upon him like a powerful tonic. Always able to be amusing when he chose, he displayed to-night a new something—was it a hint of personal dignity?—which Dion had not hitherto found in him. "Dear old Daventry," the agreeable, and obviously clever, nobody, who was a sure critic of others, and never did anything himself, who blinked at moments with a certain feebleness, and was too fond of the cozy fireside, or the deep arm-chairs of his club, had evidently caught hold of the flying skirts of his self-respect, and was thoroughly enjoying his capture. He did not talk very much to Beatrice, but it was obvious that he was at every moment enjoying her presence, her attention; when she listened earnestly he caught her earnestness and it seemed to help him; when she laughed, in her characteristic delicate way,—her laugh seemed almost wholly of the mind,—he beamed with a joy that was touching in a man of his type because it was so unself-conscious. His affection for Beatrice had performed the miracle of drawing him out of the prison of awareness in which such men as he dwell. To-night he was actually unobservant. Dion knew this by the changed expression of his eyes. Even Beatrice he was not observing; he was just feeling what she was, how she was. For once he had passed beyond the narrow portals and had left satire far behind him.

When Beatrice got up to go to the drawing-room he opened the door for her. She blushed faintly as she went out. When the door was shut, and the three men were alone, Bruce Evelin said to Dion:

"Will you mind if Daventry and I talk a little shop to-night?"

"Of course not. But would you rather I went up and kept Beattie company?"

"No; stay till you're bored, or till you think Beatrice is bored. Let us light up."

He walked slowly, with his gently precise gait, to a cigar cabinet, opened it, and told the young men to help themselves.

"And now for the Clarke case," he said.

"Is that the name of the woman from Constantinople?" asked Dion.

"Yes, Mrs. Beadon Clarke," said Daventry. "But she hates the Beadon and never uses it. Beadon Clarke's trying to divorce her, and I'm on her side. She's staying with Mrs. Chetwinde. Esme Darlington, who's an old friend of hers, thinks her too unconventional for a diplomatist's wife."

Bruce Evelin had lighted his cigar.

"We mustn't forget that our friend Darlington has always run tame rather than wild," he remarked, with a touch of dry satire. "And now, Daventry, let us go through the main facts of the case, without, of course, telling any professional secrets."

And he began to outline the Clarke case, which subsequently made a great sensation in London.

It appeared that Mrs. Clarke had come first to him in her difficulty, and had tried hard to persuade him to emerge from his retirement and to lead for her defense. He had been determined in refusal, and had advised her to get Sir John Addington, with Daventry as junior. This she had done. Now Bruce Evelin was carefully "putting up" Daventry to every move in the great game which was soon to be played out, a game in which a woman's honor and future were at stake. The custody of a much-loved child might also come into question.

"Suppose Addington is suddenly stricken with paralysis in the middle of the case, you must be ready to carry it through triumphantly alone," he observed, with quietly twinkling eyes, to Daventry.

"May I have a glass of your oldest brandy, sir?" returned Daventry, holding on to the dinner-table with both hands.

The brandy was given to him and the discussion of the case continued. By degrees Dion found himself becoming strongly interested in Mrs. Clarke, whose name came up constantly. She was evidently a talented and a very unusual woman. Perhaps the latter fact partially accounted for the unusual difficulties in which she was now involved. Her husband, Councilor to the British Embassy at Constantinople, charged her with misconduct, and had cited two co-respondents,—Hadi Bey, a Turkish officer, and Aristide Dumeny, a French diplomat,—both apparently men of intellect and of highly cultivated tastes, and both slightly younger than Mrs. Clarke. A curious fact in the case was that Beadon Clarke was deeply in love with his wife, and had—so Dion gathered from a remark of Bruce Evelin's—probably been induced to take action against her by his mother, Lady Ermyntrude Clarke, who evidently disliked, and perhaps honestly disbelieved in, her daughter-in-law. There was one child of the marriage, a boy, to whom both the parents were deeply attached. The elements of tragedy in the drama were accentuated by the power to love possessed by accuser and accused. As Dion listened to the discussion he realized what a driving terror, what a great black figure, almost monstrous, love can be—not only the sunshine, but the abysmal darkness of life.

Presently, in a pause, while Daventry was considering some difficult point, Dion remembered that Beatrice was sitting upstairs alone. Her complete unselfishness always made him feel specially chivalrous towards her. Now he got up.

