CHAPTER I

Amedeo Dorini, the hall porter of the Hotel Cavour in Milan, stood on

the pavement before the hotel one autumn afternoon in the year 1894,

waiting for the omnibus, which had gone to the station, and which was

now due to return, bearing--Amedeo hoped--a load of generously inclined

travelers. During the years of his not unpleasant servitude Amedeo had

become a student of human nature. He had learnt to judge shrewdly and

soundly, to sum up quickly, to deliver verdicts which were not unjust.

And now, as he saw the omnibus, with its two fat brown horses, coming

slowly along by the cab rank, and turning into the Piazza that is

presided over by Cavour’s statue, he prepared almost mechanically to

measure and weigh evidence, to criticize and come to a conclusion.

He glanced first at the roof of the omnibus to take stock of the luggage

pile there. There was plenty of it, and a good deal of it was leather

and reassuring. Amedeo had a horror of tin trunks--they usually gave

such small tips. Having examined the luggage he sent a searching glance

to two rows of heads which were visible inside the vehicle. The brawny

porters hurried out, the luggage chute was placed in position, the

omnibus door was opened, and the first traveler stepped forth.

A German of the most economical type, large, red and wary, with a mouth

like a buttoned-up pocket, was followed by a broad-waisted wife, with

dragged hair and a looped-up gown. Amedeo’s smile tightened. A Frenchman

followed them, pale and elaborate, a “one-nighter,” as Amedeo instantly

decided in his mind. Such Frenchmen are seldom extravagant in hotels.

This gentleman would want a good room for a small price, would be

extremely critical about the cooking, and have a wandering eye and a

short memory for all servants in the morning.

An elderly Englishwoman was the fourth personage to appear. She was

badly dressed in black, wore a tam-o’-shanter with a huge black-headed

pin thrust through it, clung to a bag, smiled with amiable patronage as

she emerged, and at once, without reason, began to address Amedeo and

the porters in fluent, incorrect, and too carefully pronounced Italian.

Amedeo knew her--the Tabby who haunts Swiss and Italian hotels, the

eternal Tabby drastically complete.

A gay Italian is gaiety in flight, a human lark with a song. But a

gloomy Italian is oppressive and almost terrible. Despite the training

of years Amedeo’s smile flickered and died out. A ferocious expression

surged up in his dark eyes as he turned rather bruskly to scrutinize

without hope the few remaining clients. But suddenly his face cleared as

he heard a buoyant voice say in English:

“I’ll get out first, Godfather, and give you a hand.”

On the last word, a tall and lithe figure stepped swiftly, and with a

sort of athletic certainty, out of the omnibus, turned at once towards

it, and, with a movement eloquent of affection and almost tender

reverence, stretched forth an arm and open hand.

A spare man of middle height, elderly, with thick gray hair, and a

clean-shaven, much-lined face, wearing a large loose overcoat and soft

brown hat, took the hand as he emerged. He did not need it; Amedeo

realized that, realized also that he was glad to take it, enjoyed

receiving this kind and unnecessary help.

“And now for Beatrice!” he said.

And he gave in his turn a hand to the girl who followed him.

There were still two people in the omnibus, the elderly man’s Italian

valet and an Englishman. As the latter got out, and stretched his limbs

cramped with much sitting, he saw Amedeo, with genuine smiles, escorting

the two girls and the elderly man towards the glass-roofed hall, on the

left of which was the lift. The figure of the girl who had stepped out

first was about to disappear. As the Englishman looked she vanished.

But he had time to realize that a gait, the carriage of a head and its

movement in turning, can produce on an observer a moral effect. A joyous

sanity came to him from this unknown girl and made him feel joyously

sane. It seemed to sweep over him, like a cool and fresh breeze of the

sea falling through pine woods, to lift from him some of the dust of

his journey. He resolved to give the remainder of the dust to the public

garden, told his name, Dion Leith, to the manager, learnt that the room

he had ordered was ready for him, had his luggage sent up to it, and

then made his way to the trees on the far side of the broad road which

skirts the hotel. When he was among them he took off his hat, kept it

in his hand, and, so, strolled on down the almost deserted paths. As

he walked he tasted the autumn, not with any sadness, but with an

appreciation that was almost voluptuous. He was at a time of life and

experience, when, if the body is healthy, the soul is untroubled by

care, each season of the year holds its thrill for the strongly beating

heart, its tonic gift for the mind. Falling leaves were handfuls of gold

for this man. The faint chill in the air as evening drew on turned his

thoughts to the brightness and warmth of English fires burning on the

hearths of houses that sheltered dear and protected lives. The far-off

voices of calling children, coming to him from hidden places among the

trees, did not make him pensive because of their contrast with things

that were dying. He hailed them as voices of the youth which lasts in

the world, though the world may seem to be old to those who are old.

Dion Leith had a powerful grip on life and good things. He was young,

just twenty-six, strong and healthy, though slim-built in body,

alert and vigorous in mind, unperturbed in soul, buoyant and warmly

imaginative. Just at that moment the joy of life was almost at full

flood in him, for he had recently been reveling in a new and glorious

experience, and now carried it with him, a precious memory.

He had been traveling, and his wanderings had given him glimpses of two

worlds. In one of these worlds he had looked into the depths, had felt

as if he realized fully for the first time the violence of the angry and

ugly passions that deform life; in the other he had scaled the heights,

had tasted the still purity, the freshness, the exquisite calm, which

are also to be found in life.

He had visited Constantinople and had sailed from it to Greece. From

Greece he had taken ship to Brindisi, and was now on his way home to

England.

What he had thought at the time to be an ill chance had sent him on his

way alone. Guy Daventry, his great friend, who was to go with him, had

been seized by an illness. It was too late then to find another man

free. So, reluctantly, and inclined to grumble a little at fate, Dion

had set off in solitude.

He knew now that his solitude had given him keen sensations, which

he could scarcely have felt with the best of friends. Never, in any

company, had he been so repelled, enticed, disgusted, deeply enchanted,

as on these lonely wanderings which were now a part of his life.

How he had hated Constantinople, and how he had loved Greece! His

expectation had been betrayed by the event. He had not known himself

when he left England, or the part of himself which he had known had been

the lesser part, and he had taken it for the greater. For he had set out

on his journey with his hopes mainly fixed on Constantinople. Its road

of wildness and tumult, its barbaric glitter, its crude mixture of

races, even its passions and crimes--a legend in history, a solid fact

of to-day--had allured his mind. The art of Greece had beckoned to him;

its ancient shrines had had their strong summons for his brain; but

he had scarcely expected to love the country. He had imagined it as

certainly beautiful but with an austere and desolate beauty that would

be, perhaps, almost repellent to his nature. He had conceived of it as

probably sad in its naked calm, a country weary with the weight of a

glorious past.

But he had been deceived, and he was glad of that. Because he had been

able to love Greece so much he felt a greater confidence in himself.

Without any ugly pride he said to himself: “Perhaps my nature is a

little bit better, a little bit purer than I had supposed.”

As the breeze in the public garden touched his bare head, slightly

lifting his thick dark hair, he remembered the winds of Greece; he

remembered his secret name for Greece, “the land of the early morning.”

It was good to be able to delight in the early morning--pure, delicate,

marvelously fresh.

He at down on a bench under a chestnut tree. The children’s voices had

died away. Silence seemed to be drawing near to the garden. He saw a

few moving figures in the shadows, but at a distance, fading towards the

city.

The line of the figure, the poise of the head of that girl with whom he

had driven from the station, came before Dion’s eyes.

CHAPTER II

One winter day in 1895--it was a Sunday--when fog lay thickly over

London, Rosamund Everard sat alone in a house in Great Cumberland Place,

reading Dante’s “Paradiso.” Her sister, Beatrice, a pale, delicate

and sensitive shadow who adored her, and her guardian, Bruce Evelin, a

well-known Q.C. now retired from practice, had gone into the country to

visit some friends. Rosamund had also been invited, and much wanted, for

there was a party in the house, and her gaiety, her beauty, and her fine

singing made her a desirable guest; but she had “got out of it.” On this

particular Sunday she specially wished to be in London. At a church not

far from Great Cumberland Place--St. Mary’s, Welby Street--a man was

going to preach that evening whom she very much wanted to hear. Her

guardian’s friend, Canon Wilton, had spoken to her about him, and had

said to her once, “I should particularly like _you_ to hear him.” And

somehow the simple words had impressed themselves upon her. So, when

she heard that Mr. Robertson was coming from his church in Liverpool to

preach at St. Mary’s, she gave up the country visit to hear him.

Beatrice and Bruce Evelin had no scruples in leaving her alone for a

couple of days. They knew that she, who had such an exceptional faculty

for getting on with all sorts and conditions of men and women, and

who always shed sunshine around her, had within her a great love of,

sometimes almost a thirst for, solitude.

“I need to be alone now and then,” they had heard her say; “it’s like

drinking water to me.”

Sitting quietly by the fire with her delightful edition of Dante, her

left hand under her head, her tall figure stretched out in a low chair,

Rosamund heard a bell ring below. It called her from the “Paradiso.” She

sprang up, remembering that she had given the butler no orders about not

wishing to be disturbed. At lunch-time the fog had been so dense that

she had not thought about possible visitors; she hurried to the head of

the staircase.

“Lurby! Lurby! I’m not at--”

It was too late. The butler must have been in the hall. She heard the

street door open and a man’s voice murmuring something. Then the door

shut and she heard steps. She retreated into the drawing-room, pulling

down her brows and shaking her head. No more “Paradiso,” and she loved

it so! A moment before she had been far away.

The book was lying open on the arm-chair in which she had been sitting.

She went to close it and put it on a table. For an instant she looked

down on the page, and immediately her dream returned. Then Lurby’s dry,

soft voice said behind her:

“Mr. Leith, ma’am.”

“Oh!” She turned, leaving the book.

Directly she looked at Dion Leith she knew why he had come.

“I’m all alone,” Rosamund said. “I stayed here, instead of going to

Sherrington with Beattie and my guardian, because I wanted to hear a

sermon this evening. Come and sit down by the fire.”

“What church are you going to?”

“St. Mary’s, Welby Street.”

“Shall I go with you?”

Rosamund had taken up the “Paradiso” and was shutting it.

“I think I’ll go alone,” she said gently but quite firmly.

“What are you reading?”

“Dante’s ‘Paradiso.’”

She put the book down on a table at her elbow.

“I don’t believe you meant me to be let in,” he said bluntly.

“I didn’t know it was you. How could I know?”

“And if you had known?”

She hesitated. His brows contracted till he looked almost fierce.

“I’m not sure. Honestly I’m not sure. I’ve been quite alone since

Friday, when they went. And I’d got it into my head that I wasn’t going

to see any one till to-morrow, except, of course, at the church.”

Dion felt chilled almost to the bone.

“I can’t understand,” he almost burst out, in an uncontrolled way that

surprised himself. “Are you completely self-sufficing then? But it isn’t

natural. Could you live alone?”

“I didn’t say that.”

She looked at him steadily and calmly, without a hint of anger.

“But could you?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. I’ve never tried.”

“But you don’t hate the idea?”

His voice was almost violent.

“No; if--if I were living in a certain way.”

“What way?”

But she did not answer his question.

“I dare say I might dislike living alone. I’ve never done such a thing,

therefore I can’t tell.”

“You’re an enigma,” he exclaimed. “And you seem so--so--you have this

extraordinary, this abnormal power of attracting people to you. You are

friends with everybody.”

“Indeed I’m not.”

“I mean you’re so cordial, so friendly with everybody. Don’t you care

for anybody?”

“I care very much for some people.”

“And yet you could live alone! Shut in here for days with a book”--at

that moment he was positively jealous of old Dante, gone to his rest

five hundred and seventy-four years ago--“you’re perfectly happy.”

“The ‘Paradiso’ isn’t an ordinary book,” she said, very gently,

and looking at him with a kind, almost beaming expression in her

yellow-brown eyes.

“I don’t believe you ever read an ordinary book.”

“I like to feed on fine things. I’m half afraid of the second-rate.”

“I love you for that. Oh, Rosamund, I love you for so many things!”

He got up and stood by the fire, turning his back to her for a moment.

When he swung round his face was earnest but he looked calmer. She

saw that he was making a strong effort to hold himself in, that he was

reaching out after self-control.

“I can’t tell you all the things I love you for,” he said, “but your

independence of spirit frightens me. From the very first, from that

evening when I saw you in the omnibus at the Milan Station over a year

ago, I felt your independence.”

“Did I manifest it in the omnibus to poor Beattie and my guardian?” she

asked, smiling, and in a lighter tone.

“I don’t know,” he said gravely. “But when I saw you the same evening

walking with your sister in the public garden I felt it more strongly.

Even the way you held your head and moved--you reminded me of the

maidens of the Porch on the Acropolis. I connected you with Greece and

all my--my dreams of Greece.”

“Perhaps if you hadn’t just come from Greece--”

“Wasn’t it strange,” he said, interrupting her but quite unconscious

that he did so, “that almost the first words I heard you speak were

about Greece? You were telling your sister abut the Greek divers who

come to Portofino to find coral under the sea. I was sitting alone in

the garden, and you passed and I heard just a few words. They made me

think of the first Greek Island I ever saw, rising out of the sunset

as I voyaged from Constantinople to the Piraeus. It was wonderfully

beautiful and wonderfully calm. It was like a herald of all the beauty

and purity I found in Greece. It was--like you.”

“How you hated Constantinople!” she said. “I remember you denouncing its

noise and its dirt, and the mongrel horrors of Pera, to my guardian in

the hotel where we made friends. And he put in a plea for Stamboul.”

“Yes, I exaggerated. But Constantinople stood to me for all the uproar

of life, and Greece for the calm and beauty and happiness, the great

Sanity of the true happiness.”

He looked at her with yearning in his dark eyes.

“For all I want in my own life,” he added.

He paused; then an expression of strong, almost hard resolution made his

face look suddenly older.

“You told me at Burstal, on the Chilton Downs, after your debut in

‘Elijah,’ that you would give me an answer soon. I have waited a good

while--some weeks----”

“Why did you ask me just that day, after ‘Woe unto them’?”

“I felt I must,” he answered, but with a slight awkwardness, as if he

were evading something and felt half-guilty. “To-day I decided I would

ask you again, for the last time.”

“You would never----”

“No, never. If you say ‘Wait, and come later on and ask me,’ I shall not

come.”

She got up restlessly. She was obviously moved.

“Dion, I can’t tell you to-day.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I just feel I can’t. It’s no use.”

“When did you mean to tell me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you mean ever to allude to the matter again, if I hadn’t?”

“Yes, I should have told you, because I knew you were waiting.

I--I--often I have thought that I shall never marry any one.”

She looked into the fire. Her face had become almost mysterious.

“Some women don’t need--that,” she murmured.

The fire played over her pale yellow hair.

“Abnormal women!” he exclaimed violently.

She turned.

“Hush! You don’t know what you are saying. It isn’t abnormal to wish to

dedicate----”

She stopped.

“What?” he said.

“Don’t let us talk of these things. But you must not judge any woman

without knowing what is in her heart. Even your own mother, with whom

you have lived alone ever since your father’s death--do you know very

much of her? We can’t always show ourselves plainly as we are. It may

not be our fault.”

“You will marry. You must marry.”

“Why--must?”

He gazed at her. As she met his eyes she reddened slightly,

understanding his thought, that such a woman as she was ought not to

avoid the great vocation of woman. But there was another vocation, and

perhaps it was hers. She felt confused. Two desires were struggling

within her. It was as if her nature contained two necessities which were

wholly irreconcilable the one with the other.

“You can’t tell me?” he said, at last.

“Not now.”

“Then I am going, and I shall never ask you again. But I shall never be

able to love any one but you.”

He said nothing more, and went away without touching her hand.

Words of Dante ran in Rosamund’s head, and she repeated them to herself

after Dion had gone.

“_La divina volontate_!” She believed in it; she said to herself that

she trusted it absolutely. But how was she to know exactly what it

was? And yet, could she escape from it even if she wished to? Could she

wander away into any path where the Divine Will did not mean her to set

foot? Predestination--free will. “If only I were not so ignorant,” she

thought.

Soon after six she went up to her bedroom to put on her things for

church.

Her bedroom was very simple, and showed plainly an indifference to

luxury, a dislike of show and of ostentation in its owner. The walls and

ceiling were white. The bed, which stood against the wall in one corner,

was exceptionally long. This fact, perhaps, made it look exceptionally

narrow. It was quite plain, had a white wooden bedstead, and was covered

with a white bedspread of a very ordinary type. There was one arm-chair

in the room made of wickerwork with a rather hard cushion on the seat,

the sort of cushion that resolutely refuses to “give” when one sits

down on it. On the small dressing-table there was no array of glittering

silver bottles, boxes and brushes. A straw flagon of eau-de-Cologne was

Rosamund’s sole possession of perfume. She did not own a box of powder

or a puff. But it must be acknowledged that she never looked “shiny.”

She had some ivory hair-brushes given to her one Christmas by Bruce

Evelin. Beside them was placed a hideous receptacle for--well, for

anything--pins, perhaps, buttons, small tiresomenesses of that kind.

It was made of some glistening black material, and at its center there

bloomed a fearful red cabbage rose, a rose all vulgarity, ostentation

and importance. This monstrosity had been given to Rosamund as a

thank-offering by a poor charwoman to whom she had been kind. It had

been in constant use now for over three years. The charwoman knew this

with grateful pride.

Upon the mantelpiece there were other gifts of a similar kind: a

photograph frame made of curly shells, a mug with “A present from

Greenwich” written across it in gold letters, a flesh-colored glass

vase with yellow trimmings, a china cow with its vermilion ears cocked

forward, lying down in a green meadow which just held it, and a toy

trombone with a cord and tassels. There were also several photographs of

poor people in their Sunday clothes. On the walls hung a photograph of

Cardinal Newman, a good copy of a Luini Madonna, two drawings of heads

by Burne-Jones, a small painting--signed “G. F. Watts”--of an old tree

trunk around which ivy was lovingly growing, and one or two prints.

The floor was polished and partially covered by three good-sized mats.

There was a writing-table on one side of the room with an ebony-and-gold

crucifix standing upon it. Opposite to it, on the other side of the

room near the fireplace, was a bookcase. On the shelves were volumes of

Shakespeare, Dante, Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Christina Rossetti,

Newman’s “Dream of Gerontius” and “Apologia,” Thomas a Kempis, several

works on mystics and mysticism, a life of St. Catherine of Genoa,

another of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius Loyola’s “Spiritual

Exercises,” Pascal’s “Letters,” etc., etc. Over the windows hung

gray-blue curtains.

Into this room Rosamund came that evening; she went to a wardrobe and

began to take down a long sealskin coat. Just then her maid appeared--an

Italian girl whom she had taken into her service in Milan when she had

studied singing there.

“Shan’t I come with you, Signorina?” she asked, as she took the jacket

from her mistress and held it for Rosamund to put on.

“No, thank you, Maria. I’m going to church, the Protestant church.”

“I could wait outside or come back to fetch you.”

“It’s not far. I shall be all right.”

“But the fog is terrible. It’s like a wall about the house.”

“Is it as bad as that?”

She went to one of the windows, pulled aside the curtains, lifted the

blind and tried to look out. But she could not, for the fog pressed

against the window panes and hid the street and the houses opposite.

“It is bad.”

She dropped the blind, let the curtains fall into place and turned

round.

“But I’d rather go alone. I can’t miss the way, and I’m not a nervous

person. You’d be far more frightened than I.” She smiled at the girl.

Apparently reassured, or perhaps merely glad that her unselfishness was

not going to be tested, Maria accompanied her mistress downstairs and

let her out. It was Lurby’s “evening off,” and for once he was not

discreetly on hand.

Church bells were chiming faintly in this City of dreadful night as

Rosamund almost felt her way onward. She heard them and thought they

were sad, and their melancholy seemed to be one with the melancholy of

the atmosphere. Some one passed by her. She just heard a muffled sound

of steps, just discerned a shadow--that was all.

To-morrow she must give an answer to Dion Leith. She went on slowly in

the fog, thinking, thinking. Two vertical lines showed in her usually

smooth forehead.

It was nearly half-past six when she turned into Welby Street. The

church was not a large one and there was no parish attached to it. It

was a proprietary chapel. The income of the incumbent came from pew

rents. His name was Limer, and he was a first-rate preacher of the

sensational type, a pulpit dealer in “actualities.” He was also an

excellent musician, and took great pains with his choir. In consequence

of these talents, and of his diligent application of them, St. Mary’s

was generally full, and all its pews were let at a high figure.

To-night, however, because of the fog, Rosamund expected to find few

people.

One bell was mournfully ringing as she drew near and presently saw a

faint gleaming of light through long narrow windows of painted glass.

“Ping, ping, ping!” It was a thin little summons to prayer. She passed

through a gateway in some railings of wrought ironwork, crossed a

slippery pavement and entered the church.

It was already more than three parts full, and there was a large

proportion of men in the congregation. A smart-looking young man,

evidently a gentleman, who was standing close to the door, nodded to

Rosamund and whispered:

“I’ll put you into Lady Millingham’s seat. You’ll find Mrs. Chetwinde

and Mr. Darlington there.”

“Oh, I’d rather--” began Rosamund.

But he had already begun to move up the aisle, and she was obliged to

follow him to a pew close to the pulpit, in which were seated a smartly

dressed woman with a vague and yet acute expression, pale eyes and

a Burne-Jones throat; and a thin, lanky and immensely tall man of

uncertain age, with pale brown, very straight hair, large white ears,

thick ragged eyebrows, a carefully disarranged beard and mustache, and

an irregular refined face decorated with a discreet but kind expression.

These were Mrs. Willie Chetwinde, who had a wonderful house in Lowndes

Square, and Mr. Esme Darlington, bachelor, of St. James’s Square, who

was everybody’s friend including his own.

Rosamund just recognized them gravely; then she knelt down and prayed

earnestly, with her face hidden against her muff. She still heard the

little bell’s insistent “Ping, ping, ping!” She pressed her shut eyes

so hard against the muff that rings of yellow light floated up in her

darkness, forming, retreating, melting away.

The bell ceased; the first notes of the organ sounded in a voluntary by

Mendelssohn, amiable and charming; the choir filed in as Rosamund rose

from her knees. In the procession the two last figures were Mr. Limer

and Mr.--or, as he was always called in Liverpool, Father--Robertson.

Mr. Limer was a short, squat, clean-shaven but hairy dark man, with

coal-black hair sweeping round a big forehead, a determined face and

large, indignant brown eyes. The Liverpool clergyman was of middle

height, very thin, with snow-white hair, dark eyes and eyebrows, and a

young almost boyish face, with straight, small features, and a luminous,

gentle and yet intense look. He seemed almost to glow, quietly,

definitely, like a lamp set in a dark place, and one felt that his glow

could not easily be extinguished. He walked tranquilly by the side of

Mr. Limer, and looked absolutely unselfconscious, quietly dignified and

simple.

When he went into the pulpit the lights were lowered and a pleasant

twilight prevailed. But the preacher’s face was strongly illuminated.

Mr. Robertson preached on the sin of egoism, and took as the motto of

his sermon the words--“_Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat_.” His method

of preaching was quiet, but intense; again the glow of the lamp. Often

there were passages which suggested a meditation--a soul communing with

itself fearlessly, with an unyielding, but never violent, determination

to arrive at the truth. And Rosamund, listening, felt as if nothing

could keep this man with the snow-white hair and the young face away

from the truth.

He ranged over a wide field--egoism being wide as the world--he exposed

many of the larger evils brought about by egoism, in connexion with the

Arts, with politics, with charity, with religious work in great cities,

with missionary enterprises abroad; he touched on some of the more

subtle forms of egoism, which may poison even the sources of love; and

finally he discussed the gains and the losses of egoism. “For,” he said,

“let us be honest and acknowledge that we often gain, in the worldly

sense, by our sins, and sometimes lose by our virtues.” Power of a kind

can be, and very often is, obtained by egoists through their egoism.

He discussed that power, showed its value and the glory of it. Then

he contrasted with it the power which is only obtained by those who,

completely unselfish, know not how to think of themselves. He enlarged

on this theme, on the Kingdom which can belong only to those who are

selfless. And then he drew to the end of his sermon.

“One of the best means I know,” he said, “for getting rid of egoism is

this: whenever you have to take some big decision between two courses

of action--perhaps between two life courses--ask yourself, ‘Which can I

share?’--which of these two paths is wide enough to admit of my treading

it with a companion, whose steps I can help, whose journey I can

enliven, whose weariness I can solace, and whose burden I can now and

then bear for a little while? And if only one of the paths is wide

enough, then choose that in preference to the other. I believe

profoundly in ‘sharing terms.’”

He paused, gazing at the congregation with his soft and luminous eyes.

Then he added:

“_Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat_. When the insistent _I_ sleeps, only

then perhaps can the heart be truly awake, be really watchful. Then let

us send the insistent I to sleep, and let us keep it slumbering.”

He half-smiled as he finished. There had been something slightly

whimsical about his final words, about his manner and himself when he

said them.

Silence and the fog, and Rosamund walking homewards with her hands deep

in her muff. All those bodies and minds and souls which had been in the

church had evaporated into the night. Mrs. Chetwinde and Esme Darlington

had wanted to speak to Rosamund, but she had slipped out of the church

quickly. She did not wish to talk to any one.

“_Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat_.”

What an odd little turn, or twist, the preacher had given to the meaning

of those words! “Whenever you have to take some big decision between

two life courses, ask yourself, ‘Which can I share?’ and if you can only

share one, choose that.”

Very slowly Rosamund walked on, bending a little above the big muff,

like one pulled forward by a weight of heavy thoughts. She turned a

corner. Presently she turned another corner and traversed a square,

which could not be seen to be a square. And then, quite suddenly, she

realized that she had not been thinking about her way home and that she

was lost in the impenetrable fog.

She stood still and listened. She heard nothing. Traffic seemed stopped

in this region. On her left there were three steps. She went up them and

was under the porch of a house. Light shone dully from within, and by it

she could just make out on the door the number “8.” At least it seemed

to her that probably it was an “8.” She hesitated, came down the steps,

and walked on. It was impossible to see the names of the streets and

squares. But presently she would come across a policeman. She went on

and on, but no policeman bulked shadowy against the background of night

and of the fog which at last seemed almost terrible to her.

Rosamund was not timid. She was constitutionally incapable of timidity.

Nor was she actively alarmed in a strong and definite way. But gradually

there seemed to permeate her a cold, almost numbing sensation of

loneliness and of desolation. For the first time in her life she felt

not merely alone but solitary, and not merely solitary but as if she

were condemned to be so by some power that was hostile to her.

It was a hideous feeling. Something in the fog and in the night made

an assault upon her imagination. Abruptly she was numbered among the

derelict women whom nobody wants, whom no man thinks of or wishes to be

with, whom no child calls mother. She felt physically and morally, “I

am solitary,” and it was horrible to her. She saw herself old and alone,

and she shuddered.

How long she walked on she did not know, but when at last she heard

a step shuffling along somewhere in front of her, she had almost--she

thought--realized Eternity.

The step was not coming towards her but was going onwards slowly before

her. She hastened, and presently came up with an old man, poorly dressed

in a dreadful frock-coat and disgraceful trousers, wearing on his long

gray locks a desperado of a top hat, and carrying, in a bloated and

almost purple hand, a large empty jug.

“Please!” said Rosamund.

