"I'm very glad," was all he found to say.

"Thank you," she replied, in a voice perhaps slightly more husky than usual. "I mean to stay on in London for some time. I've got lots of things to settle"—she paused—"before I go back to Constantinople."

"But are you really going back?"

"Of course—eventually."

Her voice, nearly drowned by the noise of people departing from the court, sounded to him implacable.

"You heard the hope of the Court that my husband and I would come together again? Of course we never shall. But I'm sure I shall get hold of Jimmy. I know my husband won't keep him from me." She stared at his shoulders. "I want you to help me with Jimmy's physical education—I mean by getting him to that instructor you spoke of."

"To be sure—Jenkins," he said, marveling at her.

"Jenkins—exactly. And I hope it will be possible for your wife and me to meet soon, now there's nothing against it owing to the verdict."

"Thank you."

"Do tell her, and see if we can arrange it."

Dumeny at this moment passed close to them with his friend on his way out of court. His eyes rested on Mrs. Clarke, and a faint smile went over his face as he slightly raised his hat.

"Good-by," said Mrs. Clarke to Dion.

And she turned to Sir John Addington.

Dion made his way slowly out into the night, thinking of the unwise life and of the smile on the lips of Dumeny.



CHAPTER VI

That summer saw, among other events of moment, the marriage of Beatrice and Daventry, the definite establishment of Robin as a power in his world, and the beginning of one of those noiseless contests which seem peculiar to women, and which are seldom, if ever, fully comprehended in all their bearings by men.

Beatrice, as she wished it, had a very quiet, indeed quite a hole-and-corner wedding in a Kensington church, of which nobody had ever heard till she was married in it, to the great surprise of its vicar, its verger, and the decent widow woman who swept its pews for a moderate wage. For their honeymoon she and Daventry disappeared to the Garden of France to make a leisurely tour through the Chateaux country.

Meanwhile Robin, according to his nurse, "was growing something wonderful, and improving with his looks like nothing I ever see before, and me with babies ever since I can remember anything as you may say, a dear!" His immediate circle of wondering admirers was becoming almost extensive, including, as it did, not only his mother and father, his nurse, and the four servants at No. 5 Little Market Street, but also Mrs. Leith senior, Bruce Evelin—now rather a lonely man—and Mr. Thrush of John's Court near the Edgware Road.

At this stage of his existence, Rosamund loved Robin reasonably but with a sort of still and holy concentration, which gradually impinged upon Dion like a quiet force which spreads subtly, affecting those in its neighborhood. There was in it something mystical and, remembering her revelation to him of the desire to enter the religious life which had formerly threatened to dominate her, Dion now fully realized the truth of a remark once made by Mrs. Chetwinde about his wife. She had called Rosamund "a radiant mystic."

Now changes were blossoming in Rosamund like new flowers coming up in a garden, and one of these flowers was a beautiful selfishness. So Dion called it to himself but never to others. It was a selfishness surely deliberate and purposeful—an unselfish selfishness, if such a thing can be. Can the ideal mother, Dion asked himself, be wholly without it? All that she is, perhaps, reacts upon the child of her bosom, the child who looks up to her as its Providence. And what she is must surely be at least partly conditioned by what she does and by all her way of life. The child is her great concern, and therefore she must guard sedulously all the gates by which possible danger to the child might strive to enter in. This was what Rosamund had evidently made up her mind to do, was beginning to do. Dion compared her with many of the woman of London who have children and who, nevertheless, continue to lead haphazard, frivolous, utterly thoughtless lives, caring apparently little more for the moral welfare of their children than for the moral welfare of their Pekinese. Mrs. Clarke had a hatred of "things with wings growing out of their shoulders." Rosamund would probably never wish their son to have wings growing out of his shoulders, but if he had little wings on his sandals, like the Hermes, perhaps she would be very happy. With winged sandals he might take an occasional flight to the gods. Hermes, of course, was really a rascal, many-sided, and, like most many-sided people and gods, capable of insincerity and even of cunning; but the Hermes of Olympia, their Hermes, was the messenger purged, by Praxiteles of very bit of dross—noble, manly, pure, serene. Little Robin bore at present no resemblance to the Hermes, or indeed—despite the nurse's statements—to any one else except another baby; but already it was beginning mysteriously to be possible to foresee the great advance—long clothes to short clothes, short clothes to knickerbockers, knickerbockers to trousers. Robin would be a boy, a youth, a man, and what Rosamund was might make all the difference in that Trinity. The mystic who enters into religion dedicated her life to God. Rosamund dedicated hers to her boy. It was the same thing with a difference. And as the mystic is often a little selfish in shutting out cries of the world—cries sometimes for human aid which can scarcely be referred from the fellow-creature to God—so Rosamund was a little selfish, guided by the unusual temperament which was housed within her. She shut out some of the cries that she might hear Robin's the better.

Robin's sudden attack of illness during Mrs. Clarke's ordeal had been overcome and now seemed almost forgotten. Rosamund had encountered the small fierce shock of it with an apparent calmness and self-possession which at the time had astonished Dion and roused his admiration. A baby often comes hardly into the world and slips out of it with the terrible ease of things fated to far-off destinies. During one night Robin had certainly been in danger. Perhaps that danger had taught Rosamund exactly how much her child meant to her. Dion did not know this; he suspected it because, since Robin's illness, he had become much more sharply aware of the depth of mother-love in Rosamund, of the hovering wings that guarded the nestling. That efficient guarding implies shutting out was presently to be brought home to him with a definiteness leading to embarrassment.

The little interruptions a baby brings into the lives of a married couple were setting in. Dion was sure that Rosamund never thought of them as interruptions. When Robin grew much older, when he was in trousers, and could play games, and appreciate his father's prowess and God-given capacities in the gymnasium, on the tennis lawn, over the plowland among the partridges, Dion's turn would come. Meanwhile, did he actually love Robin? He thought he did. He was greatly interested in Robin, was surprised by his abrupt manifestations and almost hypnotized by his outbursts of wrath; when Robin assumed his individual look of mild inquiry, Dion was touched, and had a very tender feeling at his heart. No doubt all this meant love. But Dion fully realized that his feeling towards Robin did not compare with Rosamund's. It was less intense, less profound, less of the very roots of being. His love for Robin was a shadow compared with the substance of his love for Rosamund. How would Rosamund's two loves compare? He began to wonder, even sometimes put to himself the questions, "Suppose Robin were to die, how would she take it? And how would she take it if I were to die?" And then, of course, his mind sometimes did foolish things, asked questions beginning with, "Would she rather——?" He remembered his talks with Rosamund on the Acropolis—talks never renewed—and compared the former life without little Robin, with the present life pervaded gently, or vivaciously, or almost furiously by little Robin. Among the mountains and by the deep-hued seas of Greece he had foreseen and wondered about Robin. Now Robin was here; the great change was accomplished. Probably Rosamund and he, Dion, would never again be alone with their love. Other children, perhaps, would come. Even if they did not, Robin would pervade their lives, in long clothes, short skirts, knickerbockers, trousers. He might, of course, some day choose a profession which would carry him to some distant land: to an Indian jungle or a West African swamp. But by that time his parents would be middle-aged people. And how would their love be then? Dion knew that now, when Rosamund and he were still young, both less than thirty, he would give a hundred Robins, even if they were all his own Robins, to keep his one Rosamund. That was probably quite natural now, for Robin was really rather inexpressive in the midst of his most unbridled demonstrations. When he was calm and blew bubbles he had charm; when he was red and furious he had a certain power; when he sneezed he had pathos; when he slept the serenity of him might be felt; but he would mean very much more presently. He would grow, and surely his father's love for him would grow. But could it ever grow to the height, the flowering height, of the husband's love for Rosamund? Dion already felt certain that it never could, that it was his destiny to be husband rather than parent, the eternal lover rather than the eternal father. Rosamund's destiny was perhaps to be the eternal mother. She had never been exactly a lover. Perhaps her remarkable and beautiful purity of disposition had held her back from being that. Force, energy, vitality, strong feelings, she had; but the peculiar something in which body seems mingled with soul, in which soul seems body and body soul, was apparently lacking in her. Dion had perhaps never, with full consciousness, missed that element in her till Robin made his appearance; but Robin, in his bubbling innocence, and almost absurd consciousness of himself and of others, did many things that were not unimportant. He even had the shocking impertinence to open his father's eyes, and to show him truths in a bright light—truths which, till now, had remained half-hidden in shadow; babyhood enlightened youth, the youth persisting hardily because it had never sown wild oats. Robin did not know that; he knew, in fact scarcely anything except when he wanted nourishment and when he desired repose. He also knew his mother, knew her mystically and knew her greedily, with knowledge which seemed of God, and with an awareness whose parent was perhaps a vital appetite. At other people he gazed and bubbled but with a certain infantile detachment, though his nurse, of course, declared that she had never known a baby to take such intelligent notice of all created things in its neighborhood. "He knows," she asseverated, with the air of one versed in mysteries, "he knows, does little master, who's who as well as any one, and a deal better than some that prides themselves on this and that, a little upsy-daisy-dear!"

Mrs. Leith senior paid him occasional visits, which Dion found just the least bit trying. Since Omar had been killed, Dion had felt more solicitous about his mother, who had definitely refused ever to have another dog. If he had been allowed to give her a dog he would have felt more easy about her, despite Beatrice's quiet statement of why Omar had meant so much. As he might not do that, he begged his mother to come very often to Little Market Street and to become intimate with Robin. But when he saw her with Robin he was generally embarrassed, although she was obviously enchanted with that gentleman, for whose benefit she was amazingly prodigal of nods and becks and wreathed smiles. It was a pity, he thought, that his mother was at moments so apparently elaborate. He felt her elaboration the more when it was contrasted with the transparent simplicity of Rosamund. Even Robin, he fancied, was at moments rather astonished by it, and perhaps pushed on towards a criticism at present beyond the range of his powers. But Mrs. Leith's complete self-possession, even when immersed in the intricacies of a baby-language totally unintelligible to her son, made it impossible to give her a hint to be a little less—well, like herself when at No. 5. So he resigned himself to a faint discomfort which he felt sure was shared by Rosamund, although neither of them ever spoke of it. But they never discussed his mother, and always assumed that she was ideal both as mother-in-law and grandmother. She was Robin's godmother and had given him delightful presents. Bruce Evelin and Daventry were his godfathers.