"It's tremendously interesting, but I'm going upstairs to Beattie," he said.

"Ah, how subtle of you, my boy!" said Bruce Evelin.

"Subtle! Why?"

"I was just coming to the professional secrets."

Dion smiled and went off to Beattie. He found her working quietly, almost dreamily, on one of those fairy garments such as he had seen growing towards its minute full size in the serene hands of his Rosamund.

"You too!" he said, looking down at the filmy white. "How good you are to us, Beattie!"

He sat down.

"What's this in your lap?"

The filmy white had been lifted in the process of sewing, and a little exquisitely bound white book was disclosed beneath it.

"May I look?"

"Yes, do."

Dion took the book up, and read the title, "The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi."

"I never heard of this. Where did you get it?"

"Guy Daventry left it here by mistake yesterday. I must give it to him to-night."

Dion opened the book, and saw on the title page: "Cynthia Clarke, Constantinople, October 1896," written in a curiously powerful, very upright caligraphy.

"It doesn't belong to Guy."

"No; it was lent to him by his client, Mrs. Clarke."

Dion turned some of the leaves of the book, began to read and was immediately absorbed.

"By Jove, it's wonderful, it's simply splendid!" he said in a moment. "Just listen to this:

"True to thy nature, to thyself, Fame and disfame nor hope, nor fear; Enough to thee the still small voice Aye thundering in thine inner ear.

From self-approval seek applause: What ken not men thou kennest thou! Spurn every idol others raise: Before thine own ideal bow."

He met the dark eyes of Beatrice.

"You care for that?"

"Yes, very much," she answered, in her soft and delicate voice.

"Beattie, I believe you live by that," he said, almost bruskly.

Suddenly he felt aware of a peculiar sort of strength in her, in her softness, a strength not at all as of iron, mysterious and tenacious.

"Dear old Beattie!" he said.

Moisture had sprung into his eyes.

"How lonely our lives are," he continued, looking at her now with a sort of deep curiosity. "The lives of all of us. I don't care who it is, man, woman, child, he or she, every one's lonely. And yet——"

A doubt had surely struck him. He sat very still for a minute.

"When I think of Rosamund I can't think of her as lonely."

"Can't you?"

"No. Somehow it seems as if she always had a companion with her."

He turned a few more pages of Mrs. Clarke's book, glancing here and there.

"Rosamund would hate this book," he said presently. "It seems thoroughly anti-Christian. But it's very wonderful."

He put the book down.

"Dear Beattie! Guy cares very much for you."

"Yes, I know," said Beatrice, with a great simplicity.

"If he comes well out of this case, and feels he's on the road to success, he'll be another man. He'll dare as a man ought to dare."

She went on sewing the little garment for Dion's child.

"I'll walk across the Park with you, old Dion," said Daventry that night, as they left the house in Great Cumberland Place, "whether you're going to walk home or whether you're not, whether you're in a devil of a hurry to get back to your Rosamund, or whether you're in a mood for friendship. What time is it, by the way?"

He was wrapped in a voluminous blue overcoat, with a wide collar, immense lapels, and apparently only one button, and that button so minute that it was scarcely visible to the naked eye. From somewhere he extracted a small, abnormally thin watch with a gold face.

"Only twenty minutes to eleven. We dined early."

"You really wish to walk?"

"I not only wish to walk, I will walk."

The still glory of frost had surely fascinated London, had subdued the rumbling and uneasy black monster; it seemed to Dion unusually quiet, almost like something in ecstasy under the glittering stars of frost, which shone in a sky swept clear of clouds by the hand of the lingering winter. It was the last night of February, but it looked, and felt, like a night dedicated to the Christ Child, to Him who lay on the breast of Mary with cattle breathing above Him. As Dion gazed up at the withdrawn and yet almost piercing radiance of the wonderful sky, instinctively he thought of the watching shepherds, and of the coming of that Child who stands forever apart from all the other children born of women into this world. He wished Rosamund were with him to see the stars, and the frost glistening white on the great stretches of grass, and the naked trees in the mysterious and romantic Park.

"Shall we take the right-hand path and walk round the Serpentine?" said Daventry presently.

"Yes. I don't mind. Rosamund will be asleep, I think. She goes to bed early now."