The old gentleman shuffled on.

“Could you tell me--_please_--can you tell me where we are?”

She had grasped his left coat-sleeve. He turned and, bending, she peered

into the face of a drunkard.

“Close to the ‘Daniel Lambert,’” said an almost refined old voice.

And a pair of pathetic gray eyes peered up at her above a nose that was

like a conflagration.

“Where’s that? What is it?”

“Don’t you know the ‘Daniel Lambert’?”

The voice sounded very surprised and almost suspicious.

“No.”

“It’s well known, very well known. I’m just popping round there to get a

little something--eh!”

The voice died away.

“I want to find Great Cumberland Place.”

“Well, you’re pretty close to it. The ‘Daniel Lambert’s’ in the Edgware

Road.”

“Could you find it?--Great Cumberland Place, I mean?”

“Certainly.”

“I wish you would. I should be so grateful.”

The gray eyes became more pathetic.

“Grateful to me--would you, miss? I’ll go with you and very glad to do

it.”

The old gentleman took Rosamund home and talked to her on the way.

When they parted she asked for his name and address. He hesitated for

a moment and then gave it: “Mr. Thrush, 2 Albingdon Buildings, John’s

Court, near Edgware Road.”

“Thank you. You’ve done me a good turn.”

At this moment the front door was opened by the housemaid.

“Oh--miss!” she said.

Her eyes left Rosamund and fastened themselves, like weapons, on the

old gentleman’s nose. He lifted his desperado of a hat and immediately

turned away, trying to conceal his jug under his left arm, but

inadvertently letting it protrude.

“Good night, and thank you very much indeed!” Rosamund called after him

with warm cordiality.

“I’m glad you’ve got back, miss. We were in a way. It’s ever so late.”

“I got lost in the fog. That dear old man rescued me.”

“I’m very thankful, miss, I’m sure.”

The girl seemed stiffened with astonishment. She shut the street door

automatically.

“He used to be a chemist once.”

“Did he, miss?”

“Yes, quite a successful one too; just off Hanover Square, he told me.

He was going round to get something for his supper when we met.”

“Indeed, miss?”

Rosamund went upstairs.

“Yes, poor old man,” she said, as she ascended.

Like most people in perfect health Rosamund slept well; but that night

she lay awake. She did not want to sleep. She had something to decide,

something of vital importance to her. Two courses lay open to her. She

might marry Dion Leith, or she might resolve never to marry. Like most

girls she had had dreams, but unlike most girls, she had often dreamed

of a life in which men had no place. She had recently entered upon the

career of a public singer, not because she was obliged to earn money but

because she had a fine voice and a strong temperament, and longed for

self-expression. But she had always believed that her public career

would be a short one. She loved fine music and enjoyed bringing its

message home to people, but she had little or no personal vanity, and

the life of a public performer entailed a great deal which she already

found herself disliking. Recently, too, her successful career had

received a slight check. She had made her festival debut at Burstal in

“Elijah,” and no engagements for oratorio had followed upon it. Some

day, while she was still young, she meant to retire, and then----

If she married Dion Leith she would have to give up an old dream. On the

other hand, if she married him, perhaps some day she would be a mother.

She felt certain--she did not know why--that if she did not marry Dion

Leith she would never marry at all.

She thought, she prayed, she thought again. Sometimes in the dark hours

of that night the memory of her sensation of loneliness in the fog

returned to her. Sometimes Mr. Robertson’s “Which can I share?” echoed

within her, in the resonant chamber of her soul. He had been very quiet,

but he had made an enormous impression upon her; he had made her hate

egoism much more than she had hated it hitherto.

Even into the innermost sanctuary of religion egoism can perhaps find

a way. The thought of that troubled Rosamund in the dark. But when the

hour of dawn grew near she fell asleep. She had made up her mind, or,

rather, it had surely been made up for her. For a conviction had come

upon her that for good or for evil it was meant that her life should

be linked with Dion Leith’s. He possessed something which she valued

highly, and which, she thought, was possessed by very few men. He

offered it to her. If she refused it, such an offering would probably

never be made to her again.

To be a lonely woman; to be a subtle and profound egoist; to be loved,

cherished, worshiped; to be a mother.

Many lives of women seemed to float before her eyes.

Just before she lost consciousness it seemed to her, for a moment, that

she was looking into the pathetic eyes of the old man whom she had met

in the fog.

“Poor old man!” she murmured.

She slept.

On the following morning she sent this note to Dion Leith:

“MY DEAR DION,--I will marry you.

“ROSAMUND.”

CHAPTER III

In the following spring, Rosamund and Dion were married, and Dion took

Rosamund “to the land of the early morning.”

They arrived in Greece at the beginning of May, when the rains were over

and the heats of summer were at hand. The bed of Ilissus was empty. Dust

lay white in the streets of Athens and along the road to Phaleron and

the sea. The low-lying tracts of country were desert-dry, and about

Athens the world was arrayed in the garb of the East. Nevertheless there

was still a delicate freshness in the winds that blew to the little city

from the purple Aegean or from the mountains of Argolis; stirring the

dust into spiral dances among the pale houses upon which Lycabettos

looks down; shaking the tiny leaves of the tressy pepper trees near the

Royal Palace; whispering the antique secrets of the ages into the ears

of the maidens who, unwearied and happily submissive, bear up the Porch

of the Erechtheion; stealing across the vast spaces and between the

mighty columns of the Parthenon. The dawns and the twilights had not

lost the pure savor of their almost frail vitality. The deepness of

slumber still came with the nights.

Greece was, perhaps, at her loveliest. And Greece was almost deserted by

travelers. They had come and gone with the spring, leaving the land to

its own, and to those two who had come there to drink deep at the wells

of happiness. And, a little selfish as lovers are, Rosamund and Dion

took everything wonderful and beautiful as their possession.

The yellow-green pines near the convent of Daphni threw patches of shade

on the warm earth because they wanted to rest there; the kingfisher

rose in low and arrow-like flight from the banks of Khephissus to make a

sweet diversion for them; they longed for brilliance, and the lagoons of

Salamis were dyed with a wonder of emerald; they asked for twilight, and

the deep and deserted glades of Academe gave it them in full measure.

All these possessions, and many others, they enjoyed almost as children

enjoy a meadow full of flowers when they have climbed over the gate

that bars it from the high road. But the Acropolis was the stronghold

of their joy. Only when their feet pressed its silvery grasses, and trod

its warm marble pavements, did they hold the world within their grasp.

For some days after their arrival in Greece they almost lived among the

ruins. The long-coated guardians smiled at them, at first with a sort

of faint amusement, at last with a friendly pleasure. And they smiled

at themselves. Each evening they said, “To-morrow we will do this--or

that,” and each morning they said nothing, just looked at each other

after breakfast, read in each other’s eyes the repetition of desire, and

set out on the dear dusty road with which they were already so familiar.

Had there ever before been a honeymoon bounded by the precipices of the

Acropolis? They sometimes discussed that important question, and always

decided against the impertinent possibility. “What we are doing has

never been done before.” Dion went further than this, to “What I am

feeling has never been felt before.” His youth asserted itself in

silent, determined statements which seemed to him to ring with authentic

truth.

It was a far cry from the downs of Chilton to the summit of the

Acropolis. Dion remembered the crowd assembled to hear “Elijah”; he felt

the ugly heat, the press of humanity. And all that was but the prelude

to this! Even the voice crying “Woe unto them!” had been the prelude

to the wonderful silence of Greece. He felt marvelously changed. And

Rosamund often seemed to him changed, too, because she was his own. That

wonderful fact gave her new values, spread about her new mysteries. And

some of these mysteries Dion did not attempt to fathom at first. Perhaps

he felt that some silences of love are like certain ceremony with a

friend--a mark of the delicacy which is the sign-manual of the things

that endure. In the beginning of that honeymoon there was a beautiful

restraint which was surely of good augury for the future. Not all

the doors were set violently open, not all the rooms were ruthlessly

visited.

Dion found that he was able to reverence the woman who had given herself

to him more after he had received the gift than before. And this was

very wonderful to him, was even, somehow, perplexing. For Rosamund

had the royal way of bestowing. She was capable of refusal, but not of

half-measures or of niggardliness. There was something primitive in

her which spoke truth with a voice that was fearless; and yet that

very primitiveness seemed closely allied with her purity. Dion only

understood what that purity was when he was married to her. It was like

the radiant atmosphere of Greece to him. Had not Greece led him to it,

made him desire it with all that was best in his nature? Now he had

brought it to Greece. Actually, day after day, he trod the Acropolis

with Rosamund.

Greece had already, he believed, put out a hand and drawn them more

closely together.

“Love me, love the land I love.”

Laughingly, yet half-anxiously too, Dion had said that to Rosamund when

they left Brindisi and set sail for Greece. With her usual sincerity she

had answered:

“I want to love it. Do you wish me to say more than that, to make

promises I may not be able to keep?”

“No,” he had answered. “I only want truth from you.” And after a moment

he had added, “I shall never want anything from you but your truth.”

She had looked at him rather strangely, like one moved by conflicting

feelings, and after a slight hesitation she had said:

“Dion, do you realize all the meaning in those words of yours?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then if you really mean them you must be one of the most daring of

human beings. But I shall try a compromise with you. I shall try to give

you my best truth, never my worst. You deserve that, I think. Indeed, I

know you do.”

And he had left it to her. Was he not wise to do that? Already he

trusted her absolutely, as he had never thought to trust any one.

“I could face any storm with you,” he once said to Rosamund.

Rosamund had wanted to love Greece, and from the first moment of seeing

the land she had loved it.

In the beginning of their stay she had scarcely been able to believe

that she was really in Athens. A great name had aroused in her

imagination a conception of a great city. The soft familiarity, the

almost rustic simplicity and intimacy, the absolutely unpretentious

brightness and homely cheerfulness of the small capital of this unique

land had surprised, had almost confused her.

“Is this really Athens?” she had said, wondering, as they had driven

into what seemed a village set in bright bareness, sparsely shaded here

and there by small pepper-trees.

And the question had persisted in her mind, had almost trembled upon

her lips, for two or three days. But then had come a mysterious change,

brought about, perhaps, by affection. Quickly she had learnt to love

Athens, and then she had the feeling that if it had been in any way

different from what it was she could not have loved it. Its very

smallness delighted her, and she would not permit its faults to be

mentioned in her presence. Once, when Dion said that it was a great pity

the Athenians did not plant more trees, and a greater pity they so often

lopped off branches from the few trees they had, she exclaimed:

“You mustn’t run down my Athens. It likes to give itself to the sun

generously. It’s grateful, as it well may be, for all the sun has done

for it. Look at the color of that marble.”

And Dion looked at the honey color, and the wonderful reddish-gold, and,

laughing, said:

“Athens is the one faultless city, and the dogs tell us so every night

and all night long.”

“Dogs always bark when the moon is up,” she answered, with a

semi-humorous gravity.

“As they bark in Athens?” he queried.

“Yes, of course.”

“If I am ever criticized,” he asked, “will you be my defender?”

“I shan’t hear you criticized.”

“How do you know that?”

“I do know it,” she said, looking at him with her honest brown eyes;

“nobody will criticize you when I am there.”

He caught hold of her hand.

“And you? Don’t you often criticize me silently? I’m sure you do. Why

did you marry me, Rosamund?”

They were sitting on the Acropolis when he put that question. It was

a shining day. The far-off seas gleamed. There was a golden pathway to

Aegina. The brilliant clearness, not European but Eastern, did not

make the great view spread out beneath and around them hard. Greece

lay wrapped in a mystery of sunlight, different from, yet scarcely less

magical than, the mystery of shadows and the moon. Rosamund looked out

on the glory. She had taken off her hat, and given her yellow hair

to the sunlight. Without any head-covering she always looked more

beautiful, and, to Dion, more Greek than when her hair was concealed.

He saw in her then more clearly than at other times the woman of all the

ages rather than the woman of an epoch subject to certain fashions.

As he looked at her now, resting on a block of warm marble above the

precipice which is dominated by the little temple of Athena Nike, he

wondered, with the concealed humility of the great lover, how it was

that she had ever chosen to give herself to him. He had sworn to marry

her. He had not been weak in his wooing, had not been one of those men

who will linger on indefinitely at a woman’s feet, ready to submit to

unnumbered refusals. But now there rose up in the depths of him the cry,

“What am I?” and the answer, “Only a man like thousands of other men, in

no way remarkable, in no way more worthy than thousands of others of the

gift of great happiness.”

Rosamund turned from the shining view. There was in her eyes an unusual

vagueness.

“Why did you?”

“Why did I marry you, Dion?”

“Yes. When I found you with your ‘Paradise’ I don’t think you meant ever

to marry me.”

“I always liked you. But at first I didn’t think of you in that way.”

“But you had known for ages before Burstal----”

“Yes, of course. I knew the day I sang at Mr. Darlington’s, at that

party he gave to introduce me as a singer. I knew first from your

mother. She told me.”

“My mother?”

“By the look she gave me when you introduced me to her.”

“Was it an----How d’you mean?”

“I can scarcely explain. But it was a look that asked a great many

questions. And they wouldn’t have been asked if you hadn’t cared for me,

and if she hadn’t known it.”

“What did you think when you knew?”

“That it was kind of you to care for me.”

“Kind?”

“Yes. I always feel that about people who like me very much.”

“And did you just go on thinking me kind until that day at Burstal?”

“I suppose so. But I felt very much at home with you.”

“I don’t know whether that’s a compliment to a man who’s still young, or

not?”

“Nor do I. But that’s just how it was.”

He said nothing for a little while. When he spoke again it was with some

hesitation, and his manner was almost diffident.

“Rosamund, that day at Burstal, were you at all inclined to accept me?”

“Yes; I think, perhaps, I was. Why?”

“Sometimes I have fancied there was a moment when----”

He looked at her and then, for once, his eyes fell before hers almost

guiltily. They sat in silence for a moment. Behind them, on a bench set

in the shadow of a mighty wall, was a guardian of the Acropolis, a thin

brown man with very large ears sticking out from his head. He had been

dozing, but now stirred, shuffled his feet, and suddenly cleared his

throat. Then he sighed heavily.

“And if there was, why did you think it came, Dion?” said Rosamund

suddenly, with an almost startling swiftness of decision.

Dion reddened.

“Why don’t you like to tell me?”

“Oh, well--things go through the mind without our wishing them to. You

must know that, Rosamund. They are often like absurd little intruders.

One kicks them out if one can.”

“What kind of intruder did you kick out, or try to kick out, at

Burstal?”

She spoke half-laughingly, but half-challengingly.

He drew a little nearer to her.

“Sometimes I have fancied that perhaps, that day at Burstal, you

suddenly realized that love might be a more powerful upholder of life

than ambition ever could be.”

“Sometimes? And you thought it first on the downs, or at any rate after

the concert?”

“I think I did.”

“Do you realize,” she said slowly, and as if with an effort, “that you

and I have never discussed my singing in ‘Elijah’?”

“I know we never have.”

“Let us do it now,” she continued, still seeming to make a strong

effort.

“But why should we?”

“I want to. Didn’t I sing well?”

“I thought you sang wonderfully well.”

“Then what was it that went wrong? I’ve never understood.”

“Why should you think anything went wrong? The critics said it was a

remarkable performance. You made a great effect.”

“I believe I did. But I felt for the first time that day that I was out

of sympathy with my audience. And then”--she paused, but presently added

with a certain dryness--“I was never offered any engagement to sing in

oratorio after Burstal.”

“I believe a good many people thought your talent would show at its best

in opera.”

“I shall never go on the stage. The idea is hateful to me, and always

has been. Would you like me to sing on the stage?”

“No.”

“Dion, why don’t you tell me what happened that day at Burstal?”

“I scarcely could.”

“I wish you would try.”

“Well--I think it was a mistake for you to begin your public career in

oratorio by singing ‘Woe unto them.’”

“Why?”

“It’s an unsympathetic thing. It’s a cruel sort of thing.”

“Cruel? But it’s one of the best-known things in oratorio.”

“You made it quite new.”

“How?”

“It sounded fanatical when you sang it. I never heard it sound like that

before.”

“Fanatical?” she said, and her voice was rather cold.

“Rosamund,” he said, quickly and anxiously, “you asked me to tell you

exactly what I meant, what I felt, that is----”

“Yes, I know. Go on, Dion. Well? It sounded fanatical----”

“To me. I’m only telling you my impression. When I’ve heard ‘Woe unto

them’ before it has always sounded sad, piteous if you like, a sort of

wailing. When you sang it, somehow it was like a curse, a tremendous

summoning of vengeance.”

“Why not? Are not the words ‘Destruction shall fall upon them’?”

“I know. But you made it sound--to me, I mean--almost as if you were

rejoicing personally at the thought of the destruction, as if you were

longing almost eagerly for it to overwhelm the faithless.”

“I see. That is what you meant by fanatical?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

After a long pause she said:

“Nobody has told me that till now.”

“Perhaps others didn’t feel it as I did.”

“I don’t know. What does one know about other people? Not even my

guardian said anything. I never could understand----”

She broke off, then continued steadily:

“So you think I repelled people that day?”

“It seems impossible that you--”

But she interrupted him.

“No, Dion, it isn’t at all impossible. I think if we are absolutely

sincere we repel people very often.”

“But you are the most sincere person I have ever seen, and you must know

how beloved you are, how popular you are wherever you go.”

“When I’m being sincere with the part of me that’s feeling kind or

affectionate. Let us go to the Parthenon.”

She got up, opened her white sun-umbrella and turned round, keeping her

hat in her left hand. As she stood there in that setting of marble, with

the sun caught in her hair, and the mighty view below and beyond her,

she looked wonderfully beautiful, Dion thought, but almost stern. He

feared perhaps he had hurt her. But was it his fault? She had told him

to speak.

Rosamund did not return to the subject of her debut at Burstal, but

in the late afternoon of that day she spoke of her singing, and of the

place it might have in their married life. Dion believed she did this

because of their conversation near the Temple of Nike.

They had spent most of the day on the Acropolis. Both had brought books:

she, Mahaffy’s “History of Greek Literature”; he, a volume of poems

written by a young diplomat who loved Greece and knew her well. Neither

of them had read many pages, but as the strong radiance began to soften

about them on the height, and the breeze from the Saronic Gulf came to

them with a more feathery warmth and freshness over the smiling bareness

of the Attic Plain, Dion, who had been half-dreamily turning the leaves

of his little book, said:

“Rosamund.”

“Yes?”

“Look at the sea and the mountains of Trigania, those far-off

mountains”--he pointed--“and the outpost of Hydra.”

She looked and said nothing. Then he read to her these lines of the

young diplomat-poet:

“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 face 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!”

Rosamund gazed before her at Greece in the evening light.

“‘The freshness of the world of old,’” she repeated, and her voice had

a thrill in it. “‘The sense of peace, the long sweet silence,--this is

Greece.’ If there was music with the music of those words I should love

to sing them.”

“And how you could sing them. Like no other.”

“At any rate my heart would be in them. ‘The freshness of the world of

old--the sense of peace, the long sweet silence.’”

She was standing now near the edge of the sacred rock, looking out over

the tawny plain flanked by gray Hymettos, and away to the sea. There

were no voices rising from below. There was no sound of traffic on

the white road which wound away down the slope to the hidden city. Her

contralto voice lingered on the words; her lips drew them out softly,

lengthening the sounds they loved.

“Freshness, that which belonged to the early world, long sweet silence,

peace. Oh, Dion, if you know how something in me cares for freshness and

for peace!”

Her glad energies were strangely stilled; yet there was a kind of force

in her stillness, the force that is in all deep truths of whatever

nature they may be. He felt that he was near to perhaps the most

essential part of her, to that which was perhaps more truly her than

even the radiant and buoyant humanity by means of which she drew people

to her.

“Could you live always out of the world?” he asked her.

“But it wouldn’t be out of the world.”

“Away from people--with me?”

“With you?”

She looked at him for a moment almost as if startled. Then there came

into her brown eyes a scrutiny that seemed half-inward, as if it were

partially applied to herself.

“It’s difficult to be certain what one could do. I suppose one has

several sides.”

“Ah! And your singing side?”

“I want to speak about that.”

Her voice was suddenly more practical, and her whole look and manner

changed, losing in romance and strangeness, gaining in directness and

energy.

“We’ve never discussed it.”

She sat down on a slab of rock at the edge of the precipice, and went

on:

“You don’t mind your wife being a public singer, do you, Dion?”

“Suppose I do?”

“Do you?”

“You’re so energetic I doubt if you could be happy in idleness.”

“I couldn’t in England.”

“And in Greece? But we are only here for such a short time.”

He took her hand in his.

“Learning the lessons of happiness.”

“Good lessons for us!” she said, smiling.

“The best there are. I believe in the education of joy. It opens the

heart, calls up all the generous things. But your singing; can I bear

your traveling about perpetually all over England?”

“If I get engagements.”

“You will. You had a good many for concerts last winter. You’ve got

several for June and July. You’ll get many more. But who’s to go with

you on your travels?”

“Beattie, of course. Why do you look at me like that?”

“How do we know Beatrice won’t marry?”

Rosamund looked grave.

“Why shouldn’t she?” asked Dion.

“She may, of course.”

“D’you think she’ll remain your apanage now?” he asked, with a hint of

smiling sarcasm that could not hurt her.

“My apanage?”

“Hasn’t she been something like that?”

“Perhaps she has. But Beattie always sinks herself in others. She

wouldn’t be happy if she didn’t do that. Of course, your friend Guy

Daventry’s in love with Beattie.”

“Deeply.”

“But I’m not at all sure that Beattie--”

She paused abruptly. After a moment she continued:

“You asked me to-day why I married you. I didn’t answer you and I’m not

going to answer you now--entirely. But you’re not like other men, most

other men.”

“In what way?”

“A way that means very much to me,” she answered, with a delicious

purity and directness. “Women feel such things very soon when they know

men. I could easily have never married, but I could never, never have

married a man who had lived, as I believe most men have lived.”

“I think I always knew that from the first moment I saw you.”

“Did you? I’m glad. I care tremendously for _that_ in you, Dion--more

than you will ever know.”

“That’s my great, too great reward,” he said soberly, almost with a

touch of deep awe. Then, reddening and looking away, he added, “You were

the very first.”

“Was I?”

“Yes, but--but you mustn’t think that it was a religious feeling,

anything of that kind, which kept me back from--from certain things. It

was more the desire to be strong, healthy, to have the sane mind in the

sane body, I think. I was mad about athletics, all that sort of thing.

Anyhow, you know now. You were the first. You will be the only one in my

life.”

There was a long silence between them. Then Rosamund said, with a change

of manner to practical briskness:

“If Beattie ever should marry, I could take a maid about with me.”

“Yes. An hotel in Liverpool with a maid! In Blackpool, in Huddersfield,

in Wolverhampton, in Glasgow, when there’s a heavy thaw on, with a maid!

Oh, how delightful it will be! Manchester on a wet day in early spring

with a--”

“Hush!” she put one hand on his lips gently, and looked at him with a

sort of smiling challenge in her eyes. “Do you mean to forbid me?”

“I don’t think I could ever forbid you to do anything.”

“We shall see in England.”

“But, Rosamund”--there was no one in sight, and he slipped one arm round

her--“if something came to fill your life, both our lives, to the brim?”

“Ah, then,”--a very remote expression came into her eyes,--“then it

would all be different.”

“All?”

“Yes. Everything would be quite different then.”

“Not our relation to each other?”

“Yes, even that. Perhaps that most of all.”

“I--I hardly like to hear you say that,” he said, struggling against

a perhaps stupid, or even hateful, feeling of depression mingled with

something else.

“But wouldn’t it? Think!”

“I don’t want that to change. I should hate any change in that.”

“What we want, and what we hate, doesn’t affect what has to be. And I

expect at the end we shall be thankful for that. But, Dion, yes, _if_

what you say, I could give it all up. Public singing! What would it

matter then? I’m a woman, not a singer. But perhaps it will never come.”

“Who knows?” he said.

And he sighed.

She turned towards him, leaned one hand on the stone and looked at him

almost anxiously.

“What is the matter, Dion?”

“Why? There is nothing the matter.”

“Would you rather we never had that in our lives?”

“A child?”

“Yes, a child.”

“I thought I longed for that,” he answered.

“Do you meant that you have changed and don’t long any more?”

“I suppose it’s like this. When a man’s very happy, perfectly happy, he

doesn’t--perhaps he can’t--want any change to come. If you’re perfectly

happy instinctively you almost fear any change. Till to-day, till this

very minute perhaps, I thought I wanted to have a child--some day.

Perhaps I still do really, or perhaps I shall. But--you must forgive me,

I can’t help it!--this evening, sitting here, I don’t want anything to

come between us. It seems to me that even a child of ours would take

some of you away from me. Don’t you see that?”

She shook her head.

“That’s a man’s feeling. I can’t share it.”

“But think--all the attention you would have to give to a child, all the

thoughts you would fasten on it, all the anxieties you’d have about it!”

“Well?”

“One only has a certain amount of time. You’d have to take away a good

deal, a great deal, of the time you can now give to me. Oh, it sounds

too beastly, I know! Perhaps I scarcely mean it! But surely you can see

how a man who loves a woman very much might, without being the least

bit unnatural, think, ‘I’d like to keep every bit of her for myself.

I’d like to have her all to myself!’ I dare say this feeling will pass.

Remember, Rose, we’re only just married, and we’re in Greece, right away

from every one. Don’t think me morbidly jealous, or a beast. I’m not. I

expect lots of men have felt as I do, perhaps even till the first child

came.”

“Ah, then it would be all right,” she said. “The natural things, the

things nature intends, are always all right.”

“How blessedly sane and central you are!”

“If we had a child--Dion, you must believe me!--we should be drawn ever

so much nearer together by it. If we ever do have one, we shall look

back on this time--you will--and think ‘We were much farther apart then

than we are now.’”

“I don’t like to hear you say that,” he said gravely, almost with pain.

Could a woman like Rosamund be driven by an instinct blindly? She

was such a perfect type of womanhood. It would be almost a tragedy if

she--such a woman--died childless. Perhaps instinct had obscurely warned

her of that, had taught her where to look for a mate. He, Dion, had

always lived purely. That day she had acknowledged that she had divined

it. Was that, perhaps, her real, her instinctive reason for marrying

him? But a man wants to be married for one thing only, because the

woman longs for him. And Dion was just an ordinary man with very strong

feelings.

“Let’s take one more stroll before we go down,” he said.

“Yes, to the maidens,” she answered.

Her voice sounded relieved. She pushed her arm gently through his as

they moved away, and he felt all his body thrill. The mystery of love

was almost painful to him at that moment. He realized that a great love

might grow to have an affinity with a disease. “I must be careful. I

must take great care with this love of mine,” he thought.

They went slowly over the slabs of marble and the gray rocks and passed

before the west front of the Parthenon. Dion felt slight resistance in

Rosamund’s arm, and stopped. In the changing light the marble was full

of warm color, was in places mysterious and translucent almost as amber.

The immense power, the gigantic calm of the temple, a sort of still

breathing of Eternity upon Time, confronted a glory which was beginning

to change in the face of its changelessness. Soon the seas that held

their dream under the precipices of Sunion, and along the shores of

Aegina, where the tall shepherd boys in their fleeces of white lead home

the flocks in the twilight, would lose the wonder of their shining, and

the skies the rapture of their diffused light. In the quietly austere

Attic Plain, through the whispering groves of Academe, and along the

sacred way to Eleusis, a very delicate vagueness was beginning to

travel, like a wanderer setting forth to greet the coming of the night.