Bruce Evelin now lived alone in the large house in Great Cumberland Place. He made no complaint of his solitude, which indeed he might be said to have helped to bring about by his effective, though speechless, advocacy of Daventry's desire. But it was obvious to affectionate eyes that he sometimes felt rather homeless, and that he was happy to be in the little Westminster home where such a tranquil domesticity reigned. Dion sometimes felt as if Bruce Evelin were watching over that home in a wise old man's way, rather as Rosamund watched over Robin, with a deep and still concentration. Bruce Evelin had, he confessed, "a great feeling" for Robin, whom he treated with quiet common sense as a responsible entity, bearing, with a matchless wisdom, that entity's occasional lapses from decorum. Once, for instance, Robin chose Bruce Evelin's arms unexpectedly as a suitable place to be sick in, without drawing down upon himself any greater condemnation than a quiet, "How lucky he selected a godfather as his receptacle!"

And Mr. Thrush of John's Court? One evening, when he returned home, Dion found that old phenomenon in the house paying his respects to Robin. He was quite neatly dressed, and wore beneath a comparatively clean collar a wisp of black tie that was highly respectable, though his top hat, deposited in the hall, was still as the terror that walketh in darkness. His poor old gray eyes were pathetic, and his long, battered old face was gently benign; but his nose, fiery and tremendous as ever, still made proclamation of his "failing." Dion knew that Mr. Thrush had already been two or three times to see Robin, and had wondered about it with some amusement. "Where will your cult for Mr. Thrush lead you?" he had laughingly said to Rosamund. And then he had forgotten "the phenomenon," as he sometimes called Mr. Thrush. But now, when he actually beheld Mr. Thrush in his house, seated on a chair in the nursery, with purple hands folded over a seedy, but carefully brushed, black coat, he genuinely marveled.

Mr. Thrush rose up at his entrance, quite unself-conscious and self-possessed, and as Dion, concealing his surprise, greeted the visitor, Rosamund, who was showing Robin, remarked:

"Mr. Thrush has great ideas on hygiene, Dion. He quite agrees with us about not wrapping children in cotton-wool."

"Your conceptions are Doric, too, in fact?" said Dion to Thrush, in the slightly rough or bluff manner which he now sometimes assumed.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say exactly that, sir," said Mr. Thrush, speaking with a sort of gentleness which was almost refined. "But having been a chemist in a very good way of business—just off Hanover Square—during the best years of my life, I have my views, foolish or perhaps the reverse, on the question of infants. My motto, so far as I have one, is, Never cosset."

He turned towards Robin, who, from his mother's arms, sent him a look of mild inquiry, and reiterated, with plaintive emphasis, "Never cosset!"

"There, Dion!" said Rosamund, with a delicious air of genial appreciation which made Mr. Thrush gently glow.

"And I'll go further," pursued that authority, lifting a purple hand and moving his old head to give emphasis to his deliverance, "I'll go further even than that. Having retired from the pharmaceutical brotherhood I'll say this: If you can do it, avoid drugs. Chemists"—he leaned forward and emphatically lowered his voice almost to a whisper—"Chemists alone know what harm they do."

"By Jove, though, and do they?" said Dion heartily.

"Terrible, sir, terrible! Some people's insides that I know of—used to know of, perhaps I should say—must be made of iron to deal with all the medicines they put into 'em. Oh, keep your baby's inside free from all such abominations!" (He loomed gently over Robin, who continued to stare at him with an expression of placid interrogation.) "Keep it away from such things as the Sampson Syrup, Mother Maybrick's infant tablets, Price's purge for the nursery, Tinkler's tone-up for tiny tots, Ada Lane's pills for the poppets, and above and before all, from Professor Jeremiah T. Iplock's 'What baby wants' at two-and-sixpence the bottle, or in tabloid form for the growing child, two-and-eight the box. Keep his inside clear of all such, and you'll be thankful, and he'll bless you both on his bended knees when he comes to know his preservation."

"He'll never have them, Mr. Thrush," said Rosamund, with a sober voice and twinkling eyes. "Never."

"Bless you, ma'am, for those beautiful words. And now really I must be going."

"You'll find tea in the housekeeper's room, Mr. Thrush, as usual," said Rosamund.

"And very kind of you to have it there, I'm sure, ma'am!" the old gentleman gallantly replied as he made his wavering adieux.

At the door he turned round to face the nursery once more, lifted one hand in a manner almost apostolic, and uttered the final warning "Never cosset!" Then he evaporated, not without a sort of mossy dignity, and might be heard tremblingly descending to the lower regions.

"Rose, since when do we have a housekeeper's room?" asked Dion, touching Robin's puckers with a gentle fore-finger.

"I can't call it the servants' hall to him, poor old man. And I like to give him tea. It may wean him from——" An expressive look closed the sentence.

That night, at last, Dion drew from her an explanation of her Thrush cult. On the evening when Mr. Thrush had rescued her in the fog, as they walked slowly to Great Cumberland Place, he had told her something of his history. Rosamund had a great art in drawing from people the story of their troubles when she cared to do so. Her genial and warm-hearted sympathy was an almost irresistible lure. Mr. Thrush's present fate had been brought about by a tragic circumstance, the death of his only child, a girl of twelve, who had been run over by an omnibus in Oxford Circus and killed on the spot. Left alone with a peevish, nagging wife who had never suited him, or, as he expressed it, "studied" him in any way, he had gone down the hill till he had landed near the bottom. All his love had been fastened on his child, and sorrow had not strengthened but had embittered him.

"But to me he seems a gentle old thing," Dion said, when Rosamund told him this.

"He's very bitter inside, poor old chap, but he looks upon us as friends. He's taken sorrow the wrong way. That's how it is. I'm trying to get him to look at things differently, and Robin's helping me."

"Already!" said Dion, smiling, yet touched by her serious face.

"Yes. He's an unconscious agent. Poor old Mr. Thrush has never learnt the lesson of our dear Greek tombs: farewell! He hasn't been able to say that simply and beautifully, leaving all in other hands. And so he's the poor old wreck we know. I want to get him out of it if I can. He came into my life on a night of destiny too."

But she explained nothing more. And she left Dion wondering just how she would receive a sorrow such as had overtaken Mr. Thrush. Would she be able to submit as those calm and simple figures on the tombs which she loved appeared to be submitting? Would she let what she loved pass away into the shades with a brave and noble, "Farewell"? Would she take the hand of Sorrow, that hand of steel and ice, as one takes the hand of a friend—stern, terrible, unfathomed, never to be fathomed in this world, but a friend? He wondered, but, loving her with that love which never ceased to grow within him, he prayed that he might never know. She seemed born to shed happiness and to be happy, and indeed he could scarcely imagine her wretched.

It was after the explanation of Mr. Thrush's exact relation to Rosamund that the silent contest began in the waning summer when London was rather arid, and even the Thames looked hot between its sluggish banks of mud.

After the trial of her divorce case was over, Mrs. Clarke had left London and gone into the country for a little while, to rest in a small house possessed by Esme Darlington at Hook Green, a fashionable part of Surrey. At, and round about, Hook Green various well-known persons played occasionally at being rural; it suited Mrs. Clarke very well to stay for a time among them under Mr. Darlington's ample and eminently respectable wing. She hated being careful, but even she, admonished by Mr. Darlington, realized that immediately after emerging from the shadow of a great scandal she had better play propriety for a time. It really must be "playing," for, as had been proved at the trial, she was a thoroughly proper person who hadn't troubled to play hitherto. So she rested at Hook Green, till the season was over, with Miss Bainbridge, an old cousin of Esme's; and Esme "ran down" for Saturdays and Sundays, and "ran up" from Mondays to Saturdays, thus seeing something of the season and also doing his chivalrous devoir by "poor dear Cynthia who had had such a cruel time of it."

The season died, and Mr. Darlington then settled down for a while at Pinkney's Place, as his house was called, and persuaded Mrs. Clarke to lengthen her stay there till the end of August. He would invite a few of the people likely to "be of use" to her under the present circumstances, and by September things would be "dying down a little," with all the shooting parties of the autumn beginning, and memories of the past season growing a bit gray and moldy. Then Mrs. Clarke could do what she liked "within reason, of course, and provided she gave Constantinople a wide berth." This she had not promised to do, but she seldom made promises.

Rosamund had expressed to Daventry her pleasure in the result of the trial, but in the rather definitely detached manner which had always marked her personal aloofness from the whole business of the deciding of Mrs. Clarke's innocence or guilt. She had only spoken once again of the case to Dion, when he had come to tell her the verdict. Then she had said how glad she was, and what a relief it must be to Mrs. Clarke, especially after the hesitation of the jury. Dion had touched on Mrs. Clarke's great self-possession, and—Rosamund had begun to tell him how much better little Robin was. He had not repeated to Rosamund Mrs. Clarke's final words to him. There was no necessity to do that just then.

Mrs. Clarke stayed at Hook Green till the end of August without making any attempt to know Rosamund. By that time Dion had come to the conclusion that she had forgotten about the matter. Perhaps she had merely had a passing whim which had died. He was not sorry, indeed, he was almost actively glad, for he was quite sure Rosamund had no wish to make Mrs. Clarke's acquaintance. At the beginning of September, however, when he had just come back to work after a month in camp which had hardened him and made him as brown as a berry, he received the following note:

"CLARIDGE'S HOTEL, 2 September, 1897

"DEAR Mr. LEITH,—What of that charming project of bringing about a meeting between your wife and me? Esme Darlington is always talking of her beauty and talent, and you know my love of the one and the other. Beauty is the consolation of the world; talent the incentive to action stirring our latent vitality. In your marriage you are fortunate; in mine I have been unfortunate. You were very kind to me when things were tiresome. I feel a desire to see your happiness. I'm here arranging matters with my solicitor, and expect to be here off and on for several months. Perhaps October will see you back in town, but if you happen to be in this dusty nothingness now, you might come and see me one day.—Yours with goodwill,

"CYNTHIA CLARKE

"P. S.—My husband and I are separated, of course, but I have my boy a good deal with me. He will be up with me to-morrow. I very much want to take him to that physical instructor you spoke of to me. I forget the name. Is it Hopkins?"

