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.