The ranges of hills and mountains, Hymettos and Pentelicus, Parnes

stretching to the far distance, Mount Corydallus, the peak of Salamis,

the exquisitely long mountains of Trigania--“the greyhounds of their

tribe,” Rosamund loved to call them--were changing almost from moment

to moment, becoming a little softer, a little more tender, putting off

their distinct hues of the day for the colors of sleep and forgetting.

But the great Doric columns fronting them, the core of the heart of this

evening splendor, seemed not to defy, but to ignore, all the processes

of change. In its ruin the Parthenon seemed to say, “I have not

changed.” And it was true. For the same soul which had confronted

Pericles confronted the two lovers who now stood at the foot of the

temple.

“I wonder how many thousands of people of all nations have learnt the

same lesson here,” Rosamund said at last.

“The Doric lesson, you mean?”

“Yes, of strength, simplicity, endurance, calmness.”

“And I wonder how many thousands have forgotten the lesson.”

“Why do you say that, Dion?”

“I don’t know. Great art is a moral teacher, I’m sure of that. But men

are very light-minded as a rule, I think. If they lived before these

columns they might learn a great deal, they might even develop in a

splendid direction, I believe. But an hour, even a few hours, is that

enough? Impressions fade very quickly in most people.”

“Not in you. You never forget the Parthenon, and I shall never forget

it.”

She stood for some minutes quite still gazing steadily up at the

temple, gaining--it seemed to her--her own stillness from its tremendous

immobility.

“The greatest strength is in silence,” she thought. “The greatest power

is in motionlessness.”

She thought of the raging of the great sea. But no! There was more of

the essence of strength, of the stern inwardness of power, in that which

confronted life and Time in absolute stillness; in a mountain, in

this temple. And the temple spoke to something far down within her; to

something which desired long silences and deep retirement, to something

mystic which she did not understand. The temple was Pagan and she knew

that. But that in her to which it spoke was not Pagan. Before she left

Athens she meant to realize that the soul of man, when it speaks through

mighty and pure effort, of whatever kind, always speaks to the same

Listener, to but one, though man may not know it.

“Doric!” she said at last. “I have always known that for me that would

be the greatest. The simplest thing is the most sublime thing. That

temple is like the Sermon on the Mount to me. Didn’t you bring me here

because it meant so much to you?”

“Not entirely. No, Rosamund, I think I brought you here because I felt

that you belonged here.”

“This satisfies me.”

She sighed deeply, still gazing at the temple.

“You aren’t only in Greece, you are of Greece. Come to the maidens.”

As they went on slowly the acid voices of the little birds which fly

perpetually among the columns of the Parthenon followed them, bidding

them good night.

They descended over the uneven ground and came to the famous Porch of

the Caryatides, jutting out from the little Ionic temple which is the

handmaid of the Parthenon. Not far from the Porch, and immediately

before it, was a wooden bench. Already Rosamund and Dion had spent many

hours here, sometimes sitting on the bench, more often resting on the

warm ground in the sunshine, among the fragments of ruin and the speary,

silver-green grasses. Now Rosamund sat down and Dion stood by her side.

“Rosamund, those maidens are my ideal of womanhood shown in marble,” he

said.

“They are almost miraculously beautiful. And one scarcely knows why. But

I know that every time I see them the mystery of their beauty seems more

ineffable to me, and the meaning of it seems more profound. How did men

get so much meaning into marble?”

“By caring so much for what is beautiful in womanhood, I suppose.”

He sat down close beside her.

“I sometimes wonder whether women have any idea what some men, many men,

I believe, seek in women.”

“What do they seek?”

“What do those maidens that hold up the Porch suggest to you?”

“All that’s calm without a touch of coldness, and strong without a touch

of hardness, and noble without a touch of pride, and obedient without a

touch of servility.”

“Brave sweetness, too, and protectiveness. They are wonderful, and so

are some women. When I saw you in the omnibus at Milan I thought of

these maidens immediately.”

“How strange!”

“Why strange?”

“Isn’t it?” she said, gazing at the six maidens in their flowering

draperies of marble, who, upon their uncovered heads, bore tranquillity

up the marble architrave. “How wonderfully simple and unpretending they

are!”

“Are not you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t believe I think about it.”

“I do. Rosamund, sometimes I feel that I am an unique man--just think of

a fellow in a firm on the Stock Exchange being unique!--because I have

had an ideal, and I have attainted to it. When I was here alone, I

conceived for the first time an ideal of woman. I said to myself, ‘In

the days of ancient Greece there must have been such women in the flesh

as these maidens in marble. If I could have lived and loved then!’ And I

came away from Greece carrying a sort of romantic dream with me. And now

I sit here with you; I can’t think why I, a quite ordinary man, should

be picked out for perfect happiness.”

“Is it really perfect?” she asked, turning to him.

“I think so. In such a place with you!”

As the evening drew on, a little wind came and went over the rocky

height, but it had no breath of cold in it. Two Greek soldiers passed

by slowly behind them--short young men with skins almost as dark as

the skins of Arabs of the South, black eyes and faces full of active

mentality. They were talking eagerly, but stopped for a moment to look

at the English, and beyond them at the six maidens on their platform of

marble. Then they went on talking again, but presently hesitated, came

back, and stood not far off, gazing at the Porch with a mixture of

reverence and quiet wistfulness. Dion drew Rosamund’s attention to them.

“They feel the beauty,” he said.

“Yes, I like that.”

She looked at the two young men with a smile. One of them noticed it,

and smiled back at her almost boyishly, and with a sort of confidential

simplicity.

The light began to fail. The six maidens were less clearly seen, but the

deep meaning of them did not lessen. In the gathering darkness they and

their sweet effort became more touching, more lovable. Their persistence

was exquisite now that they confronted with serenity the night.

“They are beautiful by day, but at night they are adorable,” said

Rosamund.

“Don’t you know why I thought of them when I met you?” he whispered.

She got up slowly. The Greek soldiers moved, turned, and went down the

slope towards the Propylae. Their quick voices were heard again. Then

there was the sound of a bell.

“Time to go,” said Rosamund.

As they followed the soldiers she again put her arm through her young

husband’s.

“Dion,” she said, “I think I’m a little afraid of your ideals. I

understand them. I have ideals too. But I think perhaps mine are less in

danger of ever being shattered than yours are.”

“Why? But I know mine are not in danger.”

“How can you say that?”

“It’s no use trying to frighten me. But what about your ideals? What is

the nature of the difference between yours and mine, which makes yours

so much less vulnerable than mine?”

But she only said:

“I don’t believe I could explain it. But I feel it, and I shall go on

feeling it.”

They went down the steep marble steps, gave the guardian at the foot of

them good night, and walked almost in silence to Athens.

CHAPTER IV

After that day Rosamund and Dion often talked of the child who might

eventually come into their lives to change them. Rosamund indeed, now

that such a possibility had been discussed between them, returned to it

with an eagerness which she did not seek to conceal. She was wonderfully

frank, and her frankness seemed to belong naturally to her transparent

purity, to be an essential part of it. Dion’s momentary depression that

evening on the Acropolis had evidently stirred something in her which

would not let her rest until it had expressed itself. She had detected

for the first time in her husband a hint of something connected with his

love for her which seemed to her morbid. She could not forget it and she

was resolved to destroy it if possible. When they next stood together on

their beloved height she said to him:

“Dion, don’t you hate anything morbid?”

“Yes, loathe it!” he answered, with hearty conviction. “But surely you

know that. Why d’you ask me such a thing? How dare you?”

And he turned to her his brown face, bright this morning with good

spirits, his dark eyes sparkling with hopefulness and energy.

It was a pale morning, such as often comes to Athens even at the edge

of the summer. They were standing on the little terrace near to the

Acropolis Museum, looking down over the city and to helmet-shaped

Lycabettos. The wind, too fond of the Attic Plain, was blowing, not

wildly, but with sufficient force to send the dust whirling in light

clouds over the pale houses and the little Byzantine churches. Long

and narrow rivulets of dust marked the positions of the few roads

which stretched out along the plain. The darkness of the groves which

sheltered the course of the Kephisos contrasted strongly with the flying

pallors and seemed at enmity with them. The sky was milky white and

gray, broken up in places by clouds of fantastic shapes, along the

ruffled edges of which ran thin gleams of sunshine like things half

timorous and ashamed. Upon the flat shores near Phaleron the purple

seas broke in spray, and the salty drops were caught up by the wind and

mingled with the hurrying grains of dust. It was not exactly a sad day,

but there was an uneasiness abroad. The delicate calm of Greece was

disturbed. Nevertheless Dion was feeling gay and light-hearted, inclined

to enjoy everything the world about him offered to him. Even the

restlessness beneath and around them accorded with his springing

spirits. The whirling spirals of dust suggested to him the gaiety of a

dance. The voice of the wind was a joyous music in his ears.

“How dare you?” he repeated with a happy pretense of indignation.

“Because I think you were almost morbid yesterday.”

“I? When?”

“When we spoke of the possibility of our some day having a child.”

“I had a moment of thinking that too,” he agreed. “Yes, Rose, the

thought went through my mind that a great love, such as mine for you,

might become almost a disease if one didn’t watch it, hold it in.”

“If it ever did become like that, do you know what would happen?”

“What, Rose?”

“Instead of rejoicing in it I should shrink from it.”

“That’s enough for me!”

He spoke gaily, confidently.

“Besides, I don’t really believe I’m a man to love like that. I

only imagined I might for a moment, perhaps because it was twilight.

Imaginings come with the twilight.”

“I could never bear to think, if a child came, that you didn’t want it,

that you wished it out of the way.”

“I never should. But I expect lots of young married people have queer

thoughts and feelings which they keep entirely to themselves--I blurted

mine out. You’ve got a dangerously sincere husband, Rose. The whole

matter lies in your own hands. If we ever have a child, love it, but

don’t love it more than me.”

“I should love it so differently! How could maternal love interfere with

the love of woman for man?”

“No, I don’t suppose it could.”

“Of course it never could.”

“Then that’s settled. Where shall we go to get out of the wind? It seems

to be rising.”

After searching for a place of shelter in vain they eventually took

refuge in the Parthenon, under the shadow of the great western wall.

Perhaps in consequence of the wind the Acropolis was entirely deserted.

Only the guardians were hidden somewhere, behind columns, in the Porch

of the Museum, under the roof of their little dwelling at the foot of

the marble staircase which leads up to the Propylae. The huge wall of

the Parthenon kept off the wind from the sea, and as Rosamund and Dion

no longer saw the whirling dust clouds in the plain they had, for the

moment, almost an illusion of peace. They sat down on the guardian’s

bench, just beneath some faint fragments of paintings which dated

from the time when the temple was made use of as a church by Greek

Christians; and immediately Rosamund went on talking about the child.

She spoke very quietly and earnestly, with the greatest simplicity, and

by degrees Dion came to see her as a mother, to feel that perhaps only

as a mother could she fulfil herself. The whole of her beauty would

never be revealed unless she were seen with a child of her own. Hitherto

he had thought of her chiefly in relation to himself, as the girl he

longed to win, then as the girl he most wonderfully had succeeded in

winning. She put herself before him now in a different light, and he

saw in her new and beautiful possibilities. While she was talking his

imagination began to play about the child, and presently he realized

that he was thinking of it as a boy. Then, in a moment, he realized that

on the previous evening he had thought of a male, not of a female child.

With this in his mind he said abruptly:

“What sort of a child do you wish to have, Rosamund?”

“What sort?” she said, looking at him with surprise in her brown eyes.

“Yes.”

“What do you mean? A beautiful, strong, healthy child, of course, the

sort of child every married woman longs to have, and imagines having

till it comes.”

“Beautiful, strong, healthy!” he repeated, returning her look. “Of

course it could only be that--your child. But I meant, do you want it to

be a boy or a girl?”

“Oh!”

She paused, and looked away from him and down at the uncemented marble

blocks which form the pavement of the Parthenon.

“Well?” he said, as she kept silence.

“If it were to be a girl I should love it.”

“You wish it to be a girl?”

“I didn’t say that. The fact is, Dion”--and now she again looked at him,

“I have always thought of our child as a boy. That’s why your question

almost startled me. I have never even once thought of having a girl. I

don’t know why.”

“I think I do.”

“Why then?”

“The thought was born of the desire. You wanted our child to be a son

and so you thought of it as a son.”

“Perhaps that was it.”

“Wasn’t it?”

He spoke with a certain pressure. She remained silent for a moment, and

two little vertical lines appeared in her forehead. Then she said:

“Yes, I believe it was. And you?”

“I confess that when yesterday we spoke of a child I was thinking all

the time about a boy.”

She gazed at him with something visionary in her eyes, which made them

look for a moment like the eyes of a woman whom he had not seen till

now. Then she said quietly:

“It will be a boy, I think. Indeed, if it weren’t perhaps absurd, I

should say that I know it will be a boy.”

He said nothing more just then, but at that moment he felt as if he,

too, knew, not merely hoped, or guessed, something about their joint

future, knew in the depths of him that a boy-child would some day be

sent to Rosamund and to him, to influence and to change their lives.

The wind began to fail almost suddenly, the sky grew brighter, a shaft

of sun lay on the marble at their feet.

“It’s going to be fine,” Dion said. “Let’s be active for once. The wind

has made me restless. Suppose we get a couple of horses and ride out to

the convent of Daphni!”

She got up at once.

“Yes. I’ve brought my habit, and haven’t had it on once.”

As they left the Great Temple she looked up at the mighty columns and

said;

“Doric! If we have a boy let us bring him up to be Doric.”

“Yes, Rosamund,” he said quietly and strongly. “We will.”

Afterward he believed that it was then, and only then, that he caught

something of her deep longing to have a child. He began to see how a

man’s child might influence him and affect his life, might even send him

upwards by innocently looking up to him. It would be bad, very bad, to

fail as a husband, but, by Jove! it would be one of the great tragedies

to fail as a father. Mentally Dion measured the respective heights

of himself and a very small boy; saw the boy’s trusting eyes looking,

almost peering, up at him. Such eyes could change, could become very

attentive. “It wouldn’t do to be adversely criticized by your boy,” he

thought. And one day he said to Rosamund, but in almost a casual way:

“If we ever do have a boy, Rose, and want him to be Doric, we shall have

to start in by being Doric ourselves, eh?”

“Yes,” she answered, “I’ve thought that, too.”

“D’you think I could ever learn to be that?”

“I know you could. You are on the way already, I think. I noticed

in London that you were never influenced by all the affectations and

absurdities, or worse, that seem to have taken hold of so many people

lately.”

“There has been a wave of something rather beastly passing over London

certainly. But I almost wonder you knew it.”

“Why?”

“Can your eyes see anything that isn’t good?”

“Yes. But I don’t want ever to look long on what I hate.”

“You aren’t afraid you might cease from hating it!”

“Oh, no. But I believe in feeding always on wholesome food.”

“Modern London doesn’t.”

“I shall never be modern, I’m afraid,” she said, half laughing, and with

a soft touch of apparently genuine deprecation.

“Be eternal, that’s better!” he almost whispered. “Listen to that

nightingale. It’s singing a song of all the ages. You have a message

like that for me.”

They had strolled out after dinner in the warm May night, and had walked

a little way up the steep flank of Lycabettos till they reached a wooden

bench near which were a few small fir trees. Somewhere among these trees

there was hidden a nightingale, which sang with intensity to Athens

spread out below, a small maze of mellow lights and of many not

inharmonious voices. Even in the night, and at a distance, they felt the

smiling intimacy of the little city they loved. Its history was like

a living thing dwelling among the shadows, hallowed and hallowing, its

treasures, like night flowers, breathed out a mysterious message to

them. They received it, and felt that they understood it. Had the

nightingale been singing to any city its song must have seemed to them

beautiful. But it was singing to Athens, and that fact gave to its

voice, in their ears, a magical meaning.

They sat for a while in silence. Nobody passed on the winding path.

Their impulse to solitude was unshared by the dwellers in Athens.

Neither knew exactly what thoughts were passing through the other’s

mind, what aspirations were flaming up in the heart of the other. But

they knew that they were close bound in sympathy just then, voyaging

towards a common future. That future lay over the sea in gray England.

Their time in Greece was but an interlude. But in it they were

gathering up impressions, were laying in stores for their journey. The

nightingale’s song was part of their provision. It had to sing to just

them for some hidden reason. And to Dion it seemed that the nightingale

knew the reason while they did not, that it comprehended all the under

things of love and of sorrow of which they were ignorant. When he spoke

again he said:

“A bird’s song always makes me feel very unlearned. Do you know what I

mean?”

“Yes. We’ve got to learn so much.”

“Together.”

“Yes--partly.”

“Partly?” he said quickly.

“I think there’s a great deal that can only be learnt quite alone.”

Again, as sometimes before, Dion trod on the verges of mystery, felt as

if something in Rosamund chided him, and was chilled for a moment.

“I dare say you are right,” he said. “But I believe I could learn any

lesson more easily with you to help me.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps we shall know which is right, you or I, when we’ve been much

longer together,” he said, with an effort to speak lightly.

“Yes.”

“Rosamund, sometimes you make me feel as if you thought I didn’t know

you, I mean didn’t know you thoroughly.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

Again silence fell between them. As Dion listened once more to the

persistent nightingale he felt that there was pain somewhere at the back

of its ecstasy. He looked down at the soft lights of little Athens, and

suddenly knew that much sorrow lay in the shadows of all the cities of

the earth. There was surely a great reserve in the girl who had given

herself to him. That was natural, perhaps. But to-night he felt that she

was aware of this reserve and was consciously guarding it like a sacred

thing. Presently they got up and went slowly down the hill.

“Suppose you had never married,” he said, as they drew near to the city,

“how would you have lived, do you think?”

“Perhaps for my singing, at first,” she answered.

“And afterwards?”

“Afterwards? Very quietly, I think.”

“You won’t tell me.”

“I don’t know for certain, and what does it matter? I have married. If I

hadn’t, perhaps I should have been very selfish and thought myself very

self-sacrificing.”

“I wonder in what way selfish.”

“There are so many ways. I heard a sermon once on a foggy night in

London.”

“Ah--that evening I called on you.”

“I didn’t say so. It made me understand egoism better than I had

understood it before. Perhaps it’s the unpardonable sin.”

“Then it could never be your sin.”

“Hush!”

They no longer heard the nightingale. The voices and the houses of

Athens were about them.

As the days slipped by, Dion felt that Rosamund and he grew closer

together. He knew, though he could not perhaps have said how, that he

would be the only man in her intimate life. Even if he died she would

never--he felt sure of this--yield herself to another man. The tie

between them was to her a bond for eternity. Her body would never be

given twice. That he knew. But sometimes he asked himself whether her

whole soul would ever be given even once. The insatiable greed of a

great and exclusive love was alive within him, needing always something

more than it had. At first, after their marriage, he had not been aware

of this greed, had not realized that nothing great is content to

remain just as it is at a given moment. His love had to progress, and

gradually, in Greece, he became conscious of this fact.

His inner certainty, quite unshakable, that Rosamund would never belong

to another man in the physical sense made jealousy of an ordinary kind

impossible to him. The lowness, the hideous vulgarity of the jealousy

which tortures the writhing flesh would never be his. Yet he wanted more

than he had sometimes, stretched out arms to something which did not

come to nestle against him.

There was a great independence in Rosamund, he thought, which set

her apart from other women, Not only could she bear to be alone, she

sometimes wished to be alone. Dion, on the contrary, never wished to be

away from her. It might be necessary for him to leave her. He was not

a young doting fool who could not detach himself even for a moment from

his wife’s apron strings. But he knew very well that at all times he

preferred to be with her, close to her, that he relished everything

more when he was in her company than when he was alone. She added to his

power of enjoyment, to his faculty of appreciation, by being beside

him. The Parthenon even was made more sublime to him by her. That was

a mystery. And the mystery of her human power to increase penetrated

everywhere through their life in common, like a percolating flood that

could not be gainsaid. She manifested her influence upon him subtly

through the maidens of the Porch, through the almost neat perfection

of the Theseion, through the detached grandeur of those columns in the

waste place, that golden and carved Olympieion which acts as an outpost

to Athens. It was as if she had the power to put something of herself

into everything that he cared for so that he might care for it more,

whether it were a golden sunset on the sea over which they drifted in

a sailing-boat off the coast of old Phaleron, or a marble figure in a

museum. She dwelt in the stones of a ruined temple; she set her feet

upon the dream of the distant mountains; she was in the dawn, the

twilight, and in all the ways of the moon, because he loved her and

found her in all things when they were together.

He did not know whether she, in a similar mysterious way, found him in

all that she enjoyed. He did not ask her the question. Perhaps, really,

in that truth of apprehension which lives very far down in a man, he had

divined the answer, although he told himself that he did not know.

He found always something new to enjoy and to worship in Rosamund.

They had many tastes in common. At first, of deliberate choice, they had

bounded their honeymoon with the precipices of the Acropolis, learning

the Doric lesson on that height above the world. Then one day they had

made a great sacrifice and gone to pass their hours in the pine woods

of Kephissia. They had returned to the Acropolis quite athirst. But by

degrees the instinct to wander a little farther afield took greater hold

upon them, their love of physical exercise asserted itself. They began

to take long rides on horseback, carrying food in their saddle-bags. The

gently wild charm of Greece laid its spell upon them. They both loved

Athens, but now they began to love, too, escaping from Athens.

Directly they were out of the city they were in a freedom that appealed

to the gipsy in both. Dion’s strong boyishness, which had never yet

been cast off, was met and countered by the best of good fellowship

in Rosamund. Though she could be very serious, and even what he called

“strange,” she was never depressed or sad. Her good spirits were

unfailing and infectious. She reveled in a “jaunt” or a “day out,” and

her physical strength kept fatigue far from her. She could ride for many

hours without losing her freshness and zest. Every little episode of the

wayside interested and entertained her. Everything comic made her laugh.

She showed an ardor almost like an intelligent child’s in getting to

understand all she saw. Scenery, buildings, animal life, people, every

offering of Greece was eagerly accepted, examined and discussed by her.

She was the perfect comrade for the wilds. Their common joy in the wilds

drew her and Dion more closely together. Never before had Rosamund been

quite away from civilization, from the hitherto easily borne trammels of

modern complicated life. She “found herself” in the adventure. The pure

remoteness of Greece came to her like natal air. She breathed it in with

a sort of rapture. It was as Dion had said. She was not merely in, she

was of, Greece.

They rode one day to Eleusis; on another day to Tatoi, buried in

oak-woods on the slope of Parnes; on another through noisy and mongrel

Piraeus, and over undulating wrinkled ground, burnt up by the sun and

covered with low scrub and bushes of myrtle, to the shore of the gulf

opposite to Salamis; on yet another to Marathon, where they lunched on

the famous mound beneath which the bodies of the Athenians who fell in

the battle were buried. They took no companion with them. Dion carried

a revolver in his hip pocket, but never had reason to show or to use

it. When they dismounted they tethered the horses to a bush or tree, or

sometimes hobbled their forelegs, and turned them loose for a while.

Such days were pure joy to them both. In them they went back to the

early world. They did not make the hard and self-conscious imaginative

effort of the prig to hurl themselves into an historic past. They just

let the land and its memories take them. As, sitting on the warm ground

among the wild myrtle bushes, they looked across the emerald green

unruffled waters to Salamis, that very long isle with its calm gray and

orange hills and its indented shores, perhaps for a moment they talked

of the Queen of Halicarnassus, and of the deception of Xerxes watching

from his throne on Mount Aegaleos. But the waters were now so solitary,

the peace about them was so profound, that the memory of battles soon

faded away in the sunshine. Terror and death had been here once. A queen

had destroyed her own people in that jeweled sea, a king had fled from

those delicate mountains. But now sea and land were for lovers. A fly

with shining wings journeyed among the leaves of the myrtles, a beetle

crept over the hot sandy ground leaving a minute pattern behind it;

and Rosamund and Dion forgot all about Artemisia, as they brooded,

wide-eyed, over the activities of the dwellers in the waste. At such

moments they realized the magic of life, as they had never realized it

in the turmoil of London. The insect with its wings that caught the

sun, the intent and preoccupied little traveler whose course could be

deflected by a twig, revealed the wonder that is lost and forgotten in

the crowded highways of men.

It was when they were at Marathon that Rosamund told Dion she loved

Greece partly because of its emptiness. The country was not only rather

bare of vegetation, despite its groves of glorious old olives, its woods

of oaks round Tatoi, its delicious curly forests of yellow-green pines,

which looked, Rosamund declared, as if they had just had their dainty

heads perfectly dressed by an accomplished coiffeur, it was also almost

strangely bare of men.

“Where are the Greeks?” Rosamund had often asked during their first few

rides, as they cantered on and on, scarcely ever meeting a human being.

“In the towns to be sure!” Dion had answered.

“And where are the towns?”

“Ah! That’s more than I can tell you!” he had said, laughing.

To one hitherto accustomed to England, the emptiness of the country,

even quite near to Athens, was at first surprising. Soon it became

enchanting.

“This is a country I can thoroughly trust,” Rosamund declared at

Marathon.

Dion had just finished hobbling the two horses, and now lifted himself

up. His brown face was flushed from bending. His thin riding-clothes

were white with dust, which he beat off with hands that looked almost as

if they wore gloves, so deeply were they dyed by the sun. As the cloud

dispersed he emerged carrying their lunch in a straw pannier.

“Why trust--specially?” he said. “Ah,” he threw himself down by her

side with a sigh of happiness, “this is good! The historic mound, and

we think of it merely as a resting-place, vandals that we are. But--why

trust?”

“I mean that Greece never keeps any unpleasant surprises up her sleeve,

surprises such as other countries have of noisy, intruding people. It’s

terrible how accustomed I’m getting to having everything all to myself,

and how I simply love it.”

He began slowly unpacking the pannier, and laying its contents out on

the mound.

“You’re a puzzle, Rosamund,” he said.

“Why?”

“You have a greater faculty for making yourself delightful to all sorts

of people than I have found in any other person, woman or man. And yet

you are developing a perfect passion for solitude.”

“Do you want people here?”

“No.”

“Then you agree with me.”

“But you have an absolute lust for an empty world.”

“Look!”

She stretched out her right arm--she was leaning on the other with her

cheek in her hand--and pointed to the crescent-shaped plain which

lay beyond them, bounded by a sea which was a wonder of sparkling and

intense blue, and guarded by a curving line of low hills. There were

some clouds in the sky, but the winds were at rest, and the clouds were

just white things dreaming. In the plain there were no trees. Here and

there some vague crops hinted at the languid labors of men. No human

beings were visible, but in the distance, not very far from the sea

edge, a few oxen were feeding. Their dark slow-moving bodies intersected

the blue. There were no ships or boats upon the stretch of sea which

Rosamund and Dion gazed at. Behind them the bare hills showed no sign of

life. The solitude was profound but not startling. It seemed in place,

necessary and beautiful. In the emptiness there was something touching,

something reticently satisfying. It was a land and seascape delicately

purged.

“Greece and solitude,” said Rosamund. “I shall always connect them

together. I shall always love each for the other’s sake.”

In the silence which followed the words the far-off lowing of oxen came

to them over the flats. Rosamund shut her eyes, Dion half shut his, and

the empty world was a shining dream.