As Dion read this note in the little house he felt the soft warm grip of Stamboul. Rosamund and Robin were staying at Westgate till the end of September; he would go down there every week from Saturday till Monday. It was now a Monday evening. Four London days lay before him. He put away the letter and resolved to answer it on the morrow. This he did, explaining that his wife was by the sea and would not be back till the autumn. He added that the instructor's name was not Hopkins but Jenkins, and gave Mrs. Clarke the address of the gymnasium. At the end of his short note he expressed his intention of calling at Claridge's, but did not say when he would come. He thought he would not fix the day and the hour until he had been to Westgate. On a postcard Mrs. Clarke thanked him for Jenkins's address, and concluded with "Suggest your own day, or come and dine if you like. Perhaps, as you're alone, you'll prefer that.—C. C."

At Westgate Dion showed Rosamund Mrs. Clarke's letter. As she read it he watched her, but could gather nothing from her face. She was looking splendidly well and, he thought, peculiarly radiant. A surely perfect happiness gazed bravely out from her mother's eyes, changed in some mysterious way since the coming of Robin.

"Well?" he said, as she gave him back the letter.

"It's very kind of her. Esme Darlington turns us all into swans, doesn't he? He's a good-natured enchanter. How thankful she must be that it's all right about her boy. Oh, here's Robin! Robino, salute your father! He's a hard-bitten military man, and some day—who knows?—he'll have to fight for his country. Dion, look at him! Now isn't he trying to salute?"

"And that he is, ma'am!" cried the ecstatic nurse. "He knows, a boy! It's trumpets, sir, and drums he's after already. He'll fight some day with the best of them. Won't he then, a marchy-warchy-umtums?"

And Robin made reply with active fists and feet and martial noises, assuming alternate expressions of severe decision almost worthy of a Field-Marshal, and helpless bewilderment that suggested a startled puppy. He was certainly growing in vigor and beginning to mean a good deal more than he had meant at first. Dion was more deeply interested in him now, and sometimes felt as if Robin returned the interest, was beginning to be able to assemble and concentrate his faculties at certain moments. Certainly Robin already played an active part in the lives of his parents. Dion realized that when, on the following Monday, he returned to town without having settled anything with regard to Mrs. Clarke. Somehow Robin had always intervened when Dion had drawn near to the subject of the projected acquaintance between the woman who kept the door of her life and the woman who, innocently, followed the flitting light of desire. There were the evenings, of course, but somehow they were not propitious for a discussion of social values. Although Robin retired early, he was apt to pervade the conversation. And then Rosamund went away at intervals to have a look at him, and Dion filled up the time by smoking a cigar on the cliff edge. The clock struck ten-thirty—bedtime at Westgate—before one had at all realized how late it was getting; and it was out of the question to bother about things on the edge of sleep. That would have made for insomnia. The question of Mrs. Clarke could easily wait till the autumn, when Rosamund would be back in town. It was impossible for the two women to know each other when the one was at Claridge's and the other at Westgate. Things would arrange themselves naturally in the autumn. Dion never said to himself that Rosamund did not intend to know Mrs. Clarke, but he did say to himself that Mrs. Clarke intended to know Rosamund.

He wondered a little about that. Why should Mrs. Clarke be so apparently keen on making the acquaintance of Rosamund? Of course, Rosamund was delightful, and was known to be delightful. But Mrs. Clarke must know heaps of attractive people. It really was rather odd. He decidedly wished that Mrs. Clarke hadn't happened to get the idea into her head, for he didn't care to press Rosamund on the subject. The week passed, and another visit to Westgate, and he had not been to Claridge's. In the second week another note came to him from Mrs. Clarke.

"CLARIDGE'S, ETC.

"DEAR Mr. LEITH,—I'm enchanted with Jenkins. He's a trouvaille. My boy goes every day to the 'gym,' as he calls it, and is getting on splendidly. We are both grateful to you, and hope to tell you so. Come whenever you feel inclined, but only then. I love complete liberty too well ever to wish to deprive another of it—even if I could. How wise of your wife to stay by the sea. I hope it's doing wonders for the baby who (mercifully) isn't wonderful.—Yours sincerely,

"CYNTHIA CLARKE"

After receiving this communication Dion felt that he simply must go to see Mrs. Clarke, and he called at the hotel and asked for her about five-thirty on the following afternoon. She was out, and he left his card, feeling rather relieved. Next morning he had a note regretting she had missed him, and asking him, "when" he came again, to let her know beforehand at what time he meant to arrive so that she might be in. He thanked her, and promised to do this, but he did not repeat his visit. By this time, quite unreasonably he supposed, he had begun to feel decidedly uncomfortable about the whole affair. Yet, when he considered it fully and fairly, he told himself that he was a fool to imagine that there could be anything in it which was not quite usual and natural. He had been sympathetic to Mrs. Clarke when she was passing through an unpleasant experience; he was Daventry's good friend; he was also a friend of Mrs. Chetwinde and of Esme Darlington; naturally, therefore, Mrs. Clarke was inclined to number him among those who had "stuck to her" when she was being cruelly attacked. Where was the awkwardness in the situation? After denying to himself that there was any awkwardness he quite suddenly and quite clearly realized one evening that such denial was useless. There was awkwardness, and it arose simply from Rosamund's passive resistance to the faint pressure—he thought it amounted to that—applied by Mrs. Clarke. This it was which had given him, which gave him still, a sensation obscure, but definite, of contest.

Mrs. Clarke meant to know Rosamund, and Rosamund didn't mean to know Mrs. Clarke. Well, then, the obvious thing for him to do was to keep out of Mrs. Clarke's way. In such a matter Rosamund must do as she liked. He had no intention of attempting to force upon her any one, however suitable as an acquaintance or even as a friend, whom she didn't want to know. He loved her far too well to do that. He decided not to mention Mrs. Clarke again to Rosamund when he went down to Westgate; but somehow or other her name came up, and her boy was mentioned, too.

"Is he still with his mother?" Rosamund asked.

"Yes. He's nearly eleven, I believe. She takes him to Jenkins for exercise. She's very fond of him, I think."

After a moment of silence Rosamund simply said, "Poor child!" and then spoke of something else, but in those two words, said as she had said them, Dion thought he heard a definite condemnation of Mrs. Clarke. He began to wonder whether Rosamund, although she had not read a full, or, so far as he knew, any account of the case in the papers, had somehow come to know a good deal about the unwise life of Constantinople. Friends came to see her in London; she knew several people at Westgate; report of a cause celebre floats in the air; he began to believe she knew.

At the end of September, just before Rosamund was to return to London for the autumn and winter, Mrs. Clarke wrote to Dion again.

"CLARIDGE'S, 28 September, 1897

"DEAR Mr. LEITH,—I'm so sorry to bother you, but I wonder whether you can spare me a moment. It's about my boy. He seems to me to have strained himself with his exercises. Jenkins, as you probably know, has gone away for a fortnight's holiday, so I can't consult him. I feel a little anxious. You're an athlete, I know, and could set me right in a moment if I'm making a fuss about nothing. The strain seems to be in the right hip. Is that possible?—Yours sincerely,

"CYNTHIA CLARKE"

Dion didn't know how to refuse this appeal, so he fixed an hour, went to Claridge's, and had an interview with Mrs. Clarke and her son, Jimmy Clarke. When he went up to her sitting-room he felt rather uncomfortable. He was thinking of her invitation to dinner, and to call again, of his lack of response. She must certainly be thinking of them, too. But when he was with her his discomfort died away before her completely natural and oddly impersonal manner. Dinners, visits, seemed far away from her thoughts. She was apparently concentrated on her boy, and seemed to be thinking of him, not at all of Dion. Had Dion been a vain man he might have been vexed by her indifference; as he was not vain, he felt relieved, and so almost grateful to her. Jimmy, too, helped to make things go easily. The young rascal, a sturdy, good-looking boy, with dark eyes brimming over with mischief, took tremendously to Dion at first sight.

"I say," he remarked, "you must be jolly strong! May I?"

He felt Dion's biceps, and added, with a sudden profound gravity:

"Well, I'm blowed! Mater, he's almost as hard as Jenkins."

His mother gave Dion a swift considering look, and then at once began to consult him about Jimmy's hip. The visit ended with an application by Dion of Elliman's embrocation, for which one of the hotel page-boys was sent to the nearest chemist.

"I say, mind you come again, Mr. Leith!" vociferated Jimmy, when Dion was going. "You're better than doctors, you know."

Mrs. Clarke did not back up her son's frank invitation. She only thanked Dion quietly in her husky voice, and bade him good-by with an "I know how busy you must be, and how difficult you must find it ever to pay a call. You've been very good to us." At the door she added, "I've never seen Jimmy take so much to anyone as to you." As Dion went down the stairs something in him was gently glowing. He was glad that young rascal had taken to him at sight. The fact gave him confidence when he thought of Robin and the future.

It occurred to him, as he turned into the Greville Club, that Mrs. Clarke had not once mentioned Rosamund during his visit.



CHAPTER VII

When Rosamund, Robin and the nurse came back to London on the last day of September, Beatrice and Daventry were settled in their home. They had taken a flat in De Lorne Gardens, Kensington, high up on the seventh floor of a big building, which overlooked from a distance the trees of Kensington Gardens. Their friends soon began to call on them, and one of the first to mount up in the lift to their "hill-top," as Daventry called their seventh floor, was Mrs. Clarke. A few nights after her call the Daventrys dined in Little Market Street, and Daventry, whose happiness had raised him not only to the seventh-floor flat, but also to the seventh heaven, mentioned that she had been, and that they were going to dine with her at Claridge's on the following night. He enlarged, almost with exuberance, upon her savoir-vivre, her knowledge and taste, and said Beattie was delighted with her. Beatrice did not deny it. She was never exuberant, but she acknowledged that she had found Mrs. Clarke attractive and interesting.

