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.