When they had lunched, Rosamund said:

“I am going to climb up into that house. The owner will never come, I’m

sure.”

Near them upon the mound was a dwelling of Arcady, in which surely a

shepherd sometimes lay and piped to the sun and the sea god. It was

lifted upon a tripod of poles, and was deftly made of brushwood, with

roof, floor and two walls all complete. A ladder of wood, from which the

bark had been stripped, led up to it.

“You want to sleep?” Dion asked.

She looked at him.

“Perhaps.”

He helped her up to her feet. Quickly she mounted the ladder and stepped

into the room.

“Good-by!” she said, looking down at him and smiling.

“Good-by!” he answered, looking up.

She made a pretense of shutting a door and withdrawing into privacy. He

lit his pipe, hesitated a moment, then went to lie down under her room.

Now he no longer saw her, but he heard her movements overhead. The dry

brushwood crackled as she lay down, as she settled herself. She was

lying surely at full length. He guessed that she had stretched out her

arms and put her two hands under her head. She sighed. Below he echoed

her sigh with a long breath of contentment. Then they both lay very

still.

Marathon!

He remembered his schoolbooks. He remembered beginning Greek. He had

never been very good at Greek. His mother, if she had been a man and had

gone to Oxford or Cambridge, would have made a far better classic than

he. She had helped him sometimes during the holidays when he was

quite small. He remembered exactly how she had looked when he had been

conjugating--half-loving and half-satirical. He had made a good many

mistakes. Later he had read Greek history with his mother, he had read

about the battle of Marathon.

“Marathon”--it was written in his school history, “became a magic

word at Athens . . . the one hundred and ninety-two Athenians who had

perished in the battle were buried on the field, and over their remains

a tumulus or mound was erected, which may still be seen about half

a mile from the sea.” As a small boy he had read that with a certain

inevitable detachment. And now here he lay, a man, on that very tumulus,

and the brushwood creaked above his head with the movement of the woman

he loved.

How wonderful was the weaving of the Fates!

And if some day he should sit in the place of his mother, and should

hear a small boy, his small boy, conjugating. By Jove! He would have to

rub up his classics! Not for ten years old; he wasn’t so bad as that;

but for twenty, when the small boy would be going up to Oxford, and

would, perhaps, be turning out alarmingly learned.

Rosamund the mother of a young man!

But Dion shied away from that. He could imagine her as the mother of a

child, beautiful mother of a child almost as beautiful; but he could not

conceive of her as the “mater” of a person with a mustache.

Their youth, their youth--must it go?

Again she moved slightly above him. The twigs crackled, making an almost

irritable music of dryness. Again the lowing of cattle came over that

old battlefield from the edge of the sea. And just then, at that very

moment, Dion knew that his great love could not stand still, that, like

all great things, it must progress. And the cry, that intense human cry,

“Whither?” echoed in the deep places of his soul. Whither were he and

his great love going? To what end were they journeying? For a moment

sadness invaded him, the sadness of one who thinks and is very ignorant.

Why cannot a man think deeply without thinking of an end? “All things

come to an end!” That cruel saying went through his mind like footsteps

echoing on iron, and a sense of fear encompassed him. There is something

terrible in a great love, set in the little life of a man like a vast

light in a tiny attic.

Did Rosamund ever have such thoughts? Dion longed to ask her. Was she

sleeping perhaps now? She was lying very still. If they ever had a child

its coming would mark a great step onwards along the road, the closing

of a very beautiful chapter in their book of life. It would be over,

their loneliness in love, man and woman in solitude. Even the sexual tie

would be changed. All the world would be changed.

He lay flat on the ground, stretched out, his elbows firmly planted, his

chin in his palms, his face set towards the plain and the sea.

What he looked at seemed gently to chide him. There were such a

brightness and simplicity and such a delicious freedom from all

complication in this Grecian landscape edged by the wide frankness of

the sea that he felt reassured. Edging the mound there were wild aloes

and the wild oleander. A river intersected the plain which in many

places was tawny yellow. Along the river bank grew tall reeds, sedges

and rushes. Beyond the plain, and beyond the blue waters, rose the

Island of Euboea, and ranges of mountains, those mountains of Greece

which are so characteristic in their unpretentious bareness, which

neither overwhelm nor entice, but which are unfailingly delicate,

unfailing beautiful, quietly, almost gently, noble. In the distance,

when he turned his head, Dion could see the little Albanian village of

Marathon, a huddle of tiny houses far off under the hills. He looked at

it for a moment, then again looked out over the plain, rejoicing in

its emptiness. Along the sea edge the cattle were straying, but their

movements were almost imperceptible. Still they were living things and

drew Dion’s eyes. The life in them sent out its message to the life in

him, and he earnestly watched them grazing. Their vague and ruminating

movements really emphasized the profound peace which lay around Rosamund

and him. To watch them thus was a savoring of peace. For every contented

animal is a bearer of peaceful tidings. In the Garden of Eden with the

Two there were happy animals. And Dion recalled the great battle which

had dyed red this serene wilderness, a battle which was great because

it had been gently sung, lifted up by the music of poets, set on high

by the lips of orators. He looked over the land and thought: “Here

Miltiades won the name which has resounded through history. To that

shore, where I see the cattle, the Persians were driven.” And it

seemed to him that the battle of Marathon had been fought in order that

Rosamund and he, in the nineteenth century, might be drawn to this place

to meet the shining afternoon. Yes, it was fought for that, and to make

this place the more wonderful for them. It was their Garden of Eden

consecrated by History.

What a very small animal that was which had strayed away from its kind

over the tawny ground where surely there was nothing to feed upon! The

little dark body of it looked oddly detached as it moved along. And

now another animal was following it quickly. The arrival of the second

darkness, running, made Dion know that the first was human, the guardian

of the beasts, no doubt.

So Eden was invaded already! He smiled as he thought of the serpent. The

human being came on slowly, always moving in the direction of the mound,

and always accompanied by its attendant animal--a dog, of course. Soon

Dion knew that both were making for the mound. It occurred to him

that Rosamund was in the private room of him who was approaching, was

possibly sound asleep there.

“Rosamund!” he almost whispered.

There was no answer.

“Rosamund!” he murmured, looking upward to his roof, which was her

floor.

“Hush!” came down to him through the brushwood. “I’m willing it to come

to us.”

“What--the guardian of the cattle?”

“Guardian of the ----! It’s a child!”

“How do you know?”

“I do know. Now you’re not to frighten it.”

“Of course not!”

He lay very still, his chin in his palms, watching the on-comers. How

had she known? And then, seeing suddenly through her eyes, he knew that

of course it was a child, that it could not be anything else. All its

movements now proclaimed to him its childishness, and he watched it with

a sort of fascination.

For he had never seen Rosamund with a child. That would be for him a new

experience with something, perhaps, prophetic in it.

Child and animal approached steadily, keeping an undeviating course, and

presently Dion saw a very small, but sturdy, Greek boy of perhaps ten

years old, wearing a collarless shirt, open at a deep brown throat,

leggings of some thin material, boots, and a funny little patched brown

coat and pointed hood made all in one, and hanging down with a fulness

almost of skirts about the small determined legs. The accompanying dog

was a very sympathetic, blunt-nosed, round-headed, curly-coated type,

whose whiteness, which positively invited the stroking hand, was broken

by two great black blotches set all askew on the back, and by a black

patch which ringed the left eye and completely smothered the cocked-up

left ear. The child carried a stick, which nearly reached to his

shoulder, and which ended in a long and narrow crook. The happy dog,

like its master, had no collar.

When these two reached the foot of the tumulus they stood still and

stared upwards. The dog uttered a short gruff bark, looked at the boy,

wagged a fat tail, barked again, abruptly depressed the fore part of its

body till its chin was against the ground between its paws, then jumped

into the air with a sudden demeanor of ludicrously young, and rather

uncouth, waggishness, which made Dion laugh.

The small boy replied with a smile almost as sturdy as his legs, which

he now permitted to convey him with decisive firmness through the wild

aloes and oleanders to the summit of the tumulus. He stood before Dion,

holding his crooked staff tightly in his right hand, but his large dark

eyes were directed upwards. Evidently his attention was not to be

given to Dion. His dog, on the contrary, after a stare and two muffled

attempts at a menacing bark, came to make friends with Dion in a way

devoid of all dignity, full of curves, wrigglings, tail waggings and

grins which exposed rows of smiling teeth.

“Dion!” came Rosamund’s voice from above.

“Yes?”

“Do show him the way up. He wants to come up.”

Dion got up, took the little Greek’s hand firmly, led him to the foot

of the ladder, and pointed to Rosamund who leaned from her brushwood

chamber and held out inviting hands, smiling, and looking at the child

with shining eyes. He understood that he was very much wanted, gravely

placed his staff on the ground, laid hold of the ladder, and slowly

clambered up, with the skirts of his coat sticking out behind him. His

dog set up a loud barking, scrambled at the ladder, and made desperate

efforts to follow him.

“Help him up, Dion!” came the commanding voice from above.

Dion seized the curly coat of the dog--picked up handfuls of dog. There

was a struggle. The dog made fierce motions as if swimming, and whined

in a thin and desperate soprano. Its body heaved upwards, its forepaws

clutched the edge of the brushwood floor, and it arrived.

“Bravo!” cried Rosamund, as she proceeded to settle down with her

guests. “But why don’t I know Greek?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dion murmured, standing with his hands on the

ladder. “You know their language.”

Rosamund was sitting now, half-curled up, with her back against the

brushwood wall. Her light sun-helmet lay on the floor. In her ruffled

hair were caught two or three thin brown leaves, their brittle edges

curled inwards. The little boy, slightly smiling, yet essentially

serious, as are children tested by a great new experience, squatted

close to her and facing her, with one leg under him, the other leg

stretched out confidentially, as much as to say, “Here it is!” The dog

lay close by panting, smiling, showing as much tongue and teeth as

was caninely possible in the ardor of feeling tremendously uplifted,

important, one of the very few.

And Rosamund proceeded to entertain her guests.

What did she do? Sometimes, long afterwards in England, Dion, recalling

that day--a very memorable day in his life--asked himself the question.

And he could never remember very much. But he knew that Rosamund showed

him new aspects of tenderness and fun. What do women who love and

understand little boys do to put them at their ease, to break down their

small shynesses? Rosamund did absurd things with deep earnestness and

complete concentration. She invented games, played with twigs and straws

which she drew from the walls of her chamber. She changed the dog’s

appearance by rearrangements of his ears, to which he submitted with

a slobbering ecstasy, gazing at her with yellow eyes which looked

flattened in his head. Turned quite back, their pink insides exposed

to view, the ears changed him into a brand-new dog, at which his master

stared with an amazement which soon was merged in gratification. With a

pocket-handkerchief she performed marvels of impersonation which the boy

watched with an almost severe intentness, even putting out his tongue

slowly, and developing a slight squint, when the magician rose to the

top of her powers. She conjured with a silver coin, and of course let

the child play with her watch. She had realized at a glance that those

things which would be considered as baby nonsense by an English boy of

ten, to this small dweller on the plain of Marathon were full of the

magic of the unknown. And at last:

“Throw me up an orange, Dion!” she cried. “I know there are two or three

left in the pannier.”

Dion bent down eagerly, rummaged and found an orange.

“Here!” he said. “Catch!”

He threw it up. She caught it with elaboration to astonish the boy.

“What are you going to do?” asked Dion.

“Throw me up your pocket-knife and you’ll see.”

Again he threw and she caught, while the boy’s mouth gaped.

“Now then!” cried Rosamund.

She set to work, and almost directly had introduced her astounded guest

of the Greek kingdom to the famous “Crossing the Channel” tragedy.

So great was the effect of this upon little Miltiades,--so they both

always called the boy when talking of him in after times,--that he began

to perspire, and drops of saliva fell from the corners of his small and

pouting mouth in imitation of the dreadfully human orange by which he

was confronted. Thereupon Rosamund threw off all ceremony and frankly

played the mother. She drew the boy, smiling, sideways to her, wiped his

mouth with her handkerchief, gently blew his small nose and gave him a

warm kiss.

“There!” she said.

And upon this the child made a remark.

Neither of them ever knew what it meant. It was long, and sounded

like an explanation. Having spoken, Miltiades suddenly looked shy. He

wriggled towards the top of the ladder. Dion thought that Rosamund would

try to stop him from leaving her, but she did not. On the contrary,

she drew up her legs and made way for him, carefully. The child deftly

descended, picked up his staff and turned. The dog, barking joyously,

had leaped after him, and now gamboled around him. For a moment the

child hesitated, and in that moment Dion popped the remains of their

lunch into his coat pockets; then slowly he walked to the side of the

tumulus by which he had come up. There he stood for two or three minutes

staring once more up at Rosamund. She waved a friendly hand to him,

boyishly, Dion thought. He smiled cautiously, then confidentially,

suddenly turned and bolted down the slope uttering little cries--and so

away once more to the far-off cattle on the old battlefield, followed by

his curly dog.

When Dion had watched him into the distance, beyond which lay the

shining glory of the sea, and looked up to Rosamund again, she was

pulling the little dry leaves from her undulating hair.

“I’m all brushwood,” she said, “and I love it.”

“So do I.”

“I ought to have been born a shepherdess. Why do you look at me like

that?”

“Perhaps because I’m seeing a new girl who’s got even more woman in her

than I knew till to-day.”

“Most women are like that, Dion, when they get the chance.”

“To think you knew all those tricks and never told me!”

“Help me down.”

He stretched out his arms to her. When she was on the ground he still

held her for a moment.

“You darling!” he whispered. “Never shall I forget this day at Marathon,

the shining, the child, and you--you!”

They did not talk much on the long ride homeward. The heat was great,

but they were not afraid of it, for the shining fires of this land on

the edge of the east cherished and did not burn them. The white dust lay

deep on the road, and flew in light clouds from under the feet of their

horses as they rode slowly upwards, leaving the blue of their pastoral

behind them, and coming into the yellow of the pine woods. Later, as

they drew nearer to Athens, the ancient groves of the olives, touched

with a gentle solemnity, would give them greeting; the fig trees and

mulberry trees would be about them, and the long vineyards watched over

by the aristocratic cypress lifting its dark spire to the sun. But now

the kingdom of the pine trees joyously held them. They were in the happy

woods in which even to breathe was sheer happiness. Now and then they

pulled up and looked back to the crescent-shaped plain which held a

child instead of armies. They traced the course of the river marked

out by the reeds and sedges. They saw the tiny dark specks, which were

cattle grazing, with the wonder of blue beyond them. In these moments,

half-unconsciously, they were telling memory to lay in its provision

for the future. Perhaps they would never come back; never again would

Rosamund rest in her brushwood chamber, never again would Dion hear the

dry music above him, and feel the growth of his love, the urgency of

its progress just as he had felt them that day. They might be intensely

happy, but exactly the same happiness would probably not be theirs again

through all the years that were coming. The little boy and his dog had

doubtless gone out of their lives for ever. Their good-by to Marathon

might well be final. They looked back again and again, till the blue

of the sea was lost to them. Then they rode on, faster. The horses

knew they were going homeward, and showed a new liveliness, sharing the

friskiness of the little graceful trees about them. Now and then the

riders saw some dusty peasants--brown and sun-dried men wearing the

fustanella, and shoes with turned-up toes ornamented with big black

tassels; women with dingy handkerchiefs tied over their heads;

children who looked almost like the spawn of the sun in their healthy,

bright-eyed brownness. And these people had cheerful faces. Their rustic

lot seemed enviable. Who would not shed his sorrows under these pine

trees, in the country where the solitudes radiated happiness, and even

bareness was like music? Here was none of the heavy and exotic passion,

none of the lustrous and almost morbid romance of the true and distant

East, drowsy with voluptuous memories. That setting was not for

Rosamund. Here were a lightness, a purity and sweetness of Arcadia, and

people who looked both intelligent and simple.

At a turn of the road they met some Vlachs--rascally wanderers, lean as

greyhounds, chicken-stealers and robbers in the night, yet with a sort

of consecration of careless cheerfulness upon them. They called out.

In their cries there was the sound of a lively malice. Their brown feet

stirred up the dust and set it dancing in the sunshine, a symbol surely

of their wayward, unfettered spirits. A little way off, on a slope among

the trees, their dark tents could be partially seen.

“Lucky beggars!” murmured Dion, as he threw them a few small coins,

while Rosamund smiled at them and waved her hand in answer to their

greetings. “I believe it’s the ideal life to dwell in the tents.”

“It seems so to-day.”

“Won’t it to-morrow? Won’t it when we are in London?”

“Perhaps more than ever then.”

Was she gently evading an answer? They had reached the brow of the hill

and put their horses to a canter. The white dust settled over them. They

were like millers on horseback as they left the pine woods behind them.

But the touch of the dust was as the touch of nature upon their faces

and hands. They would not have been free of it as they rode towards

Athens, and came to the region of the vineyards, of the olive groves and

the cypresses. Now and then they passed ramshackle cafes made of boards

roughly nailed together anyhow, with a straggle of vine sprawling over

them, and the earth for a flooring. Tables were set out before them,

or in their shadows; a few bottles were visible within; on benches or

stools were grouped Greeks, old and young, busily talking, no doubt

about politics. Carts occasionally passed by the riders, sending out

dust to mingle with theirs. Turkeys gobbled at them, dogs barked in

front of one-storied houses. They saw peasants sitting sideways on

pattering donkeys, and now and then a man on horseback. By thin runlets

of water were women, chattering as they washed the clothes of their

households. Then again, the horses came into the bright and solitary

places where the cheerful loneliness of Greece held sway.

And so, at last they cantered into the outskirts of Athens when the

evening was falling. Another day had slipped from them. But both felt it

was a day which they had known very well, had realized with an unusual

fulness.

“It’s been a day of days!” Dion said that evening.

And Rosamund nodded assent.

A child had been in that day, and, with a child’s irresistible might,

had altered everything for them. Now Dion knew how Rosamund would be

with a child of her own, and Rosamund knew that Dion loved her more

deeply because he had seen her with a child. A little messenger had

come to them over the sun-dried plain of Marathon bearing a gift of

knowledge.

The next day they spent quietly. In the morning they visited the

National Museum, and in the late afternoon they returned to the

Acropolis.

In the Museum Rosamund was fascinated by the tombs. She, who always

seemed so remote from sorrow, who, to Dion, was the personification of

vitality and joyousness, was deeply moved by the record of death, by

the wonderfully restrained, and yet wonderfully frank, suggestion of the

grief of those who, centuries ago, had mingled their dust with the dust

of the relations, the lovers, the friends, whom they had mourned for.

“What a lesson this is for me!” she murmured at last, after standing for

a long while wrapped in silence and contemplation.

“Why for you, specially?” he asked.

She looked up at him. There were tears in her eyes. He believed she

was hesitating, undecided whether to let him into a new chamber of her

being, or whether to close a half-opened door against him.

“It’s very difficult to submit, I think, for some of us,” she answered,

after a pause, slowly. “Those old Greeks must have known how to do it.”

“To submit to sorrow?”

“Yes, to a great sorrow. Such a thing is like an attack in the dark. If

I am attacked I want to strike back and hurt.”

“But whom could you reasonably hurt on account of a death that came in

the course of nature? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

After a slight hesitation she said:

“Do you mean that you don’t think we can hurt God?”

“I wonder,” Dion answered.

“I don’t. I know we can.”

She looked again at the tomb before which they were standing. It showed

a woman seated and stretching out her right arm, which a woman friend

was touching. In the background was another, contemplative, woman and

a man wearing a chaplet of leaves, his hand lifted to his face. For

epitaph there was one word cut in marble.

“It means farewell, doesn’t it?” asked Rosamund.

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you’ll smile, but I think these tombs are the most beautiful

things I have seen in Greece. It’s a miracle--their lack of violence.

What a noble thing grief could be. That little simple word. It’s great

to be able to give up the dearest thing with that one little word. But I

couldn’t--I couldn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I know, because I didn’t.”

She said nothing more on the subject that morning, but when they were

on the Acropolis waiting, as so often before, for the approach of the

evening, she returned to it. Evidently it was haunting her that day.

“I believe giving up nobly is a much finer thing than attaining nobly,”

she said. “And yet attaining wins all the applause, and giving up, if it

gets anything, only gets that ugly thing--pity.”

“But is pity an ugly thing?” said Dion.

He had a little stone in his hand, and, as he spoke, he threw it gently

towards the precipice, taking care not to send it over the edge.

“I think I would rather have anything on earth from people than their

pity.”

“Suppose I were to pity you because I loved you?”

He picked up another stone and held it in his hand.

“I should hate it.”

He had lifted his hand for the throw, but he kept hold of the stone.

“What, pity that came straight out of love?”

“Any sort of pity.”

“You must be very proud--much prouder than I am then. If I were unhappy

I should wish to have pity from you.”

“Perhaps you have never been really unhappy.”

Dion laid the stone down. He thought hard for a moment.

“Without any hope at all of a change back to happiness--no, actually I

never have.”

“Ah, then you’ve never had to brace up and see if you could find a

strong voice to utter your ‘farewell’!”

She spoke with firmness, a firmness that rang like true metal struck

with a hammer and giving back sincerity.

“That sounds tremendously Doric,” he said.

His lips were smiling, but there was an almost surprised expression in

his eyes.

“Dion, do you know you’re intuitive to-day?”

“Ah, your training--your training!”

“Didn’t you say we should have to be Doric ourselves if----?”

“Come, Rosamund, it’s time for the Parthenon.”

Once more they went over the uneven ground to stand before its solemn

splendor.

“Shall we have learnt before we go?” said Dion.

“It’s strange, but I think the tombs teach me more. They’re more within

my reach. This is so tremendous that it’s remote. Perhaps a man, or--or

a boy----”

She looked at him.

“A boy?”

“Yes.”

He drew her down. She clasped her hands, that looked to him so capable

and so pure, round her knees.

“A boy? Go on, Rose.”

“He might learn his lesson here, with a man to help him. The Parthenon’s

tremendously masculine. Perhaps women have to learn from the gentleness

of those dear tombs.”

Never before had she seemed to him so soft, so utterly soft of nature.

“You’ve been thinking a great deal to-day of our boy, haven’t you?” he

said.

“Yes.”

“Suppose we did have a boy and lost him?”

“Lost him?”

Her voice sounded suddenly almost hostile.

“Such a thing has happened to parents. It might happen to us.”

“I don’t believe it would happen to me,” Rosamund said, with a sort of

curious, almost cold decision.

“But why not?”

“What made you think of such a thing?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it was because of what you said this morning

about grief, and then about bracing up and finding a firm voice to utter

one’s ‘farewell.’”

“You don’t understand what a woman would feel who lost her child.”

“Are you sure that you do?”

“Partly. Quite enough to----Don’t let us speak about it any more.”

“No. There’s nothing more futile than imagining horrors that are never

coming upon us.”

“I never do it,” she said, with resolute cheerfulness. “But we shall

very soon have to say one ‘farewell.’”

“To the Parthenon?”

“Yes.”

“Say it to-night!”

She turned round to face him.

“To-night? Why?”

“For a little while.”

A sudden happy idea had come to him. A shadow had fallen over her for

a moment. He wanted to drive it away, to set her again in the full

sunshine for which she was born, and in which, if he could have his

will, she should always dwell.

“You wanted to take me away somewhere.”

“Yes. You must see a little more of Greece before we go home. Say your

‘farewell,’ Rosamund.”

She did not know what was in his mind, but she obeyed him, and, looking

up at the great marble columns, glowing with honey-color and gold in the

afternoon light, she murmured:

“Farewell.”

On the following day they left Athens and set out on the journey to

Olympia.

CHAPTER V

“Why are you bringing me to Olympia?”

That question, unuttered by her lips, was often in Rosamund’s eyes as

they drew near to the green wilds of Elis. Of course they had always

meant to visit Olympia before they sailed away to England, but she knew

very well that Dion had some special purpose in his mind, and that it

was closely connected with his great love of her. She had understood

that on the Acropolis, and her “farewell” had been an act of submission

to his will not wholly unselfish. Her curiosity was awake.

What was the secret of Olympia?

They had gone by train to Patras, slept there, and thence rode

on horseback to Pyrgos through the vast vineyards of the

Peloponnesus--vineyards that stretched down to the sea and were dotted

with sentinel cypresses. The heat was much greater than it had been in

Athens. Enormous aloes hedged gardens from which came scents that seemed

warm. The sandy soil, turned up by the horses’ feet, was hot to the

touch. The air quivered, and was shot with a music of insects faint but

pervasive.

Pyrgos was suffocating and noisy, but Rosamund was amused by democracy

at close quarters, showing its naked love of liberty. Her strong

humanity rose to the occasion, and she gave herself with a smiling

willingness to the streets, in which men, women, children and animals,

with lungs of leather, sent forth their ultimate music. Nevertheless,

she was glad when she and Dion set out again, and followed the banks of

the Alpheus, leaving the cries of the city behind them. It seemed to her

that they were traveling to some hidden treasure, secluded in the folds

of a green valley where the feet of men seldom, if ever, came. Dion’s

eyes told her that they were drawing nearer and nearer to the secret he

knew of, and was going to reveal to her. She often caught him looking

at her with an almost boyish expression of loving anticipation; and more

than once he laughed happily when he saw her question, but he would not

give her an answer.

Peasants worked in the vineyards, shoulder-high in the plants, brown and

sweating in the glare. Swarthy children, with intelligent eyes, often

with delicate noses, and those pouting lips which are characteristic of

many Greek statues, ran to stare at them, and sometimes followed them a

little way, but without asking for alms. Then the solitudes took them,

and they wound on and on, with their guide as their only companion.

He was a gentle, even languid-looking youth, called Nicholas Agathoulos,

who was a native of Patras, but who had lived a good deal in Athens,

who spoke a few words of English and French, and who professed a deep

passion for Lord Byron. Nicholas rode on a mule, leading, or not leading

as the case might be--for he was a charmingly careless person--a

second mule on which was fastened Rosamund’s and Dion’s scanty luggage.

Rosamund, like a born vagabond, was content to travel in this glorious

climate with scarcely any impedimenta. When Nicholas was looked at he

smiled peacefully under his quiet and unpretending black mustache. When

he was not looked at he seemed to sleep with open eyes. He never sang

or whistled, had no music at all in him; but he could quote stanzas from

“Don Juan” in Greek, and, when he did that, he woke up, sparks of fire

glowed in his eyes, and his employers realized that he shared to the

full the patriotism of his countrymen.

Did he know the secret of Olympia which Dion was concealing so

carefully, and enjoying so much, as the little train of pilgrims wound

onwards among fruit trees and shrubs of arbutus, penetrating farther and

ever farther into a region sweet and remote? Of course he must know it.

“I shall ask Nicholas,” Rosamund said once to Dion, perversely.

“What?”

“You know perfectly well what.”

His face was a map of innocence as he touched his thin horse with the

whip and rode forward a little faster.

“What is there to see at Olympia, Nicholas?” she said, speaking rather

loudly in order that Dion might hear.

Nicholas woke up, and hastily, in a melodious voice, quoted some scraps

of guide-book. Rosamund did not find what she wanted among them. She

knew already about the ruins, about the Nike of Paeonius and the Hermes

of Praxiteles. So she left the young Greek to his waking dream, and

possessed her soul in a patience that was not difficult. She liked to

dwell in anticipation. And she felt that any secret this land was about

to reveal to her would be, must be, beautiful. She trusted Greece.