"A lot of the clever ones are going to-morrow," said Daventry. He mentioned several, both women and men, among them a lady who was famed for her exclusiveness as well as for her brains.

Evidently Mrs. Chetwinde had been speaking by the book when she had said at the trial, "If she wins, she wins, and it's all right. If she gets the verdict, the world won't do anything, except laugh at Beadon Clarke." No serious impression had apparently been left upon society by the first disagreement of the jury. The "wild mind in the innocent body" had been accepted for what it was. And perhaps now, chastened by a sad experience, the wild mind was on the way to becoming tame. Dion wondered if it were so. After dinner he was undeceived by Daventry, who told him over their cigars that Mrs. Clarke was positively going back to live in Constantinople, and had already taken a flat there, "against every one's advice." Beadon Clarke had got himself transferred, and was to be sent to Madrid, so she wouldn't run against him; but nevertheless she was making a great mistake.

"However," Daventry concluded, "there's something fine about her persistence; and of course a guilty woman would never dare to go back, even after an acquittal."

"No," said Dion, thinking of the way his hand had been held in Mrs. Chetwinde's drawing-room. "I suppose not."

"I wonder when Rosamund will get to know her," said Daventry, with perhaps a slightly conscious carelessness.

"Never, perhaps," said Dion, with equal carelessness. "Often one lives for years in London without knowing, or even ever seeing, one's next-door neighbor."

"To be sure!" said Daventry. "One of London's many advantages, or disadvantages, as the case may be."

And he began to talk about Whistler's Nocturnes. Dion had never happened to tell Daventry about Jimmy Clarke's strained hip and his own application of Elliman's embrocation. He had told Rosamund, of course, and she had said that if Robin ever strained himself she should do exactly the same thing.

That night, when the Daventrys had gone, Dion asked Rosamund whether she thought Beattie was happy. She hesitated for a moment, then she said with her usual directness:

"I'm not sure that she is, Dion. Guy is a dear, kind, good husband to her, but there's something homeless about Beattie somehow. She's living in that pretty little flat in De Lorne Gardens, and yet she seems to me a wanderer. But we must wait; she may find what she's looking for. I pray to God that she will."

She did not explain; he guessed what she meant. Had she, too, been a wanderer at first, and had she found what she had been looking for? While Rosamund was speaking he had been pitying Guy. When she had finished he wondered whether he had ever had cause to pity some one else—now and then. Despite the peaceful happiness of his married life there was a very faint coldness at, or near to, his heart. It came upon him like a breath of frost stealing up out of the darkness to one who, standing in a room lit and warmed by a glowing fire, opens a window and lets in for a moment a winter night. But he shut his window quickly, and he turned to look at the fire and to warm his hands at its glow.

Mrs. Clarke rapidly established a sort of intimacy with the Daventrys. As Daventry had helped to fight for her, and genuinely delighted in her faculties, this was very natural; for Beatrice, unlike Rosamund, was apt to take her color gently from those with whom she lived, desiring to please them, not because she was vain and wished to be thought charming, but because she had an unusually sweet disposition and wished to be charming. She was sincere, and if asked a direct question always returned an answer that was true; but she sometimes fell in with an assumption from a soft desire to be kind. Daventry quite innocently assumed that she found Mrs. Clarke as delightful as he did. Perhaps she did; perhaps she did not. However it was, she gently accepted Mrs. Clarke as a friend.

Dion, of course, knew of this friendship; and so did Rosamund. She never made any comment upon it, and showed no interest in it. But her life that autumn was a full one. She had Robin; she had the house to look after, "my little house"; she had Dion in the evenings; she had quantities of friends and acquaintances; and she had her singing. She had now definitely given up singing professionally. Her very short career as an artist was closed. But she had begun to practise diligently again, and showed by this assiduity that she loved music not for what she could gain by it, but for its own sake. Of her friends and acquaintances she saw much less than formerly. Many of them complained that they never could get a glimpse of her now, that she shut them out, that "not at home" had become a parrot-cry on the lips of her well-trained parlor-maid, that she cared for nobody now that she had a husband and a baby, that she was self-engrossed, etc., etc. But they could not be angry with her; for if they did happen to meet her, or if she did happen to be "at home" when they called, they always found her the genial, radiant, kind and friendly Rosamund of old; full, apparently, of all the former interest in them and their doings, eager to welcome and make the most of their jokes and good stories, sympathetic towards their troubles and sorrows. To Dion she once said in explanation of her withdrawal from the rather bustling life which keeping up with many friends and acquaintances implies:

"I think one sometimes has to make a choice between living deeply in the essentials and just paddling up to one's ankles in the non-essentials. I want to live deeply if I can, and I am very happy in quiet. I can hear only in peace the voices that mean most to me."

"I remember what you said to me once in the Acropolis," he answered.

"What was that?"

"You said, 'Oh, Dion, if you knew how something in me cares for freshness and for peace.'"

"You remember my very words!"

"Yes."

"Then you understand?"

"And besides," he said slowly, and as if with some hesitation, "you used to long for a very quiet life, for the religious life; didn't you?"

"Once, but it seems such ages ago."

"And yet Robin's not a year old yet."

She looked at him with a sudden, and almost intense, inquiry; he was smiling at her.

"Robino maestro di casa!" he added.

And they both laughed.

Towards the end of November one day Daventry said to Dion in the Greville Club:

"Beatrice is going to give a dinner somewhere, probably at the Carlton. She thought of the twenty-eighth. Are Rosamund and you engaged that night? She wants you, of course."

"No. We don't go out much. Rose is an early rooster, as she calls it."

"Then the twenty-eighth would do capitally."

"Shall I tell Rose?"

"Yes, do. Beattie will write too, or tell Rosamund when she sees her."

"Whom are you going to have?"

"Oh, Mrs. Chetwinde for one, and—we must see whom we can get. We'll try to make it cheery and not too imbecile."

As Daventry was speaking, Dion felt certain that the dinner had an object, and he thought he knew what that object was. But he only said:

"It's certain to be jolly, and I always enjoy myself at the Carlton."

"Even with bores?" said Daventry, unable to refrain from pricking a bubble, although he guessed the reason why Dion had blown it.

"Anyhow, I'm sure you won't invite bores," said Dion, trying to preserve a casual air, and wishing, for the moment, that he and his friend were densely stupid instead of quite intelligent.

"Pray that Beattie and I may be guided in our choice," returned Daventry, going to pick up the "Saturday Review."

Rosamund said of course she would go on the twenty-eighth and help Beattie with her dinner. She had accepted before she asked who were the invited guests. Beattie, who was evidently quite guileless in the matter, told her at once that Mrs. Clarke was among them. Rosamund said nothing, and appeared to be looking forward to the twenty-eighth. She even got a new gown for it, and Dion began to feel that he had made a mistake in supposing that Rosamund had long ago decided not to know Mrs. Clarke. He was very glad, for he had often felt uncomfortable about Mrs. Clarke, who, he supposed, must have believed that his wife did not wish to meet her, as her reiterated desire to make Rosamund's acquaintance had met with no response. She had, he thought, shown the tact of a lady and of a thorough woman of the world in not pressing the point, and in never seeking to continue her acquaintance, or dawning friendship, with him since his wife had come back to town. He felt a strong desire now to be pleasant and cordial to her, and to show her how charming and sympathetic his Rosamund was. He looked forward to this dinner as he seldom looked forward to any social festivity.

On the twenty-sixth of November Robin had a cold! On the twenty-seventh it was worse, and he developed a little hard cough which was rather pathetic, and which seemed to surprise and interest him a good deal. Rosamund was full of solicitude. On the night of the twenty-seventh she said she would sit up with Robin. The nurse protested, but Rosamund was smilingly firm.

"I want you to have a good night, Nurse," she said. "You're too devoted and take too much out of yourself. And, besides, I shouldn't sleep. I should be straining my ears all the time to hear whether my boy was coughing or not."

Nurse had to give in, of course. But Dion was dismayed when he heard of the project.

"You'll be worn out!" he exclaimed.

"No, I shan't But even if I were it wouldn't matter."

"But I want you to look your radiant self for Beattie's dinner."

"Oh—the dinner!"

It seemed she had forgotten it.

"Robin comes first," she said firmly, after a moment of silence.

And she sat up that night in an arm-chair by the nursery fire, ministering at intervals to the child, who seemed impressed and heartened in his coughings by his mother's presence.

On the following day she was rather tired, the cough was not abated, and when Dion came back from business he learnt that she had telegraphed to Beattie to give up the dinner. He was very much disappointed. But she did really look tired; Robin's cough was audible in the quiet house; the telegram had gone, and of course there was nothing more to be done. Dion did not even express his disappointment; but he begged Rosamund to go very early to bed, and offered to sleep in a separate room if his return late was likely to disturb her. She agreed that, perhaps, that would be best. So, at about eleven-thirty that night, Dion made his way to their spare room, walking tentatively lest a board should creak and awaken Rosamund.

Everybody had missed her and had made inquiries about her, except Mrs. Clarke and Daventry. The latter had not mentioned her in Dion's hearing. But he was very busy with his guests. Mrs. Clarke had apparently not known that Rosamund had been expected at the dinner, for when Dion, who had sat next her, had said something about the unfortunate reason for Rosamund's absence, Mrs. Clarke had seemed sincerely surprised.

"But I thought your wife had quite given up going out since her child was born?" she had said.

"Oh no. She goes out sometimes."

"I had no idea she did. But now I shall begin to be disappointed and to feel I've missed something. You shouldn't have told me."