"When will it be?"

"Very soon, I suppose; perhaps in ten days or so."

Daventry was silent. He wanted and meant to talk about his own affairs, but he hesitated to begin. Something in the night was making him feel very small and very great. Dion gave him a lead by saying:

"D'you mind my asking you something about the Clarke case?"

"Anything you like. I'll answer if I may."

"Do you believe Mrs. Clarke to be guilty or innocent?"

"Oh, innocent!" exclaimed Daventry, with unusual warmth.

"And does Bruce Evelin?"

"I believe so. I assume so."

"I noticed that, while I was listening to you both, he never expressed any opinion, or gave any hint of what his opinion was on the point."

"I feel sure he thinks her innocent," said Daventry, still almost with heat. "Not that it much matters," he added, in a less prejudiced voice. "The point is, we must prove her to be innocent whether she is nor not. I happen to feel positive she is. She isn't the least the siren type of woman, though men like her."

"What type is she?"

"The intellectual type. Not a blue-stocking! God forbid! I couldn't defend a blue-stocking. But she's a woman full of taste, who cares immensely for fine and beautiful things, for things that appeal to the eye and the mind. In that way, perhaps, she's almost a sensualist. But, in any other way! I want you to know her. She's a very interesting woman. Esme Darlington says her perceptions are exquisite. Mrs. Chetwinde's backing her up for all she's worth."

"Then she believes her to be innocent too, of course."

"Of course. Come with me to Mrs. Chetwinde's next Sunday afternoon. She'll be there."

"On a night like this, doesn't a divorce case seem preposterous?"

"Well, you have the tongue of the flatterer!"—he looked up—"But perhaps it does, even when it's Mrs. Clarke's."

"Are you in love with Mrs. Clarke?"

"Deeply, because she's my first client in a cause celebre."

"Have you forgotten her book again?"

"Her book? 'The Kasidah'? I've got it here."

He tapped the capacious side pocket of his coat.

"You saw it then?" he added.

"Beattie had it when I went upstairs."

"I wonder what she made of it," Daventry said, with softness in his voice. "Don't ever let Rosamund see it, by the way. It's anything rather than Christian. Mrs. Clarke gets hold of everything, dives into everything. She's got an unresting mind."

They had come to the edge of the Serpentine, on which there lay an ethereal film of baby ice almost like frosted gauze. The leafless trees, with their decoration of filigree, suggested the North and its peculiar romance—nature trailing away into the mighty white solitudes where the Pole star reigns over fields of ice.

"Hyde Park is bringing me illusions to-night," said Daventry. "That water might be the Vistula. If I heard a wolf howling over there near the ranger's lodge, I shouldn't be surprised."

A lifeguardsman, in a red cloak, and a woman drifted away over the frost among the trees.

"I love Mrs. Clarke as a client, but perhaps I love her even more because, through her, I hope to get hold of something I've—I've let drop," continued Daventry.

"What's that?"

Daventry put his arm through Dion's.

"I don't know whether I can name it even to you; but it's something a man of great intelligence, such as myself, should always keep in his fist."

He paused.

"The clergy are apt to call it self-respect," he at length added, in a dry voice.

Dion pressed his arm.

"Bruce Evelin wants you to marry Beatrice."

"He hasn't told you so?"

"No, except by taking the trouble to force you to work."

Daventry stood still.

"I'm going to ask her—almost directly."

"Come on, Guy, or we shall have all the blackbirds round us. Look over there."

Not far off, among the trees, two slinking and sinister shadows of men seemed to be intent upon them.

"Isn't it incredible to practise the profession of a blackmailer out of doors on a night like this?" said Dion. "D'you remember when we were in the night train coming from Burstal? You had a feather that night."

"Damn it! Why rake up—?"

"And I said how wonderful it would be if some day I were married to Rosamund."

"Is it wonderful?"

"Yes."

"Very wonderful?"

"Yes."

"Children too!"

Daventry sighed.

"One wants to be worthy of it all," he murmured. "And then"—he laughed, as if calling in his humor to save him from something—"the children, in their turn, feel they would like to live up to papa. Dion, people can be caught in the net of goodness very much as they can be caught in the net of evil. Let us praise the stars for that."