“We aren’t far off now,” said Dion presently, as they rode up the

valley--a valley secluded from the world, pastoral and remote, shaded by

Judas trees.

“How peaceful and lovely it is.”

“And full of the echoes of the Pagan feet which once trod here.”

“I don’t hear them,” said Rosamund, “and I am listening.”

“Perhaps you could never hear Pagan echoes. And yet you love Greece.”

“Yes. But I have nothing Pagan in me. I know that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You are the ideal woman to be in Greece

with. If I don’t come back to Greece with you, I shall never come back.”

They rode on. Her horse was following his along the windings of the

river. Presently she said:

“Where are we going to sleep? Surely there isn’t a possible inn in

this remoteness?--or have they build one for travelers who come here in

winter and spring?”

“Our inn will be a little above Olympia.”

The green valley seemed closing about them, as if anxious to take them

to itself, to keep them in its closest intimacy, with a gentle jealousy.

Rosamund had a sensation, almost voluptuous, of yielding to the pastoral

greenness, to the warm stillness, to the hush of the delicate wilds.

“Elis! Elis!” she whispered to herself. “I am riding up into Elis, where

once the processions passed to the games, where Nero built himself a

mansion. And there’s a secret here for me.”

Then suddenly there came into her mind the words in the “Paradiso” which

she had been dreaming over in London on the foggy day when Dion had

asked her to marry him.

The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence from warm love and living hope

which conquereth the Divine will.

It was strange that the words should come to her just then. She could

not think why they came. But, repeating them to herself, she felt how

very far off she was from Paganism. Yet she had within her warm love

surely and living hope. Could such things, as they were within her, ever

do violence to the Kingdom of Heaven? She looked between her horse’s

perpetually moving ears at the hollow athletic back of her young

husband. If she had not married she would have given rein to deep

impulses within her which now would never be indulged. They would not

have led her to Greece. If she had been governed by them she would never

have been drawn on by the secret of Olympia. How strange it was that,

within the compass of one human being, should be contained two widely

differing characters. Well, she had chosen, and henceforth she must live

according to the choice she had made. But how would she have been in

the other life of which she had dreamed so often, and so deeply, in her

hours of solitude? She would never know that. She had chosen the warm

love and the living hope, but the Kingdom of Heaven should never suffer

violence from anything she had chosen. There are doubtless many ways of

consecrating a life, of rendering service.

They came into a scattered and dingy hamlet. Hills rose about it, but

the narrowing valley still wound on.

“We are close to the ruins,” said Dion.

“Already! Where are we going to sleep?”

“Up there!”

He pointed to a steep hill that was set sheer above the valley.

“Go on with the mules, Nicholas.”

Nicholas rode on, smiling.

“What’s that building on the hump?”

“The Museum.”

“I wonder why they put the inn so far away.”

“It isn’t really very far, not many minutes from here. But the way’s

pretty steep. Now then, Rosamund!”

They set their horses to the task. Nicholas and the mules were out of

sight. A bend of the little track had hidden them.

“Why, there’s a village up here!” said Rosamund, as they came to a

small collection of houses with yards and rough gardens and scattered

outbuildings.

“Yes--Drouva. Our inn is just beyond it, but quite separated from it.”

“I’m glad of that. They don’t bother very much about cleanliness here, I

should think.”

He was smiling at her now. His lips were twitching under his mustache,

and his eyes seemed trying not to tell something to her.

“Surely the secret isn’t up here?”

He shook his head, still smiling, almost laughing.

They were now beyond the village, and emerged on a plateau of rough

short grass which seemed to dominate the world.

“This is the top of the hill of Drouva,” said Dion, with a ring of joy,

and almost of pride, in his voice. “And there’s our inn, the Inn of

Drouva.”

Rosamund pulled up her horse. She did not say a word. She just looked,

while her horse lowered his head and sniffed the air in through his

twitching nostrils. Then he sent forth a quivering neigh, his welcome to

the Inn of Drouva. The view was immense, but Rosamund was not looking

at it. A small dark object not far off in the foreground of this great

picture held her eyes. For the moment she saw little or nothing else.

She saw a dark, peaked tent pitched in the middle of the plateau. Smoke

from a fire curled up behind it. Two or three figures moved near it.

Beyond, Nicholas was unloading the mules.

She dropped the cord by which she had been guiding her horse and slipped

down to the ground. Her legs were rather stiff from riding. She held on

to the saddle for a moment.

“A camp?” she said at last.

Dion was beside her.

“An awfully rough one.”

“How jolly!”

She said the words almost solemnly.

“Dion, you are a brick!” she added, after a pause. “I’ve never stayed in

camp before. A real brick! But you always are.”

“Aren’t you coming into the camp?”

She put her hand on his arm and kept him back.

“No--wait! What did you mean by shaking your head when I asked you if

the secret was up here?”

“This isn’t the real secret. It wasn’t because of this that I asked you

suddenly on the Acropolis to say ‘farewell’ to the Parthenon.”

“There’s another secret?”

“There’s another reason, the real reason, why I hurried you to Olympia.

But I’m going to let you find it out for yourself. I shan’t tell you

anything.”

“But how shall I know when----?”

“You will know.”

“To-day?”

“Don’t you think we might stay on our hill-top till to-morrow?”

“Yes, all right. It’s glorious here; I won’t be impatient. But how could

you manage to get the tent here before we came?”

“We’ve been two nights on the way, Patras and Pyrgos. That gave plenty

of time to the magician to work the spell. Come along.”

This time she did not hold him back. Her eagerness was as great as his.

Certainly it was a very ordinary camp, scarcely, in fact, a camp at all.

The tent was small and of the roughest kind, but there were two neat

little camp-beds within it, with their toes planted on the short dry

grass. In the iron washhand stand were a shining white basin and a jug

filled with clear water. There was a cake of remarkable pink soap with a

strange and piercing scent; there was a “tooth glass”; there was a straw

mat.

“What isn’t there?” cried Rosamund, who was almost as delighted as a

child.

A grave and very handsome gentleman from Athens, Achilles Stavros

by name, received her congratulations with a classical smile of

satisfaction.

“He’s even got a genuine Greek nose for the occasion!” Rosamund said

delightedly to Dion, when Achilles retired for a moment to give some

instructions about tea to the cook. “Where did you find him?”

“That’s my secret.”

“I never realised how delicious a camp was before. My wildest dreams are

surpassed.”

As they looked at the two small, hard chairs with straw bottoms which

were solemnly set out side by side facing the view, and upon which

Achilles expected them to sink voluptuously for the ritual of tea, they

broke into laughter at Rosamund’s exaggerated expressions of

delight. But directly she was able to stop laughing she affirmed with

determination:

“I don’t care what anybody says, or thinks; I repeat it”--she glanced

from the straw mat to the cake of anemic pink soap--“my wildest dreams

are surpassed. To think”--she spread out her hands--“only to think of

finding a tooth glass here! It’s--it’s admirable!”

She turned upon him an almost fanatical eye, daring contradiction; and

they both laughed again, long and loud like two children who, suddenly

aware of a keen physical pleasure, prolong it beyond all reasonable

bounds.

“What are we going to have for tea?” she asked.

“Tea,” Dion cried.

“You ridiculous creature!”

From a short distance, Achilles gazed upon the merriment of theses

newly-married English travelers. Nobody had told him they were newly

married; he just knew it, had known it at a glance. As he watched, the

laughter presently died away, and he saw the two walk forward to the

edge of the small plateau, then stand still to gaze at the view.

The prospect from the hill of Drouva above Olympia is very great, and

all Rosamund’s inclination to merriment died out of her as she looked

upon it. Even her joy in the camp was forgotten for a moment.

Upon their plateau, sole guests of the bareness, stood two small olive

trees, not distorted by winds. Rosamund leaned against one of them

as she gazed, put her arms round it with a sort of affectionate

carelessness that was half-protective, that seemed to say, “You dear

little tree! How nice of you to be here. But you almost want taking care

of.” Then the tree was forgotten, and the Hellenic beauty reigned over

her spirit, as she gazed upon the immense pastoral bounded by mountains

and the sea; a green wilderness threaded by a serpentine river of

silver--a far-flung river which lingered on its way, journeying hither

and thither, making great curves as if it loved the wilderness

and wished to know it well, to know all of it before being merged

irrevocably with the sea.

“Those are the valleys of the Kladeos and the Alpheios.”

“Yes.”

“And that far-off Isle is the Island of Zante.”

“Of Zante,” she repeated.

After a long pause she said:

“You know those words somewhere in the Bible--‘the wilderness and the

solitary places’?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve always loved them, just those words. Even when I was quite a

child I liked to say them. And I remember once, when I was staying at

Sherrington, we drove over to the cathedral. Canon Wilton took us into

the stalls. It was a week-day and there were very few people. The anthem

was Wesley’s ‘The Wilderness.’ I had never heard it before, and when I

heard those words--my words--being sung, I had such a queer thrill. I

wanted to cry and I was startled. To most people, I suppose, the word

wilderness suggests something dreary and parched, ugly desolation.”

“Yes. The scapegoat was driven out into the wilderness.”

“I think I’d rather take _my_ sin into the wilderness than anywhere

else. Purification might be found there.”

“_Your_ sin!” he said. “As if----” He was silent.

Zante seemed sleeping in the distance of the Ionian Sea, far away as

the dream from which one has waked, touched with a dream’s mystic

remoteness. The great plain, stretching to mountains and sea, vast and

green and lonely--but with the loneliness that smiles, desiring nothing

else--seemed uninhabited. Perhaps there were men in it, laboring among

the vineyards or toiling among the crops, women bending over the earth

by which they lived, or washing clothes on the banks of the river.

Rosamund did not look for them and did not see them. In the green

landscape, over which from a distance the mountains kept their quiet and

deeply reserved watch, she detected no movement. Even the silver of

the river seemed immobile, as if its journeyings were now stilled by an

afternoon spell.

“It’s as empty as the plain of Marathon, but how much greater!” she said

at last.

“At Marathon there was the child.”

“Yes, and here there’s not even a child.”

She sighed.

“I wonder what one would learn to be if one lived on the hill of

Drouva?” she said.

“It will be much more beautiful at sunset. We are looking due west. Soon

we shall have the moon rising behind us.”

“What memories I shall carry away!”

“And I.”

“You were here before alone?”

“Yes. I walked up from the village just before sunset after a long day

among the ruins. I--I didn’t know then of your existence. That seems

strange.”

But she was gazing at the view, and now with an earnestness in which

there seemed to him to be a hint of effort, as if she were, perhaps,

urging imagination to take her away and to make her one with that on

which she looked. It struck him just then that, since they had been

married, she had changed a good deal, or developed. A new dreaminess had

been added to her power and her buoyancy which, at times, made her very

different from the radiant girl he had won.

“The Island of Zante!” she said once more, with a last look at the sea,

as they turned away in answer to the grave summons of Achilles. “Ah,

what those miss who never travel!”

“And yet I remember your saying once that you had very little of the

normal in you, and even something about the cat’s instinct.”

“Probably I meant the cat’s instinct to say nasty things. Every woman--”

“No, what you meant--”

He began actually to explain, but her “Puss, Puss, Puss!” stopped him.

Her dream was over and her laugh rang out infectiously as they returned

to the tent.

The tea was fairly bad, but she defended its merits with energy, and

munched biscuits with an excellent appetite. Afterwards she smoked a

cigarette and Dion his pipe, sitting on the ground and leaning against

the tent wall. In vain Achilles drew her attention to the chairs.

Rosamund stretched out her long limbs luxuriously and shook her head.

“I’m not a school-teacher, Achilles,” she said.

And Dion had to explain what she meant perhaps--only perhaps, for he

wasn’t sure about it himself,--to that classical personage.

“These chairs fight against the whole thing,” she said, when Achilles

was gone.

“I’ll hide them,” said Dion.

He was up in a moment, caught hold of the chairs, gripping one in each

hand, and marched off with them. When he came back Rosamund was no

longer sitting on the ground by the tent wall. She had slipped away. He

looked round. She must have gone beyond the brow of the hill, for she

was not on the plateau. He hesitated, pulling hard at his pipe. He knew

her curious independence, knew that sometimes she wanted to be alone.

No doubt she had gone to look at the great view from some hidden place.

Well, then, he ought not to try to find her, he ought to respect her

wish to be by herself. But this evening it hurt him. As he stood there

he felt wounded, for he remembered telling her that the great view would

be much more beautiful at sunset when the moon would be rising behind

them. The implication of course had been, “Wait a little and I’ll

show you.” It was he who had chosen the place for the camp, he who had

prepared the surprise. Perhaps foolishly, he had thought of the whole

thing, even of the plain, the river, the mountains, the sea and the

Island of Zante, as a sort of possession which he was going gloriously

to share with her. And now----! He felt deprived, almost wronged. The

sky was changing. He turned and looked to the east. Above Olympia, in

a clear and tremulous sky, a great silver moon was rising. It was his

hour, and she had hidden herself.

Again, at that moment, Dion felt almost afraid of his love.

His pipe had gone out. He took it from his lips, bent, and knocked out

the tobacco against the heel of his boot. He was horribly disappointed,

but he was not going to search for Rosamund; nor was he ever going to

let her know of his disappointment. Perhaps by concealing it he would

kill it. He thrust his pipe into his pocket, hesitated, then walked a

little way from the camp and sat down on the side of the hill. What rot

it was his always wanting to share everything now. Till he met Rosamund

he had always thought only women could never be happy unless they shared

their pleasures, and preferably with a man. Love apparently could

play the very devil, bridge the gulf between sexes, make a man who was

thoroughly masculine in all his tastes and habits have “little feelings”

which belonged properly only to women.

Doric! Suddenly the word jumped up in his mind, and a vision of the

Parthenon columns rose before his imagination, sternly glorious, almost

with the strength of a menace. He set his teeth together and cursed

himself for a fool and a backslider.

Rosamund and he were to be Doric. Well, this evening he didn’t know

exactly what he was, but he certainly was not Doric.

Just then he heard the sound of a shot. He did not know what direction

it came from, but, fantastically enough, it seemed to be a comment on

his thought, a brusk, decisive exclamation flung at him from out of the

silent evening. “Sentimentalist! Take that, and get out of your mush

of feeling!” As he recognized it--he now forced himself to that

sticking-point--to be a mush, the shot’s comment fell in, of course,

with his own view of the matter.

He sat still for a moment, thinking of the shot, and probably expecting

it to be repeated. It was not repeated. A great silence prevailed, the

silence of the Hellenic wild held in the hand of evening. And abruptly,

perhaps, from that large and pervasive silence, Dion caught a coldness

of fear. All his perceptions rushed upon him, an acute crowd. He sprang

up, put his hand to his revolver. Rosamund out alone somewhere in the

loneliness of Greece--evening--a shot!

He was over the brow of the hill towards the west in a moment. All

respect for Rosamund’s evening whim, all remembrance of his own proper

pride, was gone from him.

“Rosamund!” he called; “Rosamund!”

“Here!” replied her strong voice from somewhere a little way below him.

And he saw her standing on the hillside and looking downwards. He thrust

his revolver back into his pocket quickly. Already his pride was pushing

its head up again. He stood still, looking down on her.

“It’s all right, it is?”

This time she lifted her head and turned her face up to him.

“All right?”

“I heard a shot.”

He saw laughter dawning in her face.

“You don’t mean to say----?”

She laughed frankly.

“Come down here!”

He joined her.

“What was it?”

“Did you, or didn’t you, think I’d been attacked by Greek brigands?”

“Of course not! But I heard a shot, and it just struck me----”

At that moment he was almost ashamed of loving her so much.

“Well, there’s the brigand, and I do believe he’s going to shoot again.

The ruffian! Yes, he’s taking aim! Oh, Dion, let’s seek cover.”

Still laughing, she shrank against him. He put one arm round her

shoulder bruskly, and his hand closed on her tightly. A little way below

them, relieved with a strange and romantic distinctness against the

evening light, in which now there was a strong suggestion of gold, was

a small figure, straight, active--a figure of the open air and the wide

spaces--with a gun to its right shoulder. A shot rang out.

“He’s got it,” said Rosamund.

And there was a note of admiring praise in her voice.

“That child’s a dead shot,” she added. “It’s quail he’s after, I

believe. Look! He’s picking it up.”

The small black figure bent quickly down, after running forward a little

way.

“He retrieves as well as he shoots. Shall we go to him and see whether

it’s quail?”

“Another child,” said Dion.

He still had his arm round her shoulder.

“Why did you come here?” he asked.

“To look at the evening coming to me over the wilderness. But he made me

forget it for a moment.”

Dion was staring at her now.

“I believe a child could make you forget anything,” he said.

“Let’s go to him.”

The gold of the evening was strengthening and deepening. The vast view,

which was the background to the child’s little figure, was losing its

robe of green and of blue, green of the land, blue of the sea, was

putting on velvety darkness and gold. The serpentine river was a long

band of gold flung out, as if by a careless enchanter, towards the

golden sea in which Zante was dreaming. Remote and immense this land

had seemed in the full daytime, a tremendous pastoral deserted by

men, sufficient to itself and existing only for its own beauty. Now it

existed for a child. The human element had caused nature, as it were,

to recede, to take the second place. A child, bending down to pick up a

shot quail, then straightening up victoriously, held the vast panorama

in submission, as if he had quietly given out the order, “Make me

significant.” And Rosamund, who had stolen away to meet the evening, was

now only intent on knowing whether the shot bird was a quail or not.

It was a quail, and a fat one.

When they came to the boy they found him a barefooted urchin, with

tattered coarse clothes and densely thick, uncovered black hair growing

down almost to his fiery young eyes, which stared at them proudly. There

was a wild look in those eyes never to be found in the eyes of a dweller

in cities, a wild grace in his figure, and a complete self-possession in

his whole bearing. The quail just shot he had in his hand. Another was

stuffed into the large pocket of his jacket. He pulled it out and showed

it to them, reading at a glance the admiration in Rosamund’s eyes. Dion

held out a hand to the boy’s gun, but at this his manner changed, he

clutched it tightly, moved a step or two back, and scowled.

“He’s a regular young savage,” said Dion.

“I like him as he is. Besides, why should he give his gun to a stranger?

He knows nothing about us.”

“You’re immense!” said Dion, laughing.

“Let’s have the quail for our dinner.”

“D’you expect him to give them to us without a stand-up fight and

probably bloodshed? For he’s armed, unfortunately!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Look here, Dion, you go off for a minute, and

leave him with me. I think you get on his nerves.”

“Well, I’m----!”

But he went. He left the two figures together, and presently saw them

both from a distance against the vastness of the gold. Bushes and

shrubs, and two or three giant pine trees, between the summit of Drouva

and the plain, showed black, and the figures of woman and child were

almost ebon. Dion watched them. He could not see any features. The

two were now like carved things which could move, and only by their

movements could they tell him anything. The gun over the boy’s shoulder

was like a long finger pointing to the west where a redness was creeping

among the gold. The great moon climbed above Drouva. Bluish-gray smoke

came from the camp-fire at a little distance. It ascended without

wavering straight up in the windless evening. Far down in the hidden

valley, behind Dion and below the small village, shadows were stealing

through quiet Elis, shadows were coming to shroud the secret that was

held in the shrine of Olympia. A slight sound of bells stole up on the

stillness from somewhere below, somewhere not far from those two ebon

figures. And this sound, suggestive of moving animals coming from

pasture to protected places for the night, put a heart in the breast of

this pastoral. Thin was the sound and delicate, fit music for Greece

in the fragile evening. As Dion listened to it, he looked at that black

finger below him pointing to the redness in the west. Then he remembered

it was a gun, and, for an instant, looking at the red, he thought of the

color of fresh blood.

At this moment the tall figure, Rosamund, took hold of the gun, and the

two figures moved away slowly down the winding track in the hill, and

were hidden at a turning of the path.

Almost directly a third shot rang out. The young dweller in the

wilderness was allowing Rosamund to give a taste of her skill with the

gun.

CHAPTER VI

Rosamund came back to the camp that evening with Dirmikis,--so the boy

of the wilderness was called,--and five quail, three of them to her gun.

She was radiant, and indeed had an air almost of triumph. Her eyes

were sparkling, her cheeks were glowing; she looked like a beautiful

schoolgirl as she walked in over the plateau with the sunset flushing

scarlet behind her, and the big moon coming to meet her. Dirmikis, at

her side, carried the quail upside down in his brown hands. Rosamund had

the gun under her right arm.

“It’s a capital gun,” she called out to Dion. “I got three. Here,

Dirmikis,”--she turned to the boy,--“show them.”

“Does he understand English?”

“No, but he understands me!” she retorted with pride. “Look there!”

Dirmikis held up the birds, smiling a savage smile.

“Aren’t they fat? Feel them, Dion! The three fattest ones fell to my

gun, but don’t tell _him_.”

She sketched a delicious wink, looking about sixteen.

“I really have a good eye,” she added, praising herself with gusto.

“It’s no use being over-modest, is it? If one has a gift, well one just

has it. Here, Dirmikis!”

She gave his gun carefully to the barefooted child.

“He’s a little stunner, and so chivalrous. I never met a boy I liked

more. Do give him a nice present, Dion, and let him feed in the camp if

he likes.”

“Well, what next? What am I to give him?”

“Nothing dressy. He isn’t a manikin, he’s a real Doric boy.”

She slapped Dirmikis on the back with a generous hand. He smiled

radiantly, this time without any savagery.

“The sort of boy who’ll be of some use in the world.”

“I’ll give him a tip.”

Rosamund seemed about to assent when an idea struck her, as she

afterwards said, “with the force of a bomb.”

“I know what he’ll like better than anything.”

“Well?”

“Your revolver, to be sure!”

“My revolver to be suren’t!” exclaimed Dion passionately, inventing a

negative. “I bought it at great cost to defend you with, not for the

endowment of a half-naked varmint from the wilderness under Drouva.”

“Be careful, Dion; you’re insulting a Doric boy!”

“Here--I’ll insult him with a ten-lepta piece.”

“Don’t be mean. Bribe him thoroughly if you’re going to bribe him. We go

shooting together again to-morrow evening.”

“Do you indeed?”

“Yes, directly after tea. It’s all arranged. Dirmikis suggested it with

the most charming chivalry, and I gave yes for an answer. So we must

keep on good terms with him at whatever cost.”

She cocked up her chin and walked exultantly into the tent. A minute

afterwards there rang out to the evening a warm contralto voice singing.

Dirmikis looked at the tent and then at Dion with an air of profound

astonishment. The quail dropped from his hands, and he did not even

snatch at them as he listened to the remarkable sounds which, he could

not doubt, flowed from his Amazon. His brows came down over his fiery

eyes, and he seemed to stand at gaze like an animal, half-fascinated

and half-suspicious. The voice died away and was followed by a sound of

pouring water. Then Dirmikis accepted two ten-lepta pieces and picked up

the quail. Dion introduced him to the cook, and it was understood that

he should be fed in the camp, and that the quail should form part of the

evening meal.

Very good they proved to be, cooked in leaves with the addition of

some fried slices of fat ham. Rosamund exulted again as she ate them,

recognizing the birds she had shot “by the taste.”

“This is one! Aren’t mine different from Dirmikis’s?” she exclaimed. “So

much more succulent!”

“Naturally, you great baby!”

“Life is glorious!” she exclaimed resonantly. “To eat one’s own bag on

the top of Drouva under the moon! Oh!”

She looked at the moon, then bent over her plate of metal-ware which

was set on the tiny folding-table. In her joy she was exactly like a big

child.

“I wonder how many I shall get to-morrow. I got my eye in at the very

start. Really, Dion, you know, I’m a gifted creature. It isn’t every

one----”

And she ran on, laughing at herself, reveling in her whimsical pretense

of conceit till dinner was over.

“Now a cigarette! Never have I enjoyed any meal so much as this! It’s

only out of doors that one gets hold of the real _joie de vivre_.”

“You’re never without it, thank God,” returned Dion, striking a match

for her.

So still was the evening that the flame burned steadily even upon that

height facing immensities. Rosamund leaned to it with the cigarette

between her lips. Her face was browned to the sun. She looked rather

like a splendid blonde gipsy, with loose yellow hair and the careless

eyes of those who dwell under smiling heavens. She sent out a puff of

cigarette smoke, directing it with ardor to the moon which now rode high

above them.

“I’d like to catch up nature in my arms to-night,” she said. “Come,

Dion, let’s go a little way.”

She was up, and put her arm through his like a comrade. He squeezed her

arm against his side and, strolling there in the night on the edge of

the hill, she talked at first with almost tumultuous energy, with an

energy as of an Amazon who cared for the things of the soul as much as

for the things of the body. To-night her body and soul seemed on the

same high level of intensity.

At first she talked of the present, of their life in Greece and of what

it had meant to her, what it had done for her; and then, always with her

arm through Dion’s, she began to talk of the future.

“We’ve got to go away from all this, but let us carry it with us; you

know, as one can carry things that one has really gathered up, really

got hold of. It will mean a lot to us afterwards in England, in our

regular humdrum life. Not that life’s ever humdrum. We must take Drouva

to England, and Marathon, and the view from the Acropolis, and the

columns of the Parthenon above all those, and the tombs.”

“But they’re sad.”

“We must take them. I’m quite sure the way to make life splendid, noble,

what it is meant to be to each of us, is to press close against

one’s heart all that is sent to one, the sorrows as well as the joys.

Everything one tries to keep at arm’s length hurts one.”

“Sins?”

“Sins, Dion? I said what is sent to us.”

“Don’t you think----?”

“Sins are never sent to us, we always have to go and fetch them. It’s

like that poor old chemist going round the corner in the fog with a jug

for what is ruining his life.”

“What poor old chemist?” he asked.

“A great friend of mine in London--Mr. Thrush. You shall know him some

day. Oh--but London! Now, Dion, can we, you and I, live perpetually in

London after all this?”

“Well, dearest, I must stick close to business.”

“I know that. And we’ve got the little house. But later on?”

“And your singing, your traveling all over the place with a maid!”

“I wonder if I shall. To-night I don’t feel as if I shall.”

She stood still abruptly, and was silent for a minute.

“Don’t you think,” she said, in a different and less exuberant voice,

and with a changed and less physical manner--“don’t you think sometimes,

in exceptional hours, one can feel what is to come, what is laid up for

one? I do. This is an exceptional hour. We are on the heights and it’s

very wonderful. Well, perhaps to-night we can feel what is coming. Let’s

try.”

“How?”

“Let’s just be quiet, and give ourselves up to the hill of Drouva, and

Greece, and the night, and--and what surrounds and permeates us and all

this.”

With a big and noble gesture she indicated the sleeping world far below

them, breathless under the moon; the imperceptible valleys merged in the

great plain through which the river, silver once more, moved unsleeping

between its low-lying banks to the sea; the ranges of mountains which

held themselves apart in the night, a great company, reserved and almost

austere, yet trodden with confidence by the feet of those fairies who

haunt the ancient lands; the sea which drew down the moon as a lover

draws down his mistress; Zante riding the sea like a shadow in harbor.

And they were silent. Dion had a sensation of consciously giving

himself, almost as a bather, to the sea. Did he feel what was coming to

him and to this girl at his side, who was part of him, and yet who was

alone, whose arm clasped his, yet whose soul dwelt far off in its own

remoteness? Would the years draw them closer and closer together, knit

them together, through greater knowledge, through custom, through shared

joys and beliefs, through common beliefs, through children, till they

were as branches growing out of one stem firmly rooted?