It was quite gravely and naturally said. As he went into the spare room, Dion remembered the exact tone of Mrs. Clarke's husky voice in speaking it, the exact expression in her eyes. They were strange eyes, he thought, unlike any other eyes he had seen. In them there was often a look that seemed both intent and remote. Their gaze was very direct but it was not piercing. There was melancholy in the eyes but there was no demand for sympathy. When Dion thought of the expression in Rosamund's eyes he realized how far from happiness, and even from serenity, Mrs. Clarke must be, and he could not help pitying her. Yet she never posed as une femme incomprise, or indeed as anything. She was absolutely simple and natural. He had enjoyed talking to her. Despite her gravity she was, he thought, excellent company, a really interesting woman and strongly individual. She seemed totally devoid of the little tiresomenesses belonging to many woman—tiresomenesses which spring out of vanity and affectation, the desire of possession, the uneasy wish to "cut out" publicly other women. Mrs. Clarke would surely never "manage" a man. If she held a man it would be with the listless and yet imperative grip of Stamboul. The man might go if he would, but—would he want to go?

In thinking of Mrs. Clarke, Dion of course always considered her with the detached spectator's mind. No woman on earth was of real importance to him except Rosamund. His mother he did not consciously count among women. She was to him just the exceptional being, the unique and homely manifestation a devoted mother is to the son who loves her without thinking about it; not numbered among women or even among mothers. She stood to him for protective love unquestioning, for interest in him and all his doings unwavering, for faith in his inner worth undying, for the Eternities without beginning or ending; but probably he did not know it. Of Rosamund, what she was, what she meant in his life, he was intensely, even secretly, almost savagely conscious. In Mrs. Clarke he was more interested than he happened to be in any of the women who dwelt in the great world of those whom he did not love and never could love.

Had the dinner-party he had just been to been arranged by Daventry in order that Rosamund and Mrs. Clarke might meet in a perfectly natural way? If so, it must have been Daventry's idea and not Mrs. Clarke's. Dion had a feeling that Daventry had been vexed by Rosamund's defection. He knew his friend very well. It was not quite natural that Daventry had not mentioned Rosamund. But why should Daventry strongly wish Mrs. Clarke and Rosamund to meet if Mrs. Clarke had not indicated a desire to know Rosamund? Daventry was an enthusiastic adherent of Mrs. Clarke's. He had, Dion knew, a chivalrous feeling for her. Having helped to win her case, any slight put upon her would be warmly resented by him.

Had Rosamund put upon her a slight? Had she deliberately avoided the dinner?

Dion was on the point of getting into the spare-room bed when he asked himself that question. As he pulled back the clothes he heard a dry little sound. It was Robin's cough. He stole to the door and opened it. As he did so he saw the tail of Rosamund's dressing-gown disappearing over the threshold of the nursery. The nursery door shut softly behind her, and Dion got into bed feeling heartily ashamed of his suspicion. How low it was to search for hidden motives in such a woman as Rosamund. He resolved never to do that again. He lay in bed listening, but he did not hear Robin's cough again, and he wondered if the child was already old enough to be what nurses call "artful," whether he had made use of his little affliction to get hold of his providence in the night.

What a mystery was the relation of mother and little child! He lay for a long while musing about it. Why hadn't he followed Rosamund over the threshold of the nursery just now? The mystery had held him back.

Was it greater than the mystery of the relation of man to woman in a love such as his for Rosamund? He considered it, but he was certain that he could not fathom it. No man, he felt sure, knew or ever could know how a mother like Rosamund, that is an intensely maternal mother, regarded her child when he was little and dependent on her; how she loved him, what he meant to her. And no doubt the gift of the mother to the child was subtly reciprocated by the child. But just how?

Dion could not remember at all what he had felt, or how he had regarded his mother when he was nine months old. Presently he recalled Hermes and the child in that remote and hushed room hidden away in the green wilds of Elis; he even saw them before him—saw the beautiful face of the Hermes, saw the child's stretched-out arm.

Elis! He had been wonderfully happy there, far away in the smiling wilderness. Would he ever be there again? And, if fate did indeed lead his steps thither, would he again be wonderfully happy? Of one thing he was certain; that he would never see Elis, would never see Hermes and the child again, unless Rosamund was with him. She had made the green wilderness to blossom as the rose. She only could make his life to blossom. He depended upon her terribly—terribly. Always that love of his was growing. People, especially women, often said that the love of a man was quickly satisfied, more quickly than a woman's, that the masculine satisfaction was soon followed by satiety. Love such as that was only an appetite, a species of lust. Such a woman as Rosamund could not awaken mere lust. For her a man might have desire, but only the desire that every great love of a man for a woman encloses. And how utterly different that was from physical lust.

He thought of the maidens upholding the porch of the Erechtheion. His Rosamund descended from them, was as pure, as serene in her goodness, as beautiful as they were.

In thinking of the beloved maidens he did not think of them as marble.

Before he went to sleep Dion had realized that, since Rosamund was awake, the reason for his coming to the spare room did not exist. Nevertheless he did not go to their bedroom that night. Robin's little dry cough still sounded in his ears. To-night was Robin's kingdom.

In a day or two Robin was better, in a week he was perfectly well. If he had not chanced to catch cold, would Rosamund have worn that new evening-gown at the Carlton dinner?

On that question Dion had a discussion with Daventry which was disagreeable to him. One day Daventry, who had evidently been, in silence, debating whether to speak or not, said to him:

"Oh, Dion, d'you mind if I use a friend's privilege and say something I very much want to say, but which you mayn't be so keen to hear?"

"No, of course not. We can say anything to each other."

"Can we? I'm not sure of that—now."

"What d'you mean?"

"Oh, well—anyhow, this time I'll venture. Why did Rosamund throw us over the other night at almost the last moment?"

"Because Robin was ill."

"He's quite well now."

"Why not. It's ten days ago."

"He can't have been so very ill."

"He was ill enough to make Rosamund very anxious. She was up with him the whole night before your dinner; and not only that, she was up again on the night of the dinner, though she was very tired."

"Well, coming to our dinner wouldn't have prevented that—only eight till ten-thirty."

"I don't think, Guy, you at all understand Rosamund's feeling for Robin," said Dion, with a sort of dry steadiness.

"Probably not, being a man."

"Perhaps a father can understand better."

"Better? It seems to me one either does understand a thing or one doesn't understand it."

There was a not very attractive silence which Daventry broke by saying:

"Then you think if Beattie and I give another dinner at the Carlton—a piece of reckless extravagance, but we are made on entertaining!—Robin won't be ill again?"

"Another dinner? You'll be ruined."

"I've got several more briefs. Would Robin be ill?"

"How the deuce can any one know?"

"I'll hazard a guess. He would be ill."

Dion reddened. There was sudden heat not only in his cheeks but also about his heart.

"I didn't know you were capable of talking such pernicious rubbish!" he said.

"Let's prove whether it's rubbish or not. Beattie will send Rosamund another dinner invitation to-morrow, and then we'll wait and see what happens to Robin's health."

"Guy, I don't want to have a quarrel with you."

"A quarrel? What about?"

"If you imply that Rosamund is insincere, is capable of acting a part, we shall quarrel. Robin was really ill. Rosamund fully meant to go to your dinner. She bought a new dress expressly for it."

"Forgive me, old Dion, and please don't think I was attacking Rosamund. No. But I think sometimes the very sweetest and best women do have their little bit of insincerity. To women very often the motive seems of more importance than the action springing from it. I had an idea that perhaps Rosamund was anxious not to hurt some one's feelings."

"Whose?"

After a slight hesitation Daventry said:

"Mrs. Clarke's."

"Did Mrs. Clarke know that Rosamund accepted to go to your dinner?" asked Dion abruptly, and with a forcible directness that put the not unastute Daventry immediately on his guard.

"What on earth has that to do with it?"

"Everything, I should think. Did she?"

"No," said Daventry.

"Then how could—?" Dion began. But he broke off, and added more quietly:

"Why are you so anxious that Rosamund should know Mrs. Clarke?"

"Well, didn't Mrs. Clarke ages ago express a wish to know Rosamund if the case went in her favor?"

"Oh, I—yes, I fancy she did. But she probably meant nothing by it, and has forgotten it."

"I doubt that. A woman who has gone through Mrs. Clarke's ordeal is generally hypersensitive afterwards."

"But she's come out splendidly. Everybody believes in her. She's got her child. What more can she want?"

"As she's such a great friend of ours I think it must seem very odd to her not knowing Rosamund, especially as she's good friends with you. D'you mind if we ask Rosamund to meet her again?"

"You've done it once. I should leave things alone. Mind, Rosamund has never told me she doesn't want to know Mrs. Clarke."

"That may be another example of her goodness of heart," said Daventry. "Rosamund seldom or never speaks against people. I'll tell you the simple truth, Dion. As I helped to defend Mrs. Clarke, and as we won and she was proved to be an innocent woman, and as I believe in her and admire her very much, I'm sensitive for her. Perhaps it's very absurd."

"I think it's very chivalrous."

"Oh—rot! But there it is. And so I hate to see a relation of my own—I count Rosamund as a relation now—standing out against her."

"There's no reason to think she's doing that."

An expression that seemed to be of pity flitted over Daventry's intelligent face, and he slightly raised his eyebrows.

"Anyhow, we won't bother you with another dinner invitation," he said.

And so the conversation ended.

It left with Dion an impression which was not pleasant, and he could not help wondering whether, during the conversation, his friend had told him a direct and deliberate lie.