They arrived at the bridge. The wide road, which looked to-night extraordinarily clean, almost as if it had been polished up for the passing of some delicate procession in the night, was empty. There were no vehicles going by; the night-birds kept among the trees. The quarter after eleven chimed from some distant church. Dion thought of Rosamund, as he paused on the bridge, thought of himself as a husband yielding his wife up to the solitude she evidently desired. He took Daventry for his companion; she had the child for hers. There was suffering of a kind even in a very perfect marriage, but what he had told Daventry was true; it had been very wonderful. He had learnt a great deal in his marriage, dear lessons of high-mindedness in desire, of purity in possession. If Rosamund were to be cut off from him even to-night he had gained enormously by the possession of her. He knew what woman can be, and without disappointment; for he did not choose to reckon up those small, almost impalpable things which, like passing shadows, had now and then brought a faint obscurity into his life with Rosamund, as disappointments. They came, perhaps, from himself. And what where they? He looked out over the long stretch of unruffled water, filmed over with ice near the shores, and saw a tiny dark object traveling through it with self-possession and an air of purpose beneath the constellations; some aquatic bird up to something, heedless of the approaching midnight and the Great Bear.

"Look at that little beggar!" said Daventry. "And we don't know so very much more about it all than he does. I expect he's a Muscovy duck, or drake, if you're a pedant about genders."

"He's evidently full of purpose."

"Out in the middle of the ice-cold Serpentine. He's only a speck now, like our world in space. Now I can't see him."

"I can."

"You're longer-sighted than I am. But, Dion, I'm seeing a longish way to-night, farther than I've seen before. Love's a great business, the greatest business in life. Ambition, and greed, and vanity, and altruism, and even fanaticism, must give place when it's on hand, when it harnesses its winged horses to a man's car and swings him away to the stars."

"Ask her. I think she'll have you."

A star fell through the frosty clear sky. Dion remembered the falling star above Drouva. This time he was swift with a wish, but it was not a wish for his friend.

They reached Hyde Park Corner just before midnight and parted there. Dion hailed a hansom, but Daventry declared with determination that he was going to walk all the way home to Phillimore Gardens.

"To get up my case, to arrange things mentally," he explained. "Big brains always work best at night. All the great lawyers toil when the stars are out. Why should I be an exception? I dedicate myself to Cynthia Clarke. She will have my undivided attention and all my deepest solicitude."

"I know why."

"No, no."

He put one hand on the apron which Dion had already closed.

"No, really, you're wrong. I am deeply interested in Mrs. Clarke because she is what she is. I want her to win because I'm convinced she's innocent. Will you come to Mrs. Chetwinde's next Sunday and meet her?"

"Yes, unless Rosamund wants me."

"That's always understood."

The cab drove away, and the great lawyer was left to think of his case under the stars.

When the cab turned the corner of Great Market Street, Westminster, and came into Little Market Street, Dion saw in the distance before him two large, staring yellow eyes, which seemed to be steadily regarding him like the eyes of something on the watch. They were the lamps of a brougham drawn up in front of No. 5. Dion's cabman, perforce, pulled up short before the brown door of No. 4.

"A carriage in front of my house at this time of night!" thought Dion, as he got out and paid the man.

He looked at the coachman and at the solemn brown horse between the shafts, and instantly realized that this was the carriage of a doctor.

"Rosamund!"

With a thrill of anxiety, a clutch at his heart, he thrust his latchkey into the door. It stuck; he could not turn it. This had never happened before. He tried, with force, to pull the key out. It would not move. He shook it. The doctor's coachman, he felt, was staring at him from the box of the brougham. As he struggled impotently with the key his shoulders began to tingle, and a wave of acute irritation flooded him. He turned sharply round and met the coachman's eyes, shrewd, observant, lit, he thought, by a flickering of sarcasm.

"Has the doctor been here long?" said Dion.

"Sir?"

"This is a doctor's carriage, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir. Doctor Mayson."

"Well, I say, has he been here long?"

"About an hour, sir, or a little more."

"Thanks."

Dion turned again and assaulted the latchkey.

But he had to ring the bell to get in. When the maid came, looking excited, he said:

"I don't know what on earth's the matter with this key. I can't either turn it or get it out."

"No, sir?"

The girl put her hand to the key, and without any difficulty drew it out of the door.

"I don't know—I couldn't!"