He gave himself and gave himself, or tried to give himself in the

silence. Yet he could not have said truly that any mystical knowledge

came to him. Only one thing he seemed strangely to know, that they would

never have children. The sleeping world and the sea, and, as Rosamund

had said, “what surrounds and permeates us and all this” seemed to

permit him mysteriously to get at that one bit of foreknowledge.

Something seemed to say to him, “You will be the father of one child.”

And yet, when he came to think of it, he realized how probable, how

indeed almost certain it was that the silent voice issued from within

himself. Rosamund and he had talked about a child, a boy, had begun

almost to sketch out mental plans for that boy’s upbringing; they had

never talked about children. He believed that he had penetrated to the

secret of the voice. He said to himself, “All that sort of thing comes

out of one’s self. It doesn’t reach one from the outside.” And yet, when

he looked out over the world, which seemed wrapped in ethereal garments,

garments woven by spirit on looms no hand of woman or man might ever

touch, he was vaguely conscious that all within him which was of any

real value was there too. Surely he did not possess. Rather was he

possessed of.

He looked at Rosamund at last.

“Have you got anything?”

But she did not answer him. There was a great stillness in her big

eyes. All the vital exuberance of body and spirit mingled together had

vanished from her abruptly. Nothing of the Amazon who had captured the

heart of Dirmikis remained. As Dion looked at her now, he simply could

not see the beautiful schoolgirl of sixteen, the blonde gipsy who had

bent forward, cigarette in mouth, to his match, who had leaned back and

blown rings to the moon above Drouva. Had she ever set the butt of a gun

against her shoulder? Something in this woman’s eyes made him suddenly

feel as if he ought to leave her alone. Yet her arm still lay on his,

and she was his.

Against the silver of the moon the twisted trunks of the two small

olive trees showed black and significant. The red of the dying camp-fire

glowed not far from the tent. Dogs were barking in the hamlet of Drouva.

She neither saw details nor heard ugly sounds in the night. He knew

that. And the rest? It seemed to him that something of her, the spirit

of her, perhaps, or some part of it with which his had never yet had any

close contact, was awake and at work in the night. But though he held

her arm in his she was a long way from him. And there came to him this

thought:

“I felt as if I ought to leave her alone. But she has left me alone.”

Almost mechanically, and slowly, he straightened his arm, thus letting

hers slip. She did not seem to notice his action. She gazed out towards

Zante over a world that now looked very mystical. In the daylight it had

been a green pastoral. Now there was over it, and even surely in it, a

dim whiteness, a something pure and hushed, like the sound, remote and

curiously final, of a quiet sleeper.

That night, when they went to bed, Rosamund was full of the delight of

a new experience. She insisted that the flap of the tent should not be

kept shut down. She had never slept in a tent before, and was resolved

to look out and see the stars from her pillow.

“And my olive tree,” she added.

Obediently, as soon as she was in her camp-bed, Dion lifted the flap.

A candle was still burning, set on a chair between the two beds. As the

moonlight came in, Rosamund lifted herself on one arm, leaned over and

blew it out.

“How horrible moonlight makes candlelight,” she said.

Dion, in his pyjamas, was outside fastening back the flap, his bare feet

on the short dry grass.

“I can see the Pleiades!” she added earnestly.

“There!” said Dion.

He looked up at the sky.

“The Pleiades, the Great Bear, Mars.”

“Oh!” she drew in her breath. “A shooting star!”

She pressed her lips together and half-shut her eyes. By her contracted

forehead Dion saw that she was wishing almost fiercely. He believed he

read her wish. He had not seen the traveling star, and did not try to

wish with her, lest he should cross the path of the Fates and throw his

shadow on her desire.

He came softly into the tent which was full of the whiteness of the

moon. Sleeping thus with Rosamund in the bosom of nature was very

wonderful to him. It was like a sort of re-marriage. The moon and the

stars looking in made his relation to her quite new and more beautiful.

“I shall never forget Olympia,” he whispered, leaning over her.

He kissed her very gently, not with any passion. He had the feeling that

she would almost resent passion just then.

He got into his bed and lay with his arm crooked, his cheek in his hand.

Part of the Milky Way was visible to him, that dust of little stars

powdering the deep of the sky. If he, too, should see a falling star

to-night, dropping down towards the hidden sea, vanishing below the line

of the hill! Would he echo her wish?

“Are you sleepy, Rosamund?” he asked presently.

“No I don’t want to sleep. It would make me miss all the stars.”

“And if you’re tired to-morrow?”

“I shan’t be. I shan’t be tired while we are in camp. I should like

never to go to bed in a room again. I should like always to dwell in the

wilderness.”

He longed for the addition of just two words. They did not come. But

of course they were to be understood. There is no need to state things

known. The fact that she had let him bring her to the wilderness was

enough. The last words he heard Rosamund say that night were these,

almost whispered slowly to herself and to the stars:

“The wilderness--and--the solitary places.”

Very early in the morning she awoke while Dion was sleeping. She slipped

softly out of the little camp-bed, wrapped a cloak around her, and went

out to gaze at the dawn.

When they sat at breakfast she said:

“And now are you going to tell me the secret?”

“No. I’m going to let you find it out for yourself.”

“But if I can’t?”

“You will.”

They set off, about ten, down the hill on foot. The morning was very

still and already very hot. As they descended towards the basin in which

lies Olympia, heat ascended to meet them and to give them a welcome--a

soft and almost enticing heat like a breath from some green fastness

where strange marvels were secluded.

“Elis even smells remote,” Rosamund said.

“Are you sorry to leave the hill-top?” he asked.

“I was, but already I’m beginning to feel drawn on. There’s something

here--what is it?”

She looked at him.

“Something for you.”

“Specially for me?”

“Specially for you.”

“Hidden in the folds of the green. Where are we going first?”

“To the ruins.”

He was carrying their lunch in a straw pannier slung over his shoulder.

“We’ll lunch in the house of Nero, and rest there.”

“That sounds rather dreadful, Dion.”

“Wait till you see it.”

“I can’t imagine that monster in Elis.”

“He was a very artistic monster, you remember.”

“Like some of the decadents in London. Why is it that those who hate

moral beauty so often worship all the other beauties?”

“D’you think in their hearts they actually hate moral beauty?”

“Well, despise it, laugh at it, try to tarnish it.”

“Paganism!”

“Good heavens, no!”

And they both laughed as they went down the narrow path to the soft

green valley that awaited them, hushed in the breathless morning,

withdrawn among the hills, holding its memories of the athletic triumphs

of past ages. Near the Museum they stopped for a moment to look down on

the valley.

“Is the Hermes in there?” Rosamund asked, glancing at the closed and

deserted building.

“Yes.”

“What a strange and delicious home for him.”

“You shall visit him presently. There are jackals in this valley.”

“I didn’t hear any last night.”

She looked again at the closed door of the Museum.

“When do they open it?”

“Probably the guardian’s in there. That’s where he lives.”

He pointed to a small dwelling close to the museum. Just then a tiny

murmur of some far-away wind stirred the umbrella pines which stood

sentinel over the valley.

“Oh, Dion, what an exquisite sound!” she said.

She held up one hand like a listening child. There was awe in her eyes.

“This is a shrine,” she said, when the murmur failed. “Dion, I know you

planned to go first to the ruins.”

“Yes. They’re just below us. Look--by the river!”

“Let me see the Hermes first, just for a moment.”

Their eyes met. He thought she was reading his mind, though he tried to

keep it closed against her just then.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” he asked.

“I feel I must see it,” she answered, with a sort of sweet obstinacy.

He hesitated.

“Well, then--I’ll see if I can find the guardian.”

In a moment he came back with a smiling Greek who was holding a key. As

the man went to open the door, Dion said:

“Rose, will you follow my directions?”

“When?”

“Now, when you go into the Museum.”

“But aren’t you coming too?”

“Not now. I will when we’ve seen the ruins. When you go into the Museum

go straight through the vestibule where the Roman Emperors are. Don’t

turn to the right. In front of you you’ll see a hall with a wooden roof

and red walls. The ‘Victory’ is there. But don’t stay there. Go into the

small room beyond, the last room, and you mustn’t let the guardian go

with you.”

From behind came the sound of the big door being opened.

“Then that is the secret, and I knew about it all the time!”

“Knew about it--yes.”

She looked down on the green cup surrounded by hills, with its little

river where now two half-naked men were dragging with a hand-net for

fish. Again the tiny breath from the far-away wind stirred in the pine

trees, evoking soft sounds of Eternity. She turned away and went into

the Museum.

Left alone, Dion lifted the lunch-pannier from his shoulder and laid it

down on the ground. Then he sat down under one of the pine trees. A wild

olive grew very near it. He thought of the crown of wild olive which the

victors received in days when the valley resounded with voices and the

trampling of the feet of horses. He took off his hat and laid it beside

him on the ground by the lunch-pannier. One of the men in the river

cried out to his companion. Sheep-bells sounded softly down the valley.

Some peasants went by with a small train of donkeys on a path which

wound away at the foot of the hill of Kronos.

Dion was being unselfish. In staying where he was, beyond the outer

door of the house of Hermes, he was taking the first firm step on a path

which might lead him on very far. He had slept in the dawn when Rosamund

slipped out of the tent, but till the stars waned he had been awake, and

in the white light of the moon he had seen the beginning of the path.

Men were said to be selfish. People, especially women, often talked

as if selfishness were bred in the very fiber of men, as if it were

ineradicable, and must be accepted by women. He meant to prove to one

woman that even a man could be unselfish, moved by something greater

than himself. Up there on Drouva he had definitely dedicated himself

to Rosamund. His acute pain when, coming back to the place where he

had left her by the tent before sunset, he had not found her, his

sense almost of smoldering anger, had startled him. In the night he had

thought things over, and then he had come to the beginning of the path.

A really great love, if it is to be worthy to carry the torch, must

tread in the way of unselfishness. He would conform to the needs,

doubtless imperious, of Rosamund’s nature, even when they conflicted

with his.

So now he sat outside under the pine tree, and she was within alone. A

first step was taken on the path.

Would she presently come through the hall of the Victory to call him in?

He heard the guardian cough in the vestibule of the Emperors; the cough

was that of a man securely alone with his bodily manifestations. The

train of peasants had vanished. Still the sheep-bells sounded, but the

chime seemed to come to him now from a greater distance.

The morning was wearing on. When would she come back to him from the

secret of Olympia?

He heard again above his head the eternities whispering in the pine

branches. The calmness and heat of the valley mingled together, and rose

to him, and wanted to take him to themselves. But he was detached from

them, terribly detached by his virtue--his virtue, which involved him in

a struggle, pushed them off.

Surely an hour had passed, perhaps even more. He began to tingle with

impatience. The sound of the sheep-bells had died away beyond the

colonnade of the echoes. A living silence was now about him.

At last he put on his hat and got up. The Hermes was proving his power

too mercilessly, was stealing the hours like a thief at work in the

dark. The knowledge that Rosamund was his own for life did not help Dion

at all at this moment. He had planned out this day as if they were never

to have another. Their time in Greece was nearly over, and they could

not linger for very long anywhere. Anyhow, just this day, once gone,

could never be recaptured.

He looked towards the doorway of the Museum, hesitating. He was devoured

by impatience. Nevertheless he did not wish to step out of that path,

the beginning of which he had seen in the night. Determined not to seek

Rosamund, yet driven by restlessness, he did one of those meaningless

things which, bringing hurt to nature, are expected by man to bring him

at least a momentary solace. His eyes happened to rest on the olive tree

which stood not far from the Museum. One branch of it was stretched out

beyond the others. He walked up to the tree, pulled at the branch, and

finally snapped it off, stripped it of its leaves and threw it on the

ground.

As he finished this stupid and useless act, Rosamund came out of the

Museum, looking almost angry.

“Oh, Dion, was it you?” she asked. “What could make you do such a

thing?”

“But--what do you mean?” he asked.

She looked down at the massacred branch at his feet.

“A branch of wild olive! If you only knew how it hurt me.”

“Oh--that! But how could you know?”

She still looked at him with a sort of shining of anger in her eyes.

“I saw from the room of the Hermes. The doorway of the Museum is the

frame for such a picture of Elis! It’s almost, in its way, as dream-like

and lovely as the distant country one sees through the temple door in

Raphael’s ‘Marriage of the Virgin’ in Milan. And hanging partly across

it was that branch of wild olive. I was looking at it and loving it in

the room of the Hermes when a man’s arm, your arm, was thrust into the

picture, and the poor branch was torn away.”

She had spoken quite excitedly, still evidently under the impulse of

something like anger. Now she suddenly pulled herself up with a little

forced laugh.

“Of course you didn’t know; you couldn’t. I suppose I was dreaming,

and it--it looked like a sort of murder. But still I don’t see why you

should tear the branch off, and all the leaves too.”

“I’m sorry, I’m very sorry, Rosamund. It was idiotic. Of course I hadn’t

an idea what you were doing, I mean, that you were looking at it. One

does senseless little things sometimes.”

“It looked so angry.”

“What did?”

“Your hand, your arm. You can have no idea how----”

She broke off again.

“Let me come in with you. Let’s go to the Hermes.”

“Oh no, not now.”

She spoke with almost brusk decision.

“Very well, then, I’ll just pay the man something, and we’ll be off to

the ruins.”

“Yes.”

Dion went to pay the guardian, whom he found standing up among the Roman

Emperors in a dignified and receptive attitude. When he came back he

picked up the lunch-basket, slung it over his shoulder, and they walked

down the small hill and towards the ruins in silence. He felt involved

in a tragedy, pained and discomforted. Yet it was all rather absurd,

too. He did not know what to say, how to take it, and he looked straight

ahead, seeking instinctively for some diversion. When they were on the

river bank he found it in the fishermen who were wading in the shallows

with their nets.

“I wonder what they catch here,” he said. “There’s not much water.”

Rosamund took up the remark with her usual readiness and sympathetic

cordiality, and soon they were chattering again much as usual.

The great heat of the hour after noontide found them lunching among the

ruins of Nero’s house. By this time the spell of the place had fast

hold of them both. Nature had long since taken the ruins to her gentle

breast; she took Rosamund and Dion with them. In her green lap she

sheltered them; with her green hills and her groves of pine trees she

wrapped them round; with her tall grasses, her bushes, her wild flowers

and her leaves she caught at and caressed them. A jackal whined in its

lair near the huge limestone blocks of the temple of Zeus. Green lizards

basked on the pavements which still showed the little ruts constructed

to save the feet of contending athletes from slipping. All along the

green valley the birds flew and sang; blackberry bushes climbed over

the broken walls of the mansion of Nero, and red and white daisies and

silvery grasses grew in every cranny where the kindly earth found a

foothold.

“Look at those butterflies, Dion!” Rosamund said.

Two snow-white butterflies, wandering among the ruins, had found their

way to the house of Nero, and seemed inclined to make it their home.

Keeping close together, as if guided by some sweet and whimsical

purpose, they flew from stone to stone, from daisy to daisy, often

alighting, as if bent on a thorough investigation of this ancient

precinct, then fluttering forward again, with quivering wings, not quite

satisfied, in an airy search for the thing or place desired. Several

times they seemed about to abandon the ruins of Nero’s house, but,

though they fluttered away, they always returned. And at last they

alighted side by side on a piece of uneven wall, and rested, as if

asleep in the sun, with folded wings.

“That’s the finishing touch,” said Rosamund. “White butterflies asleep

in the house of Nero.”

She looked round over the ruins, poetic and beautiful in their

prostration, as if they had fallen to kiss the vale which, in return,

had folded them in an eternal embrace.

“Don’t take me to Delphi this time, Dion; don’t take me anywhere else,”

she said.

“I was thinking only to-day that our time’s very short now. We lingered

so long in Athens.”

“We’ll say our good-by to Greece from the Acropolis. That’s--of course!

The grandeur and wonder are there. But the dream of Greece--that’s here.

This is a shrine.”

“For Pan?”

“Oh no, not for Pan, though I dare say he often comes here.”

From the Kronos Hill, covered with little pines, came the mystical voice

of the breeze, speaking to them in long and remote murmurs.

“That’s the most exquisite sound in the world,” Rosamund continued. “But

it has nothing to do with Pan. You remember that day we went into the

Russian church in Athens, Dion?”

“Yes.”

“There was the same sort of sound in those Russian voices when they were

singing very softly. It could never come from a Pagan world.”

“You find belief behind it?”

“No--knowledge.”

He did not ask her to define exactly what she meant. It was not an hour

for definition, but for dreaming, and he was happy again; the cloud of

the morning had passed away; he had his love with untroubled eyes among

the ruins. Thinking of that, realizing that with a sudden intensity, he

took her warm hand from the warm stone on which it was resting, and held

it closely in his.

“Oh, Rosamund, shall I ever have another hour as happy as this?” he

said.

A little way off, in that long meadow in the breast of which the Stadium

lay hidden, the sheep-bells sounded almost pathetically; a flock was

there happily at pasture.

“It’s as if all the green doors were closing upon us to keep us in Elis

forever, isn’t it?” she said. “But----”

She looked at him with a sort of smiling reproach:

“You wouldn’t be allowed to stay.”

“Why not?”

“You committed a crime this morning. Nature’s taken possession of

Olympia, and you struck at her.”

“D’you know why I did that?”

“No.”

But she did not again ask him why, and he never told her. When the heat

had lessened a little, they wandered once more through that garden of

ruins, where scarcely a column is standing, where convulsions of nature

have helped the hands of man to overthrow man’s work, and where nature

has healed every wound, and made every scar tender and beautiful. And

presently Rosamund said:

“I want to know exactly where Hermes was found.”

“Come, and I’ll show you.”

He led her on among the wild flowers and the grasses, till they came to

the clearly marked base of the Heraeon, the most ancient known temple

of Greece. Two of its columns were standing, tremendously massive Doric

columns of a warm golden-brown color.

“The Hermes was found in this temple. It stood between two of the

columns, but I believe it was lying down when it was found.”

“It’s difficult to imagine him between such columns as these.”

“Yet you love Doric.”

“Yes, but I don’t know----”

She looked at the columns, even put her hands on them as if trying to

clasp them.

“It must have been right. The Greeks knew. Strength and grace, power and

delicacy, that’s the bodily ideal. So the Hermes stood actually here.”

She looked all round, she listened to the distant sheep-bells, she drew

into her nostrils the green scents of the valley.

“And left his influence here for ever,” she added. “His quiet

influence.”

“Let me come to see him with you on the way home.”

And this time she said, “Yes.”

At a little after four they left the sweet valley, and, passing over

the river ascended the hill to the Museum. The door was open, and the

guardian was sitting profoundly asleep in the vestibule of the Emperors.

“You see, that’s the picture-frame,” Rosamund whispered, when they

were inside, pointing to the doorway. “The branch came just there in my

picture.”

She had lifted her hand. He took her by the wrist and gently pulled her

hand down.

“You mustn’t show me that.”

“Don’t let us wake him.”

A fly buzzed outside on the sunny threshold of the door, making a sleepy

sound like the winding of a rustic horn in the golden stillness, as they

went forward on tiptoe between the dull red walls of the hall of the

Victory, and came into the room beyond, where the Hermes stood alone but

for the little Dionysos on his arm.

There a greater silence seemed to reign--the silence of the harmony

which lies beyond music, as a blue background of the atmosphere lies

beyond the verges of the vastest stretch of land that man’s eyes have

power to see; he sees the blue, but almost as if with his soul, and

in like manner hears the harmony. Both Rosamund and Dion felt the

difference in the silence directly they entered that sacred room.

There was no room beyond it. Not very large, it was lighted by three

windows set in a row under a handsome roof of wood. The walls were dull

red like the walls in the hall of the Victory. On the mosaic pavement

were placed two chairs. Rosamund went straight up to one of them, and

sat down in front of the statue, which was raised on a high pedestal,

and set facing the right-hand wall of the chamber. Dion remained

standing a little way behind her.

He remembered quite well his first visit to Olympia, his first sight

of the Hermes. He had realized then very clearly the tragedy of large

Museums in which statues stand together in throngs, enclosed within

roaring cities. From its situation, hidden in the green breast of this

valley in Elis, the Hermes seemed to receive a sort of consecration, a

blessing from its shrine; and the valley received surely from the Hermes

a gracious benediction, making it unlike any other valley, however

beautiful, in any land of the earth. Nowhere else could the Hermes have

been so serenely tender, so exquisitely benign in its contemplation; and

no other valley could have kept it safe with such gentle watchfulness,

such tranquilly unwearied patience. Surely each loved the other, and so

each gained something from the other.

Through all the months since his visit, Dion had remembered the unique

quality of the peace of Olympia, like no other peace, and the strange

and exquisite hush which greeted the pilgrim at the threshold of the

chamber in which the Hermes stood. He had remembered, but now he felt.

Again the silence seemed to come out of the marble to greet him, a

remembered pilgrim who had returned to his worship bringing another

pilgrim. He entered once more into the peace of the Hermes, and now

Rosamund shared that peace. As he looked at her for a moment, he knew he

had made a complete atonement; he had sent the shadow away.

How could any shadow stand in the presence of the Hermes? The divine

calm within this chamber had a power which was akin to the power of

nature in the twilight of a windless evening, or of a beautiful soul at

ease in its own simplicity. It purified. Dion could not imagine any

man being able to look at the Hermes and feel the attraction of sin.

Rosamund was right, he thought. Surely men have to go and fetch their

sins. Their goodness is given to them. The mother holds it, and is aware

of it, when her baby is put into her arms for the first time.

For a long while these two watched Hermes and the child in the silence

of Elis, bound together by an almost perfect sympathy. And they

understood as never before the beauty of calm--calm of the nerves, calm

of the body, calm of the mind, the heart and the soul; peace physical,

intellectual and moral. In looking at the Hermes they saw, or seemed to

themselves to see, the goal, what struggling humanity is meant for--the

perfect poise, all faculties under effortless control, and so peace.

“We must be meant for that,” Dion said to himself. “Shall we reach that

goal, and take a child with us?”

Then he looked down at Rosamund, saw her pale yellow hair, the back of

her neck, in which, somehow, purity was manifested, and thought:

“I might perhaps get there through her, but only through her.”

She turned round, looked at him and smiled.

“Isn’t he divine? And the child’s attitude!”

Dion moved and sat down beside her.

“If this is Paganism,” she continued, “it’s the same thing as

Christianity. It’s what God means. Men try to separate things that are

all one. I feel that when I look at Hermes. Oh, how beautiful he is! And

his beauty is as much moral as physical. You know the Antinous mouth?”

“Of course.”

“Look at his mouth. Could any one, comparing the two, honestly say that

purity doesn’t shine like a light in darkness? Aren’t those lips stamped

with the Divine seal?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Dion, I’m so thankful I have a husband who’s kept the power to see that

even physical beauty must have moral beauty behind it to be perfect.

Many men can’t see that, I think.”

“Is it their fault?”

“Yes.”

After another long silence she said:

“Spirit really is everything. Hermes tells me that almost as plainly as

the New Testament. Lots of people we know in London would laugh at me

for saying so, the people who talk of ‘being Greek’ and who never can be

Greek. And he stood between Doric columns. I’m trying to learn something

here.”

“What?”

“How to bring _him_ up if he ever comes.”

Dion felt for her hand.

They stayed on for a week at Drouva. Each evening Rosamund shot with

the boy of the wilderness, and they ate any birds that fell, at their

evening meal. The nights were given to the stars till sleep came. And

all the days were dedicated to Hermes, the child, and the sweet green

valley which served as a casket for the perfect jewel which the earth

had given up after centuries of possession. Since Rosamund had told the

dear secret of her heart, what she was trying to learn, Dion was able to

see her go in alone to the inner chamber without any secret jealousy or

any impatience. The given confidence had done its blessed work swiftly

and surely; the spring behind the action, revealed so simply, was

respected, was almost loved by Dion. Often he sat among the ruins alone,

smoking his pipe; or he wandered away after the call of the sheep-bells,

passing between the ruined walls overgrown with brambles and grasses and

mosses, shaded here and there by a solitary tree, and under the low arch

of the Athletes’ entrance into the great green space where the contests

had been held. Here he found the wearers of music feeding peacefully,

attended by a dreaming boy. With the Two in the Garden of Eden there

were happy animals. The sheep-bells ringing tranquilly in his ears made

Eden more real to him, and also more like something in one of the happy

dreams of a man.

A world that had risen to great heights of emotion in this valley was

dead, but that did not sadden him. He found it impossible to be sad in

Olympia, because his own life was so happy.

A delicious egoism, the birthright of his youth, had him safe in its

grasp. But sometimes, when Rosamund was alone in the room of the Hermes,

learning her lesson, and he was among the ruins, or walking above the

buried Stadium where the flocks were at pasture, he recalled the great

contests of the Athletes of ancient Greece; the foot-races which were

the original competitions at the games, the races in armor, the long

jumps, the wrestling matches, the discus and dart-throwing, the boxing

and the brutal _pankration_. And he remembered that at the Olympic

Games there were races for boys, for quite young boys. A boy had won at

Olympia who was only twelve years old. When Dion recalled that fact one

golden afternoon, it seemed to him that perhaps his lesson was to be

learnt among the feeding sheep in the valley, rather even than on the

hill where the Hermes dwelt. The father surely shapes one part of the

sacred clay of youth, while on the other part, with a greater softness,

a perhaps subtler care, the mother works.

He would try to make his boy sturdy and strong and courageous, swift

to the race of life; he would train his boy to be a victor, to be a boy

champion among other boys. Her son must not fail to win the crown of

wild olive. And when he was a man----! But at that point in his dreams

of the future Dion always pulled up. He could not see Rosamund as the

mother of a man, could not see Rosamund old. She would, of course, be

beautiful in old age, with a perhaps more spiritual beauty than she had

even now. He shut his eyes, tried to imagine her, to see her before him

with snow-white hair, a face perhaps etherealized by knowledge of life

and suffering; once he even called up the most perfect picture of old

age he knew of--the portrait of Whistler’s mother, calm, dignified,

gentle, at peace, with folded hands; but his efforts were in vain; he

simply could not see his Rosamund old. And so, because of that, he could

only see their child as a very young boy, wearing a boy’s crown of wild

olive, such as had once been won by the boy of twelve in the games at

Olympia.

The last day of their visit to the green wilds and the hilltops dawned,

still, cloudless and very hot. There was a light haze over Zante, and

the great plain held a look of sleep--not the sleep of night but of the

siesta, when the dreams come out of the sun, and descend through the

deep-blue corridors to visit those who are weary in the gold. Rosamund,

bareheaded, stood on the hill of Drouva and gazed towards the sea; her

arm was round her olive tree; she looked marvelously well, lithe and

strong, but her face was grave, held even a hint of sadness.

“Our last day here!” she said to Dion. “One more night with the stars,

only one! Dion, when you brought me here, you did a dangerous thing.”

“Gave you opportunities for regret? D’you mean that?”

She nodded, still gazing towards Zante.

“Such opportunities!”

“It couldn’t be helped. I had to bring you.”

“Of course. I know. If you had let me leave Greece without coming here,

and I had ever come to understand what I had missed, I don’t believe I

could have forgiven even you.”

“I always meant to bring you here.”

“But you had a sudden impulse, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why exactly did it come?”

He hesitated. Suddenly he felt reserved; but he broke through his

reserve and answered:

“I saw I had made you feel sad.”

“Did you? Why was that?”

“Don’t you remember?”

She was catching the dream of the plain, perhaps, for she replied, with

an almost preoccupied air:

“I don’t think so.”