No more dinners were given by Beattie and Daventry at the Carlton. Robin's health continued to be excellent. Mrs. Clarke was never mentioned at 5 Little Market Street, and she gave to the Leiths no sign of life, though Dion knew that she was still in London and was going to stay on there until the spring. He did not meet her, although she knew many of those whom he knew. This was partly due, perhaps, to chance; but it was also partly due to deliberate action by Dion. He avoided going to places where he thought he might meet her: to Esme Darlington's, to Mrs. Chetwinde's, to one or two other houses which she frequented; he even gave up visiting Jenkins's gymnasium because he knew she continued to go there regularly with Jimmy Clarke, whom, since the divorce case, with his father's consent, she had taken away from school and given to the care of a tutor. All this was easy enough, and required but little management on account of Rosamund's love of home and his love of what she loved. Since Robin's coming she had begun to show more and more plainly her root-indifference to the outside pleasures and attractions of the world, was becoming, Dion thought, week by week, more cloistral, was giving the rein, perhaps, to secret impulses which marriage had interfered with for a time, but which were now reviving within her. Robin was a genuine reason, but perhaps also at moments an excuse. Was there not sometimes in the quiet little house, quiet unless disturbed by babyhood's occasional outbursts, a strange new atmosphere, delicate and subdued, which hinted at silent walks, at twilight dreamings, at slowly pacing feet, bowed heads and wide-eyed contemplation? Or was all this a fancy of Dion's, bred in him by Rosamund's revelation of an old and haunting desire? He did not know; but he did know that sometimes, when he heard her warm voice singing at a little distance from him within their house, he thought of a man's voice, in some dim and remote chapel with stained-glass windows, singing an evening hymn in the service of Benediction.

In the midst of many friends, in the midst of the enormous City, Rosamund effected, or began to effect, a curiously intent withdrawal, and Dion, as it were, accompanied her; or perhaps it were truer to say, followed after her. He loved quiet evenings in his home, and the love of them grew steadily upon him. To the occasional protests of his friends he laughingly replied:

"The fact is we're both very happy at home. We're an unfashionable couple."

Bruce Evelin, Esme Darlington and a few others, including, of course, Dion's mother and the Daventrys, they sometimes asked to come to them. Their little dinners were homely and delightful; but Mr. Darlington often regretted plaintively their "really, if I may say so, almost too definite domesticity." He even said to certain intimates:

"I know the next thing we shall hear of will be that the Leiths have decided to bury themselves in the country. And Dion Leith will wreck his nerves by daily journeys to town in some horrid business train."

At the beginning of January, however, there came an invitation which they decided to accept. It was to an evening party at Mrs. Chetwinde's, and she begged Rosamund to be nice to her and sing at it.

"Since you've given up singing professionally one never hears you at all," she wrote. "I'm not going to tell the usual lie and say I'm only having a few people. On the contrary, I'm asking as many as my house will hold. It's on January the fifteenth."

It happened that the invitation arrived in Little Market Street by the last post, and that, earlier in the day, Daventry had met Dion in the Club and had casually told him that Mrs. Clarke was spending the whole of January in Paris, to get some things for the flat in Constantinople which she intended to occupy in the late spring. Rosamund showed Dion Mrs. Chetwinde's note.

"Let's go," he said at once.

"Shall we? Do you like these crowds? She says 'as many as my house will hold.'"

"All the better. There'll be all the more to enjoy the result of your practising. Do say yes."

His manner was urgent. Mrs. Clarke would be in Paris. This party was certainly no ingenuity of Daventry's.

"We mustn't begin to live like a monk and a nun," he exclaimed. "We're too young and enjoy life too much for that."

"Do monks and nuns live together? Since when?" said Rosamund, laughing at him.

"Poor wretches! If only they did, how much—!"

"Hush!" she said, with a smiling pretense of thinking of being shocked presently.

She went to the writing-table.

"Very well, then, we'll go if you want to."

"Don't you?" he asked, following her.

She had sat down and taken up a pen. Now she looked up at him with her steady eyes.

"I'm sure I shall enjoy it when I'm there," she answered. "I generally enjoy things. You know that. You've seen me among people so often."

"Yes. One would think you reveled in society if one only knew you in that phase."

"Well, I don't really care for it one bit. I can't, because I never miss it if I don't have it."

"I believe you really care for very few things and for very few people," he said.

"Perhaps that's true about people."

"How many people, I wonder?"

"I don't think one always knows whom one cares for until something happens."

"Something?"

"Until one's threatened with loss, or until one actually does lose somebody one loves. I"—she hesitated, stretched out her hand, and drew some notepaper out of a green case which stood on the table—"I had absolutely no idea what I felt for my mother until she died. She died very suddenly."

Tears rushed to her eyes and her whole face suddenly reddened.

"Then I knew!" she said, in a broken voice.

Dion had never before seen her look as she was looking now.

For a moment he felt almost as if he were regarding a stranger. There was a sort of heat of anger in the face, which looked rebellious in its emotion; and he believed it was the rebellion in her face which made him realize how intensely she had been able to love her mother.

"Now I must write to Mrs. Chetwinde," she said, suddenly bending over the notepaper, "and tell her we'll come, and I'll sing."

"Yes."

He stood a moment watching the moving pen. Then he bent down and just touched her shoulder with a great gentleness.

"If you knew what I would do to keep every breath of sorrow out of your life!" he said, in a low voice.

Without looking up she touched his hand.

"I know you would. You could never bring sorrow into my life."

From that day Dion realized what intensity of feeling lay beneath Rosamund's serene and often actively joyous demeanor. Perhaps she cared for very few people, but for those few she cared with a force surely almost abnormal. Her mother had now been dead for many years; never before had Rosamund spoken of her death to him. He understood the reason of that silence now, and from that day the desire to keep all sorrow from her became almost a passion in him. He even felt that its approach to her, that its cold touch resting upon her, would be a hateful and almost unnatural outrage. Yet he saw all around him people closely companioned by sorrow and did not think that strange. Sorrow even approached very near to Rosamund and to him in that very month of January, for Beatrice had a miscarriage and lost her baby. She said very little about it, but Dion believed that she was really stricken to the heart. He was very fond of Beatrice, he almost loved her; yet her sorrow was only a shadow passing by him, not a substance pressing upon him. And that fact, which he realized, made him know how little even imagination and quiet affection can help men feel the pains of others. The heart knoweth only its own bitterness and the bitterness of those whom it deeply and passionately loves.



CHAPTER VIII

On January the fifteenth Rosamund put on the gown which had been bought for the Carlton dinner but not worn at it.

Although she had not really wanted to go to Mrs. Chetwinde's party she looked radiantly buoyant, and like one almost shining with expectation, when she was ready to start for Lowndes Square.

"You ought to go out every night," Dion said, as he put her cloak over her shoulders.

"Why?"

"To enjoy and to give enjoyment. Merely to look at you would make the dullest set of people in London wake up and scintillate. Don't tell me you're not looking forward to it, because I couldn't believe you."

"Now that the war-paint is on I confess to feeling almost eager for the fray. How nicely you button it. You aren't clumsy."

"How could I be clumsy in doing something for you? Where's your music?"

"In my head. Jennie will meet us there."

Jennie was Rosamund's accompanist, a clever Irish girl who often came to Little Market Street to go through things with Rosamund.

"It will be rather delightful singing to people again," she added in a joyous voice as they got into the hired carriage. "I hope I've really improved."

"How you love a thing for itself!" he said, as they drove off.

"I think that's the only way to love."

"Of course it is. You know the only way to everything beautiful and sane. What I have learnt from you!"

"Dion," she said, in the darkness, "I think you are rather a dangerous companion for me."

"How can I be?"

"I'm not at all a piece of perfection. Take care you don't teach me to think I am."

"But you're the least conceited—"

"Hush, you encourager of egoism!" she interrupted seriously.

"I'm afraid you'll find a good many more at Mrs. Chetwinde's."

Dion thought he had been a true prophet half an hour later when, from a little distance, he watched and listened while Rosamund was singing her first song. Seeing her thus in the midst of a crowd he awakened to the fact that Robin had changed her very much. She still looked splendidly young but she no longer looked like a girl. The married woman and the mother were there quite definitely. Even he fancied that he heard them in her voice, which had gained in some way, perhaps in roundness, in mellowness. This might be the result of study; he was inclined to believe it the result of motherhood. She was wearing ear-rings—tiny, not long drooping things, they were green, small emeralds; and he remembered how he had loved her better when he saw her wearing ear-rings for the first time in Mr. Darlington's drawing-room. How definite she was in a crowd. Crowds effaced ordinary people, but when Rosamund was surrounded she always seemed to be beautifully emphasized, to be made more perfectly herself. She did not take, she gave, and in giving showed how much she had.

She was giving now as she sang, "Caro mio ben."

Towards the end of the song, when Dion was deeply in it and in her who sang it, he was disturbed by a woman's whisper coming from close behind him. He did not catch the beginning of what was communicated, but he did catch the end. It was this: "Over there, the famous Mrs. Clarke."

But Mrs. Clarke was in Paris. Daventry had told him so. Dion looked quickly about the large and crowded room, but could not see Mrs. Clarke. Then he glanced behind him to see the whisperer, and beheld a hard-faced, middle-aged and very well-known woman—one of those women who, by dint of perpetually "going about," become at length something less than human. He was quite sure Mrs. Brackenhurst would not make a mistake about anything which happened at a party. She might fail to recognize her husband, if she met him about her house, because he was so seldom there; she would not fail to recognize the heroine of a resounding divorce case. Mrs. Clarke must certainly have returned from Paris and be somewhere in that room, listening to Rosamund and probably watching her. Dion scarcely knew whether this fact made him sorry or glad. He did know, however, that it oddly excited him.

When "Caro mio ben" was ended people began to move. Rosamund was surrounded and congratulated, and Dion saw Esme Darlington bending to her, half paternally, half gallantly, and speaking to her emphatically. Mrs. Chetwinde drifted up to her; and three or four young men hovered near to her, evidently desirous of putting in a word. The success of her leaped to the eye. Dion saw it and glowed. But the excitement in him persisted, and he began to move towards the far side of the great room in search of Mrs. Clarke. If she had just come in she would probably be near the door by which the pathetic Echo stood on her pedestal of marble, withdrawn in her punishment, in her abasement beautiful and wistful. How different was Rosamund from Echo! Dion looked across at her joyous and radiant animation, as she smiled and talked almost with the eagerness and vitality of a child; and he had the thought, "How goodness preserves!" Women throng the secret rooms of the vanity specialists, put their trust in pomades, in pigments, in tinctures, in dyes; and the weariness and the sin become lustrous, perhaps, but never are hidden or even obscured. His Rosamund trusted in a wholesome life, with air blowing through it, with sound sleep as its anodyne, with purity on guard at its door; and radiance and youth sparkled up in her like fountain spray in the sunshine. And the wholesomeness of her was a lure to the many even in a drawing-room of London. He saw powdered women, women with darkened eyebrows, and touched-up lips, and hair that had forgotten long ago what was its natural color, looking at her, and he fancied there was a dull wonder in their eyes. Perhaps they were thinking: "Yes, that's the recipe—being gay in goodness!" And perhaps some of them were thinking, too: "We've lost the power to follow that recipe, if we ever had it." Poor women! With a sort of exultation he pitied them and their husbands. A chord was sounded on the piano. He stood still. The loud buzz of conversation died down. Was Rosamund going to sing again so soon? Perhaps some one had begged for something specially beloved. Jennie was playing a soft prelude as a gentle warning to a few of those who seem ever to find silence a physical difficulty. She stopped, and began to play something Dion did not know, something very modern in its strange atmospheric delicacy, which nevertheless instantly transported him to Greece. He was there, even before Rosamund began to sing in a voice that was hushed, in a far-off voice, not antique, but the voice of modernity, prompted by a mind looking away from what is near to what is afar and is deeply desired.