The girl shut the door.

"What's the matter? Why's the doctor here? It isn't——?"

"Yes, sir," said the girl, with a sort of intensely feminine significance. "It came on quite sudden."

"How long ago?"

"A good while, sir. I couldn't say exactly."

"But why wasn't I sent for?"

"My mistress wouldn't have you sent for, sir. Besides, we were expecting you every moment."

"Ah! and I—and now it's past midnight."

He had quickly taken off his coat, hat and gloves. Now he ran up the shallow steps of the staircase. There was a sort of tumult within him. He felt angry, he did not know why. His whole body was longing to do something strong, eager, even violent. He hated his latchkey, he hated the long stroll in Hyde Park, the absurd delay upon the bridge, his preoccupation with the Muscovy duck, or whatever bird it was, voyaging over the Serpentine. Why had nothing told him not to lose a moment but to hurry home? He remembered that he had been specially reluctant to leave Rosamund that evening, that he had even said to her, "I don't know why it is, but this evening I hate to leave you." Perhaps, then, he had been warned, but he had not comprehended the warning. As he had looked at the stars he had thought of the coming of the most wonderful Child who had ever visited this earth. Perhaps then, too——He tried to snap off his thought, half confusedly accusing himself of some sort of blasphemy. At the top of the staircase he turned and looked down into the hall.

"The nurse?"

"Sir?"

"Have you managed to get the nurse?"

"Yes, sir; she's been here some time."

At this moment Doctor Mayson opened the door of Rosamund's room and came out upon the landing—a tall, rosy and rather intellectual-looking man, with tranquil gray eyes, and hair thinning above the high knobby forehead. Dion had never seen him before. They shook hands.

"I shouldn't go into your wife's room," said Doctor Mayson in a low bass voice.

"Why? Doesn't she wish it?"

"She wished you very much to be in the house."

"Then why not send for me?"

"She was against it, I understand. And she doesn't wish any one to be with her just now except the nurse and myself."

"When do you expect? . . ."

"Some time during the night. It's evidently going to be an easy confinement. I'm just going down to send away my carriage. It's no use keeping the horse standing half the night in this frost. I'm very fond of horses."

"Fond of horses—are you?" said Dion, rather vacantly.

"Yes. Are you?"

The low bass voice almost snapped out the question.

"Oh, I dare say. Why not? They're useful animals. I'll come down with you if I'm not to go into my wife's room."

He followed the doctor down the stairs he had just mounted. When the carriage had been sent away, he asked Doctor Mayson to come into his den for a moment. The pains of labor had come on unexpectedly, but were not exceptionally severe; everything pointed to an easy confinement.

"Your wife is one of the strongest and healthiest women I have ever attended," Doctor Mayson added; "superb health. It's a pleasure to see any one like that. I look after so many neurotic women in London. They give themselves up for lost when they are confronted with a perfectly natural crisis. Mrs. Leith is all courage and self-possession."

"But then why shouldn't I see her?"

"Well, she seems to have an extraordinary sense of duty towards the child that's coming. She thinks you might be less calm than she is."

"But I'm perfectly calm."

Doctor Mayson smiled.

"D'you know, it's really ever so much better for us men to keep right out of the way in such moments as these. It's the kindest thing we can do."

"Very well. I'll do it of course."

"I never go near my own wife when she's like this."

Dion stared into the fire.

"Have you many children?"

"Eleven," remarked the bass voice comfortably. "But I married very young, before I left Guy's. Now I'll go up again. You needn't be the least alarmed."

"I'm not," said Dion bruskly.

"Capital!"

And Doctor Mayson went off, not treading with any precaution. It was quite obvious that his belief in his patient was genuine.

Eleven children! Well, some people were prepared to take any risks and to face any responsibilities. Was it very absurd to find in the coming of one child a tremendous event? Really, Doctor Mayson had almost succeeded in making Dion feel a great fool. Just another child in the world—crying, dribbling, feebly trying to grasp the atmosphere; another child to cut its first tooth, with shrieks, to have whooping-cough, chicken-pox, rose rash and measles; another child to eat of the fruit of the tree; another child to combat and love and suffer and die. No, damn it, the matter was important. Doctor Mayson and his rosy face were unmeaning. He might have eleven, or a hundred and eleven children, but he had no imagination.