“I wanted to make you happy again, very happy, to give you a treat as

quickly as possible. The idea of this”--he flung out a brown hand--“came

to me suddenly. That’s how it was. You--you don’t know how I wish to

keep every breath of sorrow out of your life.”

“I know you do; I feel it. But you’ve put a sorrow in.”

She spoke with a half-whimsical smile.

“Have I?”

“The sorrow of leaving all this, of leaving the Hermes. I didn’t know

it was possible to grow to care for a lifeless thing as I care for

him. Sometimes I believe the marble has actually retained nothing of

Praxiteles as a man. I mean as apart from a sculptor. But he must have

been full of almost divine feelings and conceptions, or he could never

have made my Hermes. No man can make the divine without having divinity

in him. I’ve learnt more here in these few days than I have learnt in

all my years.”

“From the statue of a Pagan. Isn’t that strange?”

“No, I don’t think so. For I was able to see the Christianity in it. I

know what Praxiteles was only able to feel mysteriously. Sometimes in

London I’ve heard people--you know the sort of people I mean--regretting

they didn’t live in the old Greek world.”

“I’ve regretted that.”

“Have you? But not in their way. When I look at the Hermes I feel very

thankful I have lived since.”

“Tell me just why.”

“Because I live in a world which has received definitely and finally the

message the Hermes knew before it was sent down.”

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

“Oh, Dion, I shall hate going away, leaving the tent and Drouva and him.

But I believe whenever I think of Olympia I shall feel the peace that,

thank God, doesn’t pass all understanding.”

They went down to the valley that day to pay their final visit to the

Hermes. Twilight had not yet come, but was not very far off when, for

the last time, they crossed the threshold of his chamber. More silent

than ever, more benignly silent, did the hush about him seem to Dion;

more profound were his peace and serenity. He and the child had surely

withdrawn a little farther from all that was not intended, but that, for

some inscrutable reason, had come to be. His winged sandals had carried

him still farther away. As Dion looked at him he seemed to be afar.

“Rosamund!”

“Yes?”

“This evening I have a feeling about the Hermes I’ve never had before.”

“What is it?”

“That he’s taking the child away, quite away.”

“But he’s always been here, and not here. That’s what I love so much.”

“I don’t mean quite that. It’s as if he were taking the child farther

and farther away, partly because of us.”

“I don’t like that. I don’t feel that at all.”

“We belong to this world, you see, and are subject to all its

conditions. We are in it and of it.”

“Well?”

“He belongs to such a different world.”

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

“The way he looks at Dionysos tells one that. He hasn’t any fear for the

boy’s future when he grows up and comes to know things. It just strikes

me that no human being who thinks could ever look at a human child like

that. There would always be the fear behind--‘What is life going to do

to the child?’”

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

“D’you think we should feel that?”

“Surely.”

“Unless we got the serene courage of the Hermes.”

“But he lived among gods, and we live among men.”

“Not always.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Perhaps some day you will,” she answered.

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

At that moment the atmosphere in the room of the Hermes seemed to Dion

more full of peace even than before, but the peace was like something

almost tangible. It troubled him a little because he felt that the

Hermes, the child and Rosamund were of it, while he was not. They were

surrounded by the atmosphere necessary to them, and to which they were

mysteriously accustomed, while he was for the first time in such an

atmosphere. He felt separated from Rosamund by a gulf, perhaps very

narrow, but probably very deep.

Over Elis the twilight was falling, a green twilight sylvan and very

ethereal, tremulous in its delicate beauty. It stole through the green

doors, and down through the murmuring pine trees; it crossed the shallow

river, and made its way to the garden of ruins where once the Hermes had

stood between Doric Columns in the Heraeon. Through the colonnade of the

echoes it passed, and under the arch of the Athletes. Over the crude and

almost terrible strength of the ruins of the temple of Zeus it let its

green garments trail down, as it felt its way softly but surely to the

buried Stadium where once a boy of twelve had won the crown of wild

olive. The sheep-bells were ringing softly; the flocks were going

homeward from pasture. They were making their way up the valley now at

the base of the Kronos Hill, and the chime of their little bells mingled

with the wide whispering of the eternities among the summits of the pine

trees. Music of earth mingled with the music from a distance that knew

what the twilight knew.

The tall oblong of the Museum doorway on the hill framed a tiny picture

of Elis, bathed in green and tremulous light; a small section of

hillside, a fragment of empty, poetic country--Pan’s world rather hinted

at than revealed--a suggestion of evening sky, remote, with infinity

lost in its distance. But there was no branch of wild olive flickering

across the picture.

Rosamund missed it as she looked from the room of the Hermes out to the

whispering evening and the quiet vale of Olympia. But she did not say

so to Dion. He thought of it too, as he looked at her, and he tried to

forget it. The picture framed by the doorway strangely grew dimmer and

yet more full of greenish light; the country of Pan was fading in light.

Presently details were entirely lost. Only an oblong of green, now

almost emerald, light showed from the chamber of the Hermes. And in that

chamber the two marble figures were gradually fading; the athletic, yet

miraculously graceful, messenger of the gods with the winged sandals,

the tiny child clinging to his shoulder with one little arm stretched

out in an enchanting gesture of desire. Still the child nestled against

Hermes, and still Hermes contemplated the child, with a celestial

benignity, a half-smiling calmness of other worlds than this.

In the vestibule of the Emperors the guardian waited patiently. He was

not accustomed to visitors who lingered on like these two English,

when the light was failing, and surely it must be difficult, if not

impossible, to see the statues properly. But Rosamund, with her usual

lack of all effort, had captivated him. He had grown accustomed to her

visits; he was even flattered by them. It pleased him subtly to have in

his care a treasure such as the Hermes, to see which beautiful women,

the Rosamunds of the world, traveled from far-off countries. Rosamund’s

perpetual, and prolonged, visits had made him feel more important than

he had ever succeeded in feeling before. Let the night come, she might

stay on there, if she chose. He took very little account of Dion. But

Rosamund was beginning to assume a certain vital importance in his quiet

life.

The green light faded into a very dim primrose; the music of the

sheep-bells drew near and died away among the small houses of the

hamlet at the foot of the hill of Drouva; Elis withdrew itself into the

obscurity that would last till the late coming of the waning moon. Of

Hermes and Dionysos now only the attitudes could be seen faintly. But

even they told of a golden age, an age from which everything ugly,

everything violent, everything unseemly, everything insincere,

everything cruel was blotted out--an age of serenity of body and soul,

the age of the long peace.

“He’s gone,” said Dion at last.

Rosamund got up slowly.

“You think he’s taken away the child because of us?”

There was an almost pathetic sound in her voice, but there was a smile

in it too.

“You remember my stupid remark?”

“Perhaps it wasn’t stupid. I think those who dare to have a child ought

to keep very near to the world Hermes walks in. They mayn’t wear wings

on their sandals, but the earth oughtn’t to hold their feet too fast.

Hermes has taught me.”

“No one could ever want to take a child away from you,” he answered.

In the vestibule of the Emperors they bade good-by to the guardian of

the Museum, and made him understand that on the morrow they would be

gone.

As he looked at Dion’s gift he felt for a moment almost depressed. He

was accustomed to his constant visitor. Surely he would miss her. She

smiled on him with her warm and very human cordiality for the last time,

and went away, with her companion, into the dimness towards the hill of

Drouva. Then the guardian pulled the great door. It closed with a final

sound. The key was turned. And Hermes was left untroubled in that world

where wings grow out of the sandals.

BOOK II -- ECHO

CHAPTER I

Robin, whose other name was Gabriel, arrived at the “little house,” of

which Rosamund had spoken to Dion upon the hill of Drouva, early in the

following year, on the last night of February to be exact. For a long

time before his coming his future home had been subtly permeated by an

atmosphere of expectancy.

No. 5 Little Market Street was in Westminster, not far from the river

and the Houses of Parliament, yet in a street which looked almost

remote, and which was often very quiet although close to great arteries

of life. Dion sometimes thought it almost too dusky a setting for his

Rosamund, but it was she who had chosen it, and they had both become

quickly fond of it. It was a house with white paneling, graceful

ceilings and carved fireplaces, and a shallow staircase of oak. There

was a tiny but welcoming hall, and the landing on the first floor

suggested potpourri, chintz-covered settees, and little curtains of

chintz moved by a country wind coming through open windows. There were,

in fact, chintz-covered settees, and there was potpourri. Rosamund had

taken care about that; she had also taken care about many other little

things which most London housewives, perhaps, think unworthy of their

attention. Every day, for instance, she burnt lavender about the house,

and watched the sweet smoke in tiny wreaths curling up from the small

shovel, as she gently moved it to and fro, with a half smile of what she

called “rustic satisfaction.” She laid lavender in the cupboards and in

the chests of drawers, and, when she bought flowers, chose by preference

cottage garden flowers, if she could get them, sweet williams, pansies,

pinks, wallflowers, white violets, stocks, Canterbury bells. Sometimes

she came home with wild flowers, and had once given a little dinner

with foxgloves for a table decoration. An orchid, a gardenia, even a

hyacinth, was never to be seen in the little house. Rosamund confessed

that hyacinths had a lovely name, and that they suggested spring, but

she added that they smelt as if they had always lived in hothouses, and

were quite ready to be friends with gardenias.

She opened her windows. In this she was almost too rigorous for her

maid-servants, who nevertheless adored her. “Plenty of warmth but plenty

of air,” was her prescription for a comfortable and healthy house, “and

not too much or too many of anything.” Dust, of course, was not to be

known of in her dwelling, but “blacks” were accepted with a certain

resignation as a natural chastening and a message from London.

“They aren’t our fault, Annie,” she had been known to observe to the

housemaid. “And dust can’t be anything else, however you look at it, can

it?” And Annie said, “Well, no, ma’am!” and, when she came to think of

it, felt she had not been a liar in the moment of speaking.

Rosamund never “splashed,” or tried to make a show in her house, and

she was very careful never to exceed their sufficient, but not large,

income; but the ordinary things, those things which of necessity come

into the scheme of everyday life, were always of the very best when she

provided them. Dion declared, and really believed, perhaps with reason,

that no tea was so fragrant, no bread and butter so delicious, no toast

so crisp, as theirs; no other linen felt so cool and fresh to the body

as the linen on the beds of the little house; no other silver glittered

so brightly as the silver on their round breakfast-table; no other

little white window curtains in London managed to look so perennially

fresh, and almost blithe, as the curtains which hung at their windows.

Rosamund and Annie might have conversations together on the subject of

“blacks,” but Dion never saw any of these distressing visitants.

The mere thought of Rosamund would surely keep them at a more than

respectful distance.

She proved to be a mistress of detail, and a housekeeper whose

enthusiasm was matched by her competence. At first Dion had been rather

surprised when he followed from afar, as is becoming in a man, this

development. Before they settled down in London he had seen in Rosamund

the enthusiastic artist, the joyous traveler, the good comrade, the gay

sportswoman touched with Amazonian glories; he had known in her the deep

lover of pure beauty; he had divined in her something else, a little

strange, a little remote, the girl to whom the “Paradiso” was a

door opening into dreamland, the girl who escaped sometimes almost

mysteriously into regions he knew nothing of; but he had not seen in her

one capable of absolutely reveling in the humdrum. Evidently, then, he

had not grasped the full meaning of a genuine _joie de vivre_.

To everything she did Rosamund brought zest. She kept house as she sang

“The heart ever faithful,” holding nothing back. Everything must be

right if she could get it right; and the husband got the benefit,

incidentally. Now and then Dion found himself mentally murmuring that

word. A great love will do such things unreasonably. For Rosamund’s

_joie de vivre_, that gift of the gods, caused her to love and rejoice

in a thing for the thing’s own sake, as it seemed, rather than for the

sake of some one, any one, who was eventually to gain by the thing.

Thus she cared for her little house with a sort of joyous devotion and

energy, but because it was “my little house” and deserved every care

she could give it. Rather as she had spoken of the small olive tree on

Drouva, of the Hermes of Olympia, even of Athens, she spoke of it, with

a sort of protective affection, as if she thought of it as a living

thing confided to her keeping. She possessed a faculty not very common

in women, a delight in doing a thing for its own sake, rather than for

the sake of some human being--perhaps a man. If she boiled an egg--she

went to the kitchen and did this sometimes--she seemed personally

interested in the egg, and keenly anxious to do the best by it; the

boiling must be a pleasure to her, but also to the egg, and it must,

if possible, be supremely well done. As the cook once said, after a

culinary effort by Rosamund, “I never seen a lady care for cooking and

all such-like as she done. If she as much as plucked a fowl, you’d swear

she loved every feather of it. And as to a roast, she couldn’t hardly

seem to set more store by it if it was her own husband.”

Such a spirit naturally made for comfort in a house, and Dion had never

before been so comfortable. Nevertheless--and he knew it with a keen

savoring of appreciation--there was a Spartan touch to be felt in the

little house. Comfort walked hand in hand with Rosamund, but so did

simplicity; she was what the maids called “particular,” but she was not

luxurious; she even disliked luxury, connecting it with superfluity,

for which she had a feeling amounting almost to repulsion. “I detest the

sensation of sinking down in _things_,” was a favorite saying of hers;

and the way she lived proved that she spoke the sheer truth.

All through the house, and all through the way of life in it, there

prevailed a “note” of simplicity, even of plainness. The odd thing,

perhaps, was that it pleased almost every one who visited the young

couple. A certain well-known man, noted as a Sybarite, clever, decadent

and sought after, once got into the house, he pretended by stealth,

and spent half an hour there in conversation with Rosamund. He came way

“acutely conscious of my profound vulgarity,” as he explained later to

various friends. “Her house revealed to me the hideous fact that all the

best houses in London smack of cocotte-try; the trail of cushions and

liqueurs is over them all. Mrs. Leith’s house is a vestal, and its lamp

is always trimmed.” Daventry’s comment on this was: “Trimmed--yes, but

trimmings--no!”

Even Esme Darlington highly approved of the “charming sobriety of No. 5

Little Market Street,” although he had had no hand in its preparation,

no voice in the deciding of its colors, its stuffs, its rugs, or its

stair-rods. He was even heard to declare that “our dear Rosamund is

almost the only woman I know who has the precious instinct of reticence;

an instinct denied, by the way, even to that delightful and marvelous

creature Elizabeth Browning--_requiescat_.”

The “charming sobriety” was shown in various ways; in a lack of those

enormous cushions which most women either love, or think necessary, in

all sitting-rooms; in the comparative smallness of such sofas as were to

be seen; in the moderation of depth in arm-chairs, and in the complete

absence of footstools. Then the binding of the many books, scattered

about here and there, and ranged on shelves, was “quiet”; there was no

scarlet and gold, or bright blue and gold; pictures were good but few;

not many rugs lay on the polished wooden floors, and there was no

litter of ornaments or bibelots on cabinets or tables. A couple of small

statuettes, copies of bronzes in the Naples Museum, and some bits of

blue-and-white china made their pleasant effect the more easily because

they had not to fight against an army of rivals. There was some good

early English glass in the small dining-room, and a few fine specimens

of luster ware made a quiet show in Dion’s little den. Apart from the

white curtains, and outer curtains of heavier material, which hung at

all the windows, there were no “draperies.” Overmantels, “cosy-corners,”

flung Indian shawls, “pieces” snatched from bazaars, and “carelessly”

hung over pedestals and divans found no favor in Rosamund’s eyes.

There was a good deal of homely chintz about which lit up the rather

old-fashioned rooms, and colors throughout the house were rather soft

than hard, were never emphatic or designed to startle or impress.

Rosamund, indeed, was by far the most vivid thing in the house, and

some people--not males--said she had taken care to supply for herself

a background which would “throw her up.” These people, if they believed

what they said, did not know her.

She had on the first floor a little sitting-room all to herself; in this

were now to be found the books which had been in her bedroom in Great

Cumberland Place; the charwoman’s black tray with the cabbage rose,

the mug from Greenwich, the flesh-colored vase, the china cow, the toy

trombone, and other souvenirs of her girlhood to which Rosamund “held.”

On the brass-railed shelf of the writing-table stood a fine photogravure

of the Hermes of Olympia with little Dionysos on his arm. Very often,

many times every day, Rosamund looked up at Hermes and the Child from

account books, letters or notes, and then the green dream of Elis fell

about her softly again; and sometimes she gazed beyond the Hermes, but

instead of the wall of the chamber she saw, set in an oblong frame, and

bathed in green twilight, a bit of the world of Pan, with a branch of

wild olive flickering across the foreground; or, now and then, she saw

a falling star, dropping from its place in the sky down towards a green

wilderness, and carrying a wish from her with it, a wish that was surely

soon to be granted. Her life in the little house had been a happy life

hitherto, but--she looked again at the little Dionysos on the arm of

Hermes, nestling against his shoulder--how much happier it was going to

be, how much happier! She was not surprised, for deep in her heart she

always expected happiness.

People had been delightful to her and to Dion. Indeed, they had flocked

to the small green door (the Elis door) of 5 Little Market Street in

almost embarrassing numbers. That was partly Mr. Darlington’s fault.

Naturally Rosamund’s and Bruce Evelin’s friends came; and of course

Dion’s relations and friends came. That would really have been enough.

Rosamund enjoyed, but was not at all “mad about,” society, and had no

wish to give up the greater part of her time to paying calls. But

Mr. Darlington could not forbear from kind efforts on behalf of his

delightful young friends, that gifted and beautiful creature Rosamund

Leith, and her pleasant young husband. He, who found time for

everything, found time to give more than one “little party, just a few

friends, no more,” specially for them; and the end of it was that

they found themselves acquainted with almost too many interesting and

delightful people.

At first, too, Rosamund continued to sing at concerts, but at the end of

July, after their return from Greece, when the London season closed,

she gave up doing so for the time, and accepted no engagements for the

autumn. Esme Darlington was rather distressed. He worked very hard in

the arts himself, and, having “launched” Rosamund, he expected great

things of her, and wished her to go forward from success to success.

Besides “the money would surely come in very handy” to two young

people as yet only moderately well off. He did not quite understand the

situation. Of course he realized that in time young married people

might have home interests, home claims upon them which might necessitate

certain changes of procedure. The day might come--he sincerely hoped it

would--when a new glory, possibly even more than one, would be added to

the delightful Rosamund’s crown; but in the meanwhile surely the autumn

concerts need not be neglected. He had heard no hint as yet of any--h’m,

ha! He stroked his carefully careless beard. But he had left town in

August with his curiosity unsatisfied, leaving Rosamund and Dion behind

him. They had had their holiday, and had stayed steadily on in Little

Market Street through the summer, taking Saturday to Monday runs into

the country; more than once to the seacoast of Kent, where Bruce Evelin

and Beatrice were staying, and once to Worcestershire to Dion’s mother,

who had taken a cottage there close to the borders of Warwickshire. The

autumn had brought people back to town, and it was in the autumn that

Rosamund withdrew from all contact with the hurly-burly of London. She

had no fears at all for her body, none of those sick terrors which some

women have as their time draws near, no premonitions of disaster or

presages of death, but she desired to “get ready,” and her way of

getting ready was to surround her life with a certain stillness, to

build about it white walls of peace. Often when Dion was away in the

City she went out alone and visited some church. Sometimes she spent an

hour or two in Westminster Abbey; and on many dark afternoons she made

her way to St. Paul’s Cathedral where, sitting a long way from the

choir, she listened to evensong. The beautiful and tenderly cool singing

of the distant boys came to her like something she needed, something to

which her soul was delicately attuned. One afternoon they and the men,

who formed the deeply melodious background from which their crystalline

voices seemed to float forward and upward, sang “The Wilderness” of

Wesley. Rosamund listened to it, thankful that she was alone, and

remembering many things, among them the green wilderness beneath the

hill of Drouva.

Very seldom she spoke to Dion about these excursions of hers. There was

something in her feeling for religion which loved reserve rather than

expression; she who was so forthcoming in many moments of her life, who

was genial and gay, who enjoyed laughter and was always at home with

humanity, knew very well how to be silent. There was a saying she cared

for, “God speaks to man in the silence;” perhaps she felt there was a

suspicion of irreverence in talking to any one, even to Dion, about

her aspiration to God. If, on his return home, he asked her how she had

passed the day, she often said only, “I’ve been very happy.” Then he

said to himself, “What more can I want? I’m able to make her happy.”

One windy evening in January, when an icy sleet was driving over the

town, as he came into the little hall, he found Rosamund at the foot of

the staircase, with a piece of mother’s work in her hand, about to go

into the drawing-room which was on the ground floor of the house.

“Rose,” he said, looking down at the little white something she was

holding, “do you think we shall both feel ever so much older in March?

It will be in March, won’t it?”

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

“In March when we are parents?”

“Are you worrying about that?” she asked him, smiling now, but with, in

her voice, a hint of reproach.

“Worrying--no. But do you?”

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

When they were there she answered him:

“Absolutely different, but not necessarily older. Feeling older must be

very like feeling old, I think--and I can’t imagine feeling old.”

“Because probably you never will.”

“Have you had tea, Dion?”

“Yes, at the Greville. I promised I’d meet Guy there to-day. He spoke

about Beattie.”

“Yes?”

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

“I don’t know.”

She sat down in the firelight near the hearth, and bent a little over

her work on the tiny garment, which looked as if it were intended for

the use of a fairy. Dion looked at her head with its pale hair. As he

leaned forward he could see all the top of her head. The firelight made

some of her hair look quite golden, gave a sort of soft sparkle to the

curve of it about her broad, pure forehead.

“Guy’s getting desperate,” he said. “But he’s afraid to put his fortune

to the test. He thinks even uncertainty is better than knowledge of the

worst.”

“Of one thing I’m certain, Dion. Beattie doesn’t love Guy Daventry.”

“Oh well, then, it’s all up.”

Rosamund looked up from the little garment.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But if Beattie--but Beattie’s the soul of sincerity.”

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

“But why?”

“I don’t know exactly. She never told me. I just feel it.”

“Oh, if you feel it, I’m sure it is so. But how awfully odd. Isn’t it?”

“Yes, it really is rather odd in Beattie. Do you want Beattie to marry

Guy Daventry?”

“Of course I do. Don’t you?”

“Dear Beattie! I want her to be happy. But I think it’s very difficult,

even when one knows some one very, very well, to know just how she can

get happiness, through just what.”

“Rose, have I made you happy?”

“Yes.”

“As happy as you could be?”

“I think, perhaps, you will have--soon.”

“Oh, you mean----?”

“Yes.”

She went on stitching quietly. Her hands looked very contented. Dion

drew up a little nearer to the fire with a movement that was rather

brusk. It just struck him that his walk home in the driving sleet had

decidedly chilled his body.

“I believe I know what you mean about Beattie,” he said, after a pause,

looking into the fire. “But do you think that would be fair to Guy?”

“I’m not quite sure myself what I mean, honestly, Dion.”

“Well, let’s suppose it. If it were so, would it be fair?”

“I think Beattie’s so really good that Mr. Daventry, as he loves her,

could scarcely be unhappy with her.”

Dion thought for a moment, then he said:

“Perhaps with Guy it wouldn’t be unfair, but, you know, Rose, that sort

of thing wouldn’t do with some men. Some men could never stand being

married for anything but the one great reason.”

He did not explain what that reason was, and Rosamund did not ask. There

was a sort of wide and sweet tranquillity about her that evening. Dion

noticed that it seemed to increase upon her, and about her, as the days

passed by. She showed no sign of nervousness, had evidently no dread at

all of bodily pain. Either she trusted in her splendid health, or she

was so wrapped up in the thought of the joy of being a mother that

the darkness to be passed through did not trouble her; or perhaps--he

wondered about this--she was all the time schooling herself, looking up,

in memory, to the columns of the Parthenon. He was much more strung up,

much more restless and excitable than she was, but she did not seem to

notice it. Always singularly unconscious of herself she seemed at this

period to be also unobservant of those about her. He felt that she was

being deliberately egoistic for a great reason, that she was caring for

herself, soul and body, with a sort of deep and quiet intensity because

of the child.

“She is right,” he said to himself, and he strove in all ways in his

power to aid her beautiful selfishness; nevertheless sometimes he felt

shut out; sometimes he felt as if already the unseen was playing truant

over the seen. He was conscious of the child’s presence in the little

house through Rosamund’s way of being before he saw the child. He

wondered what other women were like in such periods, whether Rosamund

was instinctively conforming to an ancient tradition of her sex, or

whether she was, as usual, strongly individualistic. In many ways she

was surely not like other women, but perhaps in these wholly natural

crises every woman resembled all her sisters who were traveling towards

the same sacred condition. He longed to satisfy himself whether this was

so or not, and one Saturday afternoon, when Rosamund was resting in her

little sitting-room with a book, and the Hermes watching over her, he

bicycled to Jenkins’s gymnasium in the Harrow Road, resolved to put in

forty minutes’ hard work, and then to visit his mother. Mrs. Leith and

Rosamund seemed to be excellent friends, but Dion never discussed his

wife with his mother. There was no reason why he should do so. On this

day, however, instinctively he turned to his mother; he thought that she

might help him towards a clearer knowledge of Rosamund.

Rosamund had long ago been formally made known to Bob Jenkins, Jim’s

boxing “coach,” who enthusiastically approved of her, though he had

never ventured to put his opinion quite in that form to Dion. Even

Jenkins, perhaps, had his subtleties, those which a really good heart

cannot rid itself of. Rosamund, in return, had made Dion known to her

extraordinary friend, Mr. Thrush of Abingdon Buildings, John’s Court,

near the Edgware Road, the old gentleman who went to fetch his sin every

evening, and, it is to be feared, at various other times also, in a jug

from the “Daniel Lambert.” Dion had often laughed over Rosamund’s “cult”

for Mr. Thrush, which he scarcely pretended to understand, but Rosamund

rejoiced in Dion’s cult for the stalwart Jenkins.

“I like that man,” she said. “Perhaps some day----” She stopped there,

but her face was eloquent.

In his peculiar way Jenkins was undoubtedly Doric, and therefore

deserving of Rosamund’s respect. Of Mr. Thrush so much could hardly be

said with truth. In him there were to be found neither the stern majesty

and strength of the Doric, nor the lightness and grace of the Ionic.

As an art product he stood alone, always wearing the top hat, a figure

Degas might have immortalized but had unfortunately never seen. Dion

knew that Mr. Thrush had once rescued Rosamund in a fog and had conveyed

her home, and he put the rest of the Thrush matter down to Rosamund’s

genial kindness towards downtrodden and unfortunate people. He loved her

for it, but could not help being amused by it.

When Dion arrived at the gymnasium, Jenkins was giving a lesson to a

small boy of perhaps twelve years old, whose mother was looking eagerly

on. The boy, clad in a white “sweater,” was flushed with the ardor of

his endeavors to punch the ball, to raise himself up on the bar till

his chin was between his hands, to vault the horse neatly, and to turn

somersaults on the rings. The primrose-colored hair on his small round

head was all ruffled up, perspiration streamed over his pink rosy

cheeks, his eyes shone with determination, and his little white teeth

were gritted as, with all the solemn intensity of childhood, he strove

to obey on the instant Jenkins’s loud words of command. It was obvious

that he looked to Jenkins as a savage looks to his Tribal God. His

anxious but admiring mother was forgotten; the world was forgotten;

Jenkins and the small boy were alone in a universe of grip dumb-bells,

heavy weights, “exercisers,” boxing-gloves, horizontal bars, swinging

balls and wooden “horses.” Dion stood in the doorway and looked on till

the lesson was finished. It ended with a heavy clap on the small boy’s

shoulders from the mighty paw of Jenkins, and a stentorian, “You’re

getting along and no mistake, Master Tim!”

The face of Master Tim at this moment was a study. All the flags of

triumph and joy were hung out in it and floated on the breeze; a

soul appeared at the two windows shining with perfect happiness;

and, mysteriously, in all the little figure, from the ruffled

primrose-colored feathers of hair to the feet in the white shoes, the

pride of manhood looked forth through the glowing rapture of a child.

“What a jolly boy!” said Dion to Jenkins, when Master Tim and his mother

had departed. “It must be good to have a boy like that.”

“I hope you’ll have one some day, sir,” said Jenkins, speaking heartily

in his powerful voice, but looking, for the moment, unusually severe.

He and Bert, his wife, had had one child, a girl, which had died of

quinsy, and they had never had another.

“Now I’m ready for you, sir!” he added, with a sort of outburst of

recovery. “I should like a round with the gloves to-day, if it’s all the

same to you.”

It was all the same to Dion, and, when he reached Queen Anne’s Mansions

in the darkness of evening, he was still glowing from the exercise; the

blood sang through his veins, and his heart was almost as light as his

step.

Marion, the parlor-maid, let him in, and told him his mother was at

home. Dion put his hand to his lips, stole across the hall noiselessly,

softly opened the drawing-room door, and caught his mother unawares.

Whenever he came into the well-known flat alone, he had a moment of

retrogression, went back to his unmarried time, and was again, as for so

many years, in the intimate life of his mother. But to-day, as he opened

the door, he was abruptly thrust out of his moment. His mother was in

her usual place on the high-backed sofa near the fire. She was doing

nothing, was just sitting with her hands, in their wrinkled gloves,

folded in her lap, and her large, round blue eyes looking. Dion thought

of them as looking because they were wide open, but they were strangely

emptied of expression. All of his mother seemed to him for just the one

instant which followed on his entrance to be emptied, as if the woman he

had always known--loving, satirical, clever, kind, observant--had been

poured away. The effect upon him was one of indescribable, almost of

horrible, dreariness. Omar Khayyam, his mother’s black pug, was not in

the room as usual, stretched out before the fire.

Even as Dion realized this, his mother was poured back into the round

face and plump figure beside the fire, and greeted him with the usual

almost saccharine sweet smile, and:

“Dee-ar, I wasn’t expecting you to-day. How is the beloved one?”

“The beloved one” was Mrs. Leith’s rendering of Rosamund.

“How particularly spry you look,” she added. “I’m certain it’s the

Jenkins paragon. You’ve been standing up to him. Now, haven’t you?”

Dion acknowledged that he had, and added:

“But you, mother? How are you?”

“Quite wickedly well. I ought to be down with influenza like all

well-bred people,--Esme Darlington has it badly,--but I cannot compass

even one sneeze.”

“Where’s Omar?”

Mrs. Leith looked grave.

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

“What--you don’t mean----?”

“Run over yesterday just outside the Mansions, and by a four-wheeler.

I’m sure he never expected that the angel of death would come for him in

a growler, poor little fellow.”

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

He sat down beside her; he was beset by a sensation of calamity. Oddly

enough the hammer of fate had never yet struck on him so definitely as

now with the death of a dog. But, without quite realizing it, he was

considering poor black Omar as an important element in his mother’s

life, now abruptly withdrawn. Omar had been in truth a rather greedy,

self-seeking animal, but he had also been a companion, an adherent, a

friend.

“You must get another dog,” Dion added quickly. “I’ll find you one.”

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

“What nonsense!”

“It isn’t. I feel I’m losing my nameless fascination for dogs. A poodle

barked at me this afternoon in Victoria Street. One can’t expect one’s

day to last for ever, though, really, some Englishwomen seem to. But,

tell me, how is the beloved one?”

“Oh--to be sure! I wanted to talk to you about Rose.”

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

face.

“There’s nothing wrong, I’m sure. Your Rosamund sheds confidence in her

dear self like a light all round her.”

“Nothing wrong--no. I didn’t mean that.”

Dion paused. Now he was with his mother he did not know how to explain

himself; his reason for coming began to seem, even to himself, a little

vague.

“It’s a little difficult,” he began at last, “but I’ve been wondering

rather about women who are as Rosamund is just now. D’you think all

women become a good deal alike at such times?”

“In spirit, do you mean?”

“Well--yes, of course.”

“I scarcely know.”

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

“Many smart women certainly don’t.”

“Oh, smart women! I mean women.”

“A good definition, dee-ar. Well, lots of poor women don’t concentrate

on the child either. They have far too much to do and worry about. They

are ‘seeing to’ things up till the very last moment.”

“Then we must rule them out. Let’s say the good women who have the

time.”

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

“Ah!” said Dion rather sharply.

“There are a few husbands, you see, who get fidgety directly the

pedestal on which number one thinks himself firmly established begins to

shake.”

“Stupid fools!”

“Eminently human stupid fools.”

“Are they?”

“Don’t you think so?”

“Perhaps. But then humanity’s contemptible.”

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

“What do you mean exactly by that, mater?”

“Only that we have to be as we are, and can never really be, can only

seem to be, as we aren’t.”

“What a whipping I’m giving to myself just now!” was her thought, as she

finished speaking.

“Oh--yes, of course. That’s true. I think--I think Rosamund’s

concentrating on the child, in a sort of quiet, big way.”

“There’s something fine in that. But her doings are often touched with

fineness.”

“Yes, aren’t they? She doesn’t seem at all afraid.”

“I don’t think she need be. She has such splendid health.”

“But she may suffer very much.”

“Yes, but something will carry her gloriously through all that, I

expect.”

“And you think it’s very natural, very usual, her--her sort of living

alone with the child before it is born?”

Mrs. Leith saw in her son’s eyes an unmistakably wistful look at this

moment. It was very hard for her not to take him in her arms just then,

not to say, “My son, d’you suppose I don’t understand it all--_all_?”

But she never moved, her hands lay still in her lap, and she replied:

“Very natural, quite natural, Dion. Your Rosamund is just being

herself.”

“You think she’s able to live with the child already?”

Mrs. Leith hesitated for a moment. In that moment certainly she felt a

strong, even an almost terrible inclination to tell a lie to her son.

But she answered:

“Yes, I do.”

“That must be very strange,” was all that Dion said just then; but a

little later on--he stayed with his mother longer than usual that day

because poor little Omar was dead--he remarked:

“D’you know, mater, I believe it’s the right thing to be what’s called a

thorough-paced egoist at certain moments, in certain situations.”

“Perhaps it is,” said his mother incuriously.

“I fancy there’s a good deal of rot talked about egoism and that sort of

thing.”

“There’s a good deal of rot talked about most things.”

“Yes, isn’t there? And besides, how is one to know? Very often what

seems like egoism may not be egoism at all. As I grow older I often feel

how important it is to search out the real reasons for things.”

“Sometimes they’re difficult to find,” returned his mother, with an

unusual simplicity of manner.

“Yes, but still----Well, I must be off.”

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

“When are you coming to see us?” he asked.

“Almost directly, dee-ar.”

“That’s right. Rosamund likes seeing you. Naturally she depends upon you

at such----” He broke off. “I mean, do come as often as you can.”

He bent down and kissed his mother.

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

“What dog, dee-ar?”

“The dog I want to give you.”

“We must think about it. Give me time. After a black pug one doesn’t

know all in a moment what type would be the proper successor. You

remember your poor Aunt Binn?”

“Aunt Binn! Why, what did she do?”

“Gave Uncle Binn a hairless thing like a note of interrogation, that had

to sleep in a coating of vaseline, when his enormous sheep-dog died who

couldn’t see for hair. She believed in the value of contrast, but

Uncle Binn didn’t. It would have led to a separation but for the hectic

efforts of your aunt’s friend, Miss Vine. When I’ve decided what type of

dog, I’ll tell you.”

Dion understood the negative and, in spite of his feeling of fitness,

went away rather uncomfortably. He couldn’t forget the strange

appearance of that emptied woman whom he had taken unawares by the

fireside. If only his mother would let him give her another dog!

When he got home he found Beatrice sitting with Rosamund.

Dion had grown very fond of Beatrice. He had always been rather touched

and attracted by her plaintive charm, but since she had become his

sister-in-law he had learnt to appreciate also her rare sincerity and

delicacy of mind. She could not grip life, perhaps, could not mold it to

her purpose and desire, but she could do a very sweet and very feminine

thing, she could live, without ever being intrusive, in the life of

another. It was impossible not to see how “wrapped up” she was in

Rosamund. Dion had come to feel sure that it was natural to Beatrice to

lead her life in another’s, and he believed that Rosamund realized this

and often let Beatrice do little things for her which, full of vigor and

“go” as she was, she would have preferred to do for herself.

“I’ve been boxing and then to see mother,” he said, as he took

Beatrice’s long narrow hand in his. “She sent her best love to you,

Rosamund.”

“The dear mother!” said Rosamund gently.

Dion sat down by Beatrice.

“I’m quite upset by something that’s happened,” he continued. “You know

poor little Omar, Beattie?”

“Yes. Is he ill?”

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

“Oh!” said Beatrice.

“Poor little dog,” Rosamund said, again gently.

“When they picked him up--are you going, Rose?”

“Only for a few minutes. I am sorry. I’ll write to the dear mother.”

She went quietly out of the room. Dion sprang up to open the door for

her, but she had been sitting nearer to the door than he, and he was too

late; he shut it, however, and came slowly back to Beatrice.

“I wonder----” He looked at Beatrice’s pale face and earnest dark eyes.

“D’you think Rosamund disliked my mentioning poor Omar’s being killed?”

“No.”

“But didn’t she leave us rather abruptly?”

“I think perhaps she didn’t want to hear any details. You were just

beginning to--”

“How stupid of me!”

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

“Yes--yes. What blunderers we men are, however much we try--”

“That’s not a blame you ought to take,” Beatrice interrupted, with

earnest gentleness. “You are the most thoughtful man I know--for a

woman, I mean.”

Dion flushed.

“Am I? I try to be. If I am it’s because--well, Beattie, you know what

Rose is to me.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Dearer and dearer every day. But nobody----Mother thinks a lot of her.”

“Who doesn’t? There aren’t many Roses like ours.”

“None. Poor mother! Beattie, d’you think she feels very lonely? You know

she’s got heaps of friends--heaps.”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t as if she knew very few people, or lived alone in the

country.”

“No but I’m very sorry her little dog’s dead.”

“I want to give her another.”

“It would be no use.”

“But why not?”

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

“Well?”

“He was part of her life with you.”

“Oh--yes.”

Dion looked rather hard at Beatrice. In that moment he began to realize

how much of the intelligence of the heart she possessed, and how widely

she applied it. His application of his intelligence of the heart was, he

feared, much less widespread than hers.

“Go to see mother when you can, will you?” he said. “She’s very fond of

you, I think.”

“I’ll go. I like going to her.”

“And, Beattie, may I say something rather intimate? I’m your brother

now.”

“Yes.”

She was sitting opposite to him near the fire on a low chair. There was

a large shaded lamp in the room, but it was on a rather distant table.

He saw Beatrice’s face by the firelight and her narrow thoroughbred

figure in a dark dress. And the firelight, he thought, gave to both face

and figure a sort of strange beauty that was sad, and that had something

of the strangeness and the beauty of those gold and red castles children

see in the fire. They glow--and that evening there was a sort of glow

in Beatrice; they crumble--and then there was a pathetic something in

Beatrice, too, which suggested wistful desires, perhaps faint hopes and

an ending of ashes.

“Would you marry old Guy if he asked you? Don’t be angry with me.”

“I’m not.”

“Of course, we’ve all known for ages how much he cares for you. He spoke

to me about it to-day. He’s desperately afraid of your refusing him. He

daren’t put his fate to the test. Beattie--would you?”

A slow red crept over Beatrice’s face. She put up one hand to guard

herself from the glow of the fire. For a moment she looked at Dion, and

he thought, “What a strange expression firelight can give to a face!”

Then she said:

“I can’t tell you.”

Her voice was husky.

“Beattie, you’ve got a cold!”

“Have I?”

She got up.

“I must go, Dion. I’ll just see Rosamund for a minute.”

As she left the room, she said:

“I’ll go and see your mother to-morrow.”

The door shut. Dion stood with one elbow resting on the mantelpiece and

looked down into the fire. He saw his mother sitting alone, a strange,

emptied figure; he saw Beatrice. And fire, which beautifies, or makes

romantic and sad everything gave to Beatrice the look of his mother. For

a moment his soul was full of questions about the two women.

CHAPTER II

“I’ve joined the Artists’ Rifles,” Dion said to Rosamund one day.

He spoke almost bruskly. Of late he had begun to develop a manner

which had just a hint of roughness in it sometimes. This manner was the

expression of a strong inward effort he was making. If, as his mother

believed, already Rosamund was able to live with the child, Dion’s

solitary possession of the woman he loved was definitely over, probably

forever. Something within him which, perhaps, foolishly, rebelled

against this fact had driven him to seek a diversion; he had found it in

beginning to try to live for the child in the man’s way. He intended to

put the old life behind him, and to march vigorously on to the new. He

called up Master Tim before him in the little white “sweater,” with

the primrose-colored ruffled feathers of hair, the gritted white teeth,

small almost as the teeth of a mouse, the moist, ardent cheeks, and

the glowing eyes looking steadfastly to the Tribal God. He must be the

Tribal God to his little son, if the child were a son.

Rosamund did not seem surprised by Dion’s abrupt statement, though he

had never spoken of an intention to join any Volunteer Corps. She knew

he was fond of shooting, and had been in camp sometimes when he was at a

public school.

“What’s that?” she asked. “I’ve heard of it, but I thought it was a

corps for men who are painters, sculptors, writers and musicians.”

“It was founded, nearly forty years ago, I believe, for fellows working

in the Arts, but all sorts of business men are let in now.”

“Will it take up much time?”

“No; I shall have to drill a certain amount, and in summer I shall go

into camp for a bit, and of course, if a big war ever came, I could be

of some use.”

“I’m glad you’ve joined.”

“I thought you would be. I shall see a little less of you, I suppose,

but, after all, a husband can’t be perpetually hanging about the house,

can he?”

Rosamund looked at him and smiled, then laughed gently.

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

“Why, what to you mean?”

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

“You wouldn’t like it if I did.”

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

“And besides--do you realize how independent you are?”

“Am I?”

“For a woman I think you are extraordinarily independent.”

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

curious stillness.

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

And then she quietly, and very naturally, turned the conversation into

another channel; she was a quieter Rosamund in those days of waiting

than the Rosamund unaffected by motherhood. That Rosamund had been

vigorous and joyous; this Rosamund was strongly serene. In all she was

and did at this time Dion felt strength; but it was shown chiefly in

stillness. She worked sometimes; she read a great deal sitting upstairs

in her own little room. One day Dion found her with a volume of

Tennyson; another day she was reading Shakespeare’s “Henry the Fifth”;

she had the “Paradiso” in hand, too, and the Greek Testament with the

English text in parallel columns. In the room there was a cottage piano,

and one evening, when Dion had been drilling and came back late, he

heard her singing. He stood still in the hall, after shutting softly the

door of the lobby, and listened to the warm and powerful voice of the

woman he loved. He could hear the words of the song, which was a setting

of “Lead, kindly Light.” Rosamund had only just begun singing it when he

came into the hall; the first words he caught were, “The night is dark,

and I am far from home; lead thou me on.” He thrust his hands into the

pockets of the black jacket he was wearing and did not move. He had

never before heard Rosamund sing any piece of music through without

seeing her while she was doing it; her voice seemed to him now different

from the voice he knew so well; perhaps because he was uninfluenced by

her appearance. That counted for much in the effect Rosamund created

when she sang to people. The thought went through Dion’s mind, “Am I

really the husband of this voice?” It was beautiful, it was fervent,

but it was strange, or seemed strange to him as it came down through the

quiet house on this winter evening. For the first time, listening thus,

he was able imaginatively to realize something of what it must be

like to be a mystic, or rather, perhaps, to have within one a definite

tendency towards mysticism, a definite and ceaseless and governing

aspiration towards harmony with the transcendental order. When this

voice which he heard above him sang “The night is dark, and I am far

from home,” he felt a sort of sharp comprehension of the real meaning of

homeless wandering such as he had certainly never experienced before. He

felt, too, that the spirit from which this voice proceeded could never

be at home in the ordinary way of ordinary people, could not be at home

even as he himself could be at home. The spirit behind this voice needed

something of which, till now, he had not consciously felt the need;

something peculiar, out of the way and remote--something very different

from human love and human comfort. Although he was musical, and could be

critical about a composition according to its lights, Dion did not think

about the music of this song _qua_ music--could not have said how good

he considered it to be. He knew only that this was not poor or insincere

music. But music sung in this peculiar way was only a means by which

the under part of a human being, that which has its existence deep down

under layers and layers of the things which commonly appear and are

known of, rose to the surface and announced itself.

The Artists’ Rifles--and this!

When the voice was silent, Dion went slowly upstairs. The door of

Rosamund’s little room was shut. He paused outside it, and stood looking

at it, the movable barrier of dark shining wood which divided him from

the voice. When he was ascending the stairs he had meant to go in to

Rosamund. But now he hesitated, and presently he turned away. He felt

that a greater barrier than the door was between them. He might open the

door easily enough, but the other barrier would remain. The life of the

body seemed to him just then an antagonist to the life of the soul.

“I’m on the lower plane,” said Dion to himself that evening. “If it’s a

boy, I shall have to look after his body; she’ll take care of the rest.

Perhaps mothers always do, but not as she could and will.”

From this moment he devoted himself as much as possible to his body,

almost, indeed, with the ardor of one possessed by a sort of mania.

The Artists’ Corps took up part of his time; Jenkins another part; he

practised rifle shooting as diligently almost as if he expected to have

to take his place almost immediately in the field; he began to learn

fencing. Rosamund saw very little of him, but she made no comment. He

explained to her what he was doing.

“You see, Rose,” he said to her once, “if it’s a boy it will be my job

eventually to train him up to be first-class in the distinctively

man’s part of life. No woman can ever do that. I mustn’t let myself get

slack.”

“You never would, I’m sure.”

“I hope not. Still, lots of business men do. And I’m sitting about

three-quarters of my time. One does get soft, and the softer a chap gets

the less inclined he is to make the effort required of him, if he wants

to get hard. If I ever am to be the father of a growing-up son--when

they get to about sixteen, you know, they get awfully critical about

games and athletics, sport, everything of that kind--I should like to

be able to keep my end up thoroughly well with him. He’d respect me far

more then. I know exactly the type of fellow real boys look up to. It

isn’t the intelligent softy, however brainy he may be; it’s the man who

can do all the ordinary things superlatively well.”

She smiled at him with her now curiously tranquil yellow-brown eyes, and

he thought he saw in them approval.

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

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

“I couldn’t do anything else. But now I feel as if we were working

together, in a way.”

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

“But if it weren’t a boy?” he said, struck by a sudden reaction of

doubt.

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

“What chance should I have then?”

“I know it will be a boy,” she answered.

“Why? Not because you sleep north and south!” he exclaimed, with a

laughing allusion to the assertion of Herrick.

“I don’t.”

“I always thought the bed----”

“No, it’s east and west.”

“Fishermen say the dead sleep east and west.”

“Are you superstitious?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps, where you are concerned.”

“Don’t be. Superstition seems to me the opposite of belief. Just wait,

and remember, I _know_ it will be a boy.”

One evening Dion went to Great Cumberland Place to dine with Bruce

Evelin and Beatrice, leaving Rosamund apparently in her usual health.

She was going to have “something on a tray” in her sitting-room, and he

went in there to say good-by to her just before he started. He found

her sitting by the fire, and looking at Hermes and the Child with steady

eyes. They were lit up rather faintly by a couple of wax candles placed

on the writing-table. The light from these candles and from the fire

made a delicate and soothing radiance in the room, which was plainly

furnished, and almost somber in color. A very dim and cloudy purple-blue

pervaded it, a very beautiful hue, but austere, and somehow suggestive

of things ecclesiastical. On a small, black oak table at Rosamund’s

elbow two or three books were lying beside a bowl of dim blue glass

which had opalescent lights in it. This bowl was nearly full of water

upon which a water-lily floated. The fire on the hearth was small,

but glowing with red and gold. Dark curtains were drawn across the one

window which looked out at the back of the house. It was a frosty night

and windless.

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

opened the door.

“How quiet you are in here!” he said.

“This little room is always quiet.”

“Yes, but to-night it’s like a room to which some one has just said

‘Hush!’”

He came in and shut the door quietly behind him.

“I’ve just a minute.”

He came up to the fire.

“And so you were looking at him, our Messenger with winged sandals. Oh,

Rosamund, how wonderful it was at Olympia! I wonder whether you and I

shall ever see the Hermes together again. I suppose all the chances are

against it.”

“I hope we shall.”

“Do you? And yet--I don’t know. It would be terrible to see him together

again--if things were much altered; if, for instance, one was less happy

and remembered----”

He broke off, came to the settee at right angles to the fire on which

she was sitting, and sat down beside her. At this moment--he did not

know why--the great and always growing love he had for her seemed

to surge forward abruptly like a tidal wave, and he was conscious of

sadness and almost of fear. He looked at Rosamund as if he were just

going to part from her, anxiously, and with a sort of greed of detail.

“Alone I would never go back to Elis,” he said. “Never. What a power

things have if they are connected in our hearts with people. It’s--it’s

awful.”

A clock chimed faintly.

“I must go.”

He got up and stood for a moment looking down at the dear head loved so

much, at her brow.

“I don’t know why it is,” he said, “but this evening I hate leaving

you.”

“But it’s only for a little while.”

There was a tap at the door.

“Ah! here’s my tray.”

The maid came in carrying a woman’s meal, and Dion’s strange moment was

over.

When he got to Great Cumberland Place, Daventry, who was to make a

fourth, had just arrived, and was taking off his coat in the hall. He

looked unusually excited, alert in an almost feverish way, which was

surprising in him.

“I’m in a case,” he said, “a quite big case. Bruce Evelin’s got it for

me. I’m going to be junior to Addington; Lewis & Lewis instruct me. What

d’you think of that?”

Dion clapped him on the shoulder.

“The way of salvation!”

“Where will it lead me?”

“To Salvation, of course.”

“I’ll walk home with you to-night, old Dion. I must yap across the Park

with you to Hyde Park Corner, and tell you all about the woman from

Constantinople.”

They were going upstairs.

“The woman----?”

“My client, my client. My dear boy, this is no ordinary case”--he waved

a small hand ceremoniously--“it’s a _cause celebre_ or I shouldn’t have

bothered myself with it.”

Lurby opened the drawing-room door.

“How’s Rosamund?” was Beatrice’s first question to Dion, as they shook

hands.

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

room.”

“Rosamund always loved having a meal on a tray,” said Bruce Evelin.

“She’s a big child still. But enthusiasts never really grow up, luckily

for them.”

“Dinner is served, sir.”

“Daventry, will you take Beatrice?”

As Dion followed with Bruce Evelin, he said:

“So you’ve got Daventry a case!”

“Yes.”

Bruce Evelin lowered his voice.

“He’s a good fellow and a clever fellow, but he’s got to work. He’s been

slacking for years.”

Dion understood. Bruce Evelin wished Beatrice to marry Daventry.

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

can.”

“I’m going to,” returned Bruce Evelin, with his quiet force. “He’s got

remarkable ability, and the slacker--well----”

He looked at Dion with his dark, informed eyes, in which knowledge of

the world and of men always seemed sitting.

“I can bear with bad energy almost more easily and comfortably than with

slackness.”

During dinner, without seeming to, Dion observed and considered Beatrice

and Daventry, imagining them wife and husband. He felt sure Daventry

would be very happy. As to Beatrice, he could not tell. There was

always in Beatrice’s atmosphere, or nearly always, a faint suggestion

of sadness which, curiously, was not disagreeable but attractive. Dion

doubted whether Daventry could banish it. Perhaps no one could, and

Daventry had, perhaps, that love which does not wish to alter, which

says, “I love you with your little sadness--keep it.”

Daventry was exceptionally animated at dinner. The prospect of actually

appearing in court as counsel in a case had evidently worked upon him

like a powerful tonic. Always able to be amusing when he chose,

he displayed to-night a new something--was it a hint of personal

dignity?--which Dion had not hitherto found in him. “Dear old Daventry,”

the agreeable, and obviously clever, nobody, who was a sure critic of

others, and never did anything himself, who blinked at moments with a

certain feebleness, and was too fond of the cozy fireside, or the deep

arm-chairs of his club, had evidently caught hold of the flying skirts

of his self-respect, and was thoroughly enjoying his capture. He did

not talk very much to Beatrice, but it was obvious that he was at every

moment enjoying her presence, her attention; when she listened earnestly

he caught her earnestness and it seemed to help him; when she laughed,

in her characteristic delicate way,--her laugh seemed almost wholly of

the mind,--he beamed with a joy that was touching in a man of his type

because it was so unself-conscious. His affection for Beatrice had

performed the miracle of drawing him out of the prison of awareness in

which such men as he dwell. To-night he was actually unobservant. Dion

knew this by the changed expression of his eyes. Even Beatrice he was

not observing; he was just feeling what she was, how she was. For once

he had passed beyond the narrow portals and had left satire far behind

him.

When Beatrice got up to go to the drawing-room he opened the door for

her. She blushed faintly as she went out. When the door was shut, and

the three men were alone, Bruce Evelin said to Dion:

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

“Of course not. But would you rather I went up and kept Beattie

company?”

“No; stay till you’re bored, or till you think Beatrice is bored. Let us

light up.”

He walked slowly, with his gently precise gait, to a cigar cabinet,

opened it, and told the young men to help themselves.

“And now for the Clarke case,” he said.

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

“Yes, Mrs. Beadon Clarke,” said Daventry. “But she hates the Beadon and

never uses it. Beadon Clarke’s trying to divorce her, and I’m on her

side. She’s staying with Mrs. Chetwinde. Esme Darlington, who’s an old

friend of hers, thinks her too unconventional for a diplomatist’s wife.”

Bruce Evelin had lighted his cigar.

“We mustn’t forget that our friend Darlington has always run tame rather

than wild,” he remarked, with a touch of dry satire. “And now, Daventry,

let us go through the main facts of the case, without, of course,

telling any professional secrets.”

And he began to outline the Clarke case, which subsequently made a great

sensation in London.

It appeared that Mrs. Clarke had come first to him in her difficulty,

and had tried hard to persuade him to emerge from his retirement and to

lead for her defense. He had been determined in refusal, and had advised

her to get Sir John Addington, with Daventry as junior. This she had

done. Now Bruce Evelin was carefully “putting up” Daventry to every move

in the great game which was soon to be played out, a game in which a

woman’s honor and future were at stake. The custody of a much-loved

child might also come into question.

“Suppose Addington is suddenly stricken with paralysis in the middle of

the case, you must be ready to carry it through triumphantly alone,” he

observed, with quietly twinkling eyes, to Daventry.

“May I have a glass of your oldest brandy, sir?” returned Daventry,

holding on to the dinner-table with both hands.

The brandy was given to him and the discussion of the case continued. By

degrees Dion found himself becoming strongly interested in Mrs. Clarke,