"A crescent sail upon the sea, So calm and fair and ripple-free You wonder storms can ever be;

A shore with deep indented bays, And o'er the gleaming water-ways A glimpse of Islands in the haze;

A faced bronzed dark to red and gold, With mountain eyes that seem to hold The freshness of the world of old;

A shepherd's crook, a coat of fleece, A grazing flock—the sense of peace, The long sweet silence—this is Greece."

The accompaniment continued for a moment alone, whispering remoteness. Then, like a voice far off in a blue distance, there came again from Rosamund, more softly and with less pressure:

"——The sense of peace, The long sweet silence—this is Greece! This is Greece!"

It was just then that Dion saw Mrs. Clarke. She had, perhaps, been sitting down; or, possibly, some one had been standing in front of her and had hidden her from him; for she was not far off, and he wondered sharply why he had not seen her till now, why, till now, she had refrained from snatching him away from his land of the early morning. There was to him at this moment something actually cruel and painful in her instant suggestion of Stamboul. Yet she was not looking at him, but was directing upon Rosamund her characteristic gaze of consideration, in which there was a peculiar grave thoroughness. A handsome, fair young man, with a very red weak mouth, stood close to her. Echo was just beyond. Without speaking, Mrs. Clarke continued looking at Rosamund intently, when the music evaporated, and Greece faded away into the shining of that distance which hides our dreams. And Dion noted again, with a faint creeping of wonder and of doubt, the strange haggardness of her face, which, nevertheless, he had come to think almost beautiful.

The fair young man spoke to her, bending and looking at her eagerly. She turned her head slowly, and as if reluctantly towards him, and was evidently listening to what he said, listening with that apparent intentness which was characteristic of her. She was dressed in black and violet, and wore a large knot of violets in her corsage. Round her throat was clasped an antique necklace of dull, unshining gold, and dim purple stones, which looked beautiful, but almost weary with age. Perhaps they had lain for years in some dim bazaar of Stamboul, forgotten under heaps of old stuffs. Dion thought of them as slumbering, made drowsy and finally unconscious by the fumes of incense and the exhalations from diapered perfume vials. As he looked at Mrs. Clarke, the bare and shining vision of Greece, evoked by the song Rosamund had just been singing, faded; the peculiar almost intellectually delicate atmosphere of Greece was gone; and he saw for a moment the umber mystery of Stamboul, lifted under tinted clouds of the evening beyond the waters of the Golden Horn; the great rounded domes and tapering speary minarets of the mosques, couchant amid the shadows and the trailing and gauzy smoke-wreaths, a suggestion of dense masses of cypresses, those trees of the night which only in the night can be truly themselves, guarding the innumerable graves of the Turkish cemeteries.

From that moment he connected Mrs. Clarke in his mind with the cypress. Surely she must have spent very many hours wandering in those enormous and deserted gardens of the dead, where the very dust is poignant, and the cries of the sea come faintly up to Allah's children crumbling beneath the stone flowers and the little fezes of stone. Mrs. Clarke must love the cypress, for about her there was an atmosphere which suggested dimness and the gathering shadows of night.

Greece and Stamboul, the land of the early morning and the wonder-city of twilight; Rosamund and Mrs. Clarke, standing there for a moment, in the midst of the shifting crowd, Dion traveled, compared, connected and was alone in the soul's solitude.

Then Mrs. Chetwinde spoke to him, and he saw Bruce Evelin in the distance going towards Rosamund.

Mrs. Chetwinde told him that Rosamund had made a great advance.

"Now that she's given up singing professionally she's singing better than ever. That Grecian song is the distilled essence of Greece felt in our new way. For we've got our new way of feeling things. Rosamund tells us she repeated the words to Jennie Stileman, and Jennie had them set by a young Athenian who's over here studying English. He catches the butterfly, lets it flutter for a moment in his hand and go. He doesn't jab a pin into it as our composers would. Oh, there's Cynthia! I hope she heard the last thing."

"Yes, she did."

"Ah?"

"I thought Mrs. Clarke was spending January in Paris."

"She came back to-day, and sent round to ask if she might come."

Mrs. Chetwinde wandered away, insouciant and observant as ever. Even at her own parties she always had an air of faintly detached indifference, never bothered about how "it" was "going." If it chose to stop it could, and her guests must put up with it.

When she left him Dion hesitated. Mrs. Clarke had just seen him and sent him a grave nod of recognition. Should he go to her? But the fair young man was still at her side, was still, with his weak red mouth, talking into her ear. Dion felt a strange distaste as he saw those moving lips under the brushed-up, almost ridiculously small, golden mustache; and just as he was conscious of this distaste Mrs. Clarke got rid of the young man, and spoke to a woman. Then she moved forward slowly. Mr. Chetwinde spoke to her, moving his ample fan-shaped beard, which always looked Assyrian, though he was profoundly English and didn't know it. She drew nearer to Dion as she answered Mr. Chetwinde, but in a wholly unconscious manner. To-night she looked more haggard even than usual, no doubt because of the journey from Paris. But Mrs. Chetwinde had once said of her: "Cynthia is made of iron." Could that be true? She was quite close to Dion now, and he was aware of a strange faint perfume which reminded him of Stamboul; and he realized here in Lowndes Square that Stamboul was genuinely fascinating, was much more fascinating than he had realized when he was in it.

Mrs. Clarke passed him without looking at him, and he felt sure quite unconscious of his nearness to her. Evidently she had forgotten all about him. Just after she had gone by he decided that of course he ought to go and speak to her, and that to-night he must introduce Rosamund to her. Not to do so would really be rude. Daventry was not there to be chivalrous. The illness of Beattie, and doubtless his own distress at the loss of his unborn child, had kept him away. Dion thought that he would be unchivalrous if he now neglected to make a point of speaking to Mrs. Clarke and of introducing his wife to her.

Having made up his mind on this he turned to follow Mrs. Clarke, and at once saw that Esme Darlington, that smoother of difficult social places, was before him. A little way off he saw Mr. Darlington, with Rosamund well but delicately in hand, making for Mrs. Clarke somewhat with the gait of Agag. In a moment the thing was done. The two women were speaking to each other, and Rosamund had sent to Mrs. Clarke one of her inquiring looks. Then they sat down together on that red sofa to which Mrs. Clarke had led Dion for his first conversation with her. Esme Darlington remained standing before it. The full acquaintance was joined at last.

Were they talking about the baby? Dion wondered, as for a moment he watched them, forgetting his surroundings. Rosamund was speaking with her usual swift vivacity. At home she was now often rather quiet, moving, Dion sometimes thought, in an atmosphere of wide serenity; but in society she was always full of sunshine and eager life. Something within her leaped up responsively at the touch of humanity, and to-night she had just been singing, and the whole of her was keenly awake. The contrast between her and Mrs. Clarke was almost startling: her radiant vitality emphasized Mrs. Clarke's curious, but perfectly natural, gravity; the rose in her cheeks, the yellow in her hair, the gaiety in her eyes, drew the attention to Mrs. Clarke's febrile and tense refinement, which seemed to have worn her body thin, to have drained the luster out of her hair, to have fixed the expression of observant distress in her large and fearless eyes. Animal spirits played through Rosamund to-night; from Mrs. Clarke they were absent. Her haggard composure, confronting Rosamund's pure sparkle, suggested the comparison of a hidden and secret pool, steel colored in the depths of a sunless forest, with a rushing mountain stream leaping towards the sea in a tangle of sun-rays. Dion realized for the first time that Mrs. Clarke never laughed, and scarcely ever smiled. He realized, too, that she really was beautiful. For Rosamund did not "kill" her; her delicacy of line and colorless clearness stood the test of nearness to Rosamund's radiant beauty. Indeed Rosamund somehow enhanced the peculiarly interesting character of Mrs. Clarke's personality, which was displayed, but with a sort of shadowy reticence, in her physique, and at the same time underlined its melancholy. So might a climbing rose, calling to the blue with its hundred blossoms, teach something of the dark truth of the cypress through which its branches are threaded.

But Mrs. Clarke would certainly never be Rosamund's stairway towards heaven.

Some one he knew spoke to Dion, and he found himself involved in a long conversation; people moving hid the two women from him, but presently the piano sounded again, and Rosamund sang that first favorite of hers and of Dion's, the "Heart ever faithful," recalling him to a dear day at Portofino where, in a cozy room, guarded by the wintry woods and the gray sea of Italy, he had felt the lure of a faithful spirit, and known the basis of clean rock on which Rosamund had built up her house of life. Bruce Evelin stood near to him while she sang it now, and once their eyes met and exchanged affectionate thoughts of the singer, which went gladly out of the gates eager to be read and understood.

When the melody of Bach was finished many people, impelled thereto by the hearty giant whom Mrs. Chetwinde had most strangely married, went downstairs to the black-and-white dining-room to drink champagne and eat small absurdities of various kinds. A way was opened for Dion to Mrs. Clarke, who was still on the red sofa. Dion noticed the fair young man hovering, and surely with intention in his large eyes, in the middle distance, but he went decisively forward, took Mrs. Clarke's listless yet imperative hand, and asked her if she would care to go down with him.

"Oh no; I never eat at odd times."

"Do you ever eat at all?"

"Yes, at my chosen moments. Do find another excuse."

"For going to eat?"

"Or drink."

His reply was to sit down beside her. Mrs. Chetwinde's dining-room was large. People probably knew that, for the drawing-room emptied slowly. Even the fair young man went away to seek consolation below. Rosamund had descended with Bruce Evelin and Esme Darlington. There was a pleasant and almost an intimate hush in the room.

"I heard you were to be in Paris this month," Dion said.

"I came back to-day."

"Aren't you tired?"

"No. I want to speak to you about Jimmy, if you don't mind."

"Please do," said Dion rather earnestly, struck by a sort of little pang as he remembered the boy's urgent insistence that his visitor was to come again soon.

"I'm not quite satisfied with his tutor."

She began to ask Dion's advice with regard to the boy's bringing up, explaining that her husband had left that matter in her hands.

"He's very sorry and ashamed now, poor man, about his attacks on me, and tries to make up from a distance by trusting me completely with Jimmy. I don't bear him any malice, but of course the link between us is smashed and can't ever be resoldered. I'm asking you what I can't ask him because he's a weak man."

The implication was obvious and not disagreeable to Dion. He gave advice, and as he did so thought of Robin at ten.

Mrs. Clarke was a remarkably sensible woman, and agreed with his views on boys, and especially with his theory, suddenly discovered in the present heat of conversation, that to give them "backbone" was of even more importance than to develop their intellectual side. She spoke of her son in a way that was almost male.

"He mustn't be small," she said, evidently comprehending both soul and body in the assertion. "D'you know Lord Brayfield who was talking to me just now?"

"You mean a fair man?"

"Yes, with a meaningless mouth. Jimmy mustn't grow up into anything of that kind."

The conversation took a decidedly Doric turn as Mrs. Clarke developed her ideas of what a man ought to be. In the midst of it Dion remembered Dumeny, and could not help saying:

"But that type"—they had been speaking of what he considered to be Rosamund's type of man, once described by her as "a strong soul in a strong body, and a soft heart but not a softy's heart"—"is almost the direct opposite of the artistic type of man, isn't it?"

Her large eyes looked "Well?" at him, but she said nothing.

"I thought you cared so very much for knowledge and taste in a man."

"So I do. But Jimmy will never have knowledge and taste. He's the boisterous athletic type."

"And you're glad?"

"Not sorry, at any rate. He'll just be a thorough man, if he's brought up properly, and that will do very well."

"I think you're very complex," Dion said, still thinking of Dumeny.

"Because I make friends in so many directions?"

"Well—yes, partly," he answered, wondering if she was reading his thought.

"Jimmy's not a friend but my boy. I know very well Monsieur Dumeny, for instance, whom you saw, and I dare say wondered about, at the trial; but I couldn't bear that my boy should develop into that type of man. You'll say I am a treacherous friend, perhaps. It might be truer to say I was born acquisitive and too mental. I never really liked Monsieur Dumeny; but I liked immensely his musical talent, his knowledge, his sure taste, and his power of making almost everything flower into interestingness. Do you know what I mean? Some people take light from your day; others add to its light and paint in wonderful shadows. If I went to the bazaars alone they were Eastern shops; if I went with Dumeny they were the Arabian Nights. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"The touch of his mind on a thing gave it life. It stirred. One could look into its heart and see the pulse beating. I care to do that, so I cared to go about with Monsieur Dumeny. But one doesn't love people for that sort of thing. In the people one loves one needs character, the right fiber in the soul. You ought to know that."

"Why?" he asked, almost startled.

"I was introduced to your wife just now."

"Oh!"

There was a pause. Then Dion said:

"I'm glad you have met."

"So am I," said Mrs. Clarke, in a voice that sounded more husky even than usual. "She sang that Greek song quite beautifully. I've just been telling her that I want to show her some curious songs I have heard in Turkey, and Asia Minor, at Brusa. There was one man who used to sing to me at Brusa outside the Mosquee Verte. Dumeny took down the melody for me."

"Did you like the 'Heart ever faithful'?"

"Of course it's excellent in that sledge-hammer sort of way, a superb example of the direct. Stamboul is very indirect. Perhaps it has colored my taste. It's full of mystery. Bach isn't mysterious, except now and then—in rare bits of his passion music, for instance."

"I wonder if my wife could sing those Turkish songs."

"We must see. She sang that Greek song perfectly."

"But she's felt Greece," said Dion. "And I think there's something in her that——"

"Yes?"

"I only mean," he said, with reserve in his voice, "that I think there's something of Greece in her."

"She's got a head like a Caryatid."

"Yes," he said, with much less reserve. "Hasn't she?"

Mrs. Clarke had paid his Rosamund two noble compliments, he thought; and he liked her way of payment, casual yet evidently sincere, the simple utterance of two thoughts in a mind that knew. He felt a sudden glow of real friendship for her, and, on the glow as it were, she said:

"Jimmy's quite mad about you."

"Still?" he blurted out, and was instantly conscious of a false step.

"He's got an extraordinary memory for a biceps, and then Jenkins talks about you to him."

As they went on talking people began coming up from the black-and-white dining-room. Dion said he would come to see Jimmy again, would visit the gymnasium in the Harrow Road one day when Jimmy was taking his lesson. Did Jimmy ever go on a Saturday? Yes, he was going next Saturday at four. Dion would look in next Saturday. Now Mrs. Clarke and Rosamund had met, and Mrs. Clarke evidently admired Rosamund in two ways, Dion felt quite different about his acquaintance with her. If it had already been agreed that Mrs. Clarke should show Rosamund Turkish songs, there was no need for further holding back. The relief which had come to him made Dion realize how very uncomfortable he had been about Mrs. Clarke in the immediate past. He was now thoroughly and cordially at his ease with her. They talked till the big drawing-room was full again, till Rosamund reappeared in the midst of delightful friends; talked of Jimmy's future, of the new tutor who must be found,—a real man, not a mere bloodless intellectual,—and, again, of Constantinople, to which Mrs. Clarke would return in April, against the advice of her friends, and in spite of Esme Darlington's almost frantic protests, "because I love it, and because I don't choose to be driven out of any place by liars." Her last remark to him, and he thought it very characteristic of her, was this:

"Liberty's worth bitterness. I would buy it at the price of all the tears in my body."

It was, perhaps, also very characteristic that she made the statement with a perfectly quiet gravity which almost concealed the evidently tough inflexibility beneath.

And then, when people were ready to go, Rosamund sung Brahm's "Wiegenlied."

Dion stood beside Bruce Evelin while Rosamund was singing this. She sang it with a new and wonderful tenderness which had come to her with Robin, and in her face, as she sang, there was a new and wonderful tenderness. The meaning of Robin in Rosamund's life was expressed to Dion by Rosamund in this song as it had never been expressed before. Perhaps it was expressed also to Bruce Evelin, for Dion saw tears in his eyes almost brimming over, and his face was contracted, as if only by a strong, even a violent, effort he was able to preserve his self-control.

As people began to go away Dion found himself close to Esme Darlington.

"My dear fellow," said Mr. Darlington, with unusual abandon, "Rosamund has made a really marvelous advance—marvelous. In that 'Wiegenlied' she reached high-water mark. No one could have sung it more perfectly. What has happened to her?"

"Robin," said Dion, looking him full in the face, and speaking with almost stern conviction.

"Robin?" said Mr. Darlington, with lifted eyebrows.

Then people intervened.

In the carriage going home Rosamund was very happy. She confessed to the pleasure her success had given her.

"I quite loved singing to-night," she said. "That song about Greece was for you."

"I know, and the 'Wiegenlied' was for Robin."

"Yes," she said.

She was silent; then her voice came out of the darkness:

"For Robin, but he didn't know it."

"Some day he will know it."

Not a word was said about Mrs. Clarke that night.

On the following day, however, Dion asked Rosamund how she had liked Mrs. Clarke.

"I saw you talking to her with the greatest animation."

"Was I?" said Rosamund.

"And she told me it had been arranged that she should—no, I don't mean that; but she said she wanted to show you some wonderful Turkish songs."

"Did she? What a beautiful profile she has!"

"Ah, you noticed that!"

"Oh yes, directly."

"Didn't she mention the Turkish songs?"

"I believe she did, but only in passing, casually. D'you know, Dion, I've got an idea that Greece is our country, not Turkey at all. You hate Constantinople, and I shall never see it, I'm sure. We are Greeks, and Robin has to be a Greek, too, in one way—a true Englishman, of course, as well. Do you remember the Doric boy?"

And off went the conversation to the hills of Drouva, and never came back to Turkey.

When Friday dawned Dion thought of his appointment for Saturday afternoon at the gymnasium in the Harrow Road, and began to wish he had not made it. Rosamund had not mentioned Mrs. Clarke again, and he began to fear that she had not really liked her, although her profile was beautiful. If Rosamund had not liked Mrs. Clarke, his cordial enthusiasm at Mrs. Chetwinde's—in retrospect he felt that his attitude and manner must have implied that—had been premature, even, perhaps, unfortunate. He wished he knew just what impression Mrs. Clarke had made upon Rosamund, but something held him back from asking her. He had asked her already once, but somehow the conversation had deviated—was it to Mrs. Clarke's profile?—and he had not received a direct answer. Perhaps that was his fault. But anyhow he must go to the gymnasium on the morrow. To fail in doing that after all that had happened, or rather had not happened, in connexion with Mrs. Clarke would be really rude. He did not say anything about the gymnasium to Rosamund on Friday, but on the Saturday he told her what had been arranged.

"Her son, Jimmy Clarke, has taken a boyish fancy to me, it seems. I said I'd look in and see his lesson just for once."

"Is he a nice boy?"

"Yes, first-rate, I should think, rather a pickle, and likely to develop into an athlete. The father is awfully ashamed now of what he did—that horrible case, I mean—and is trying to make up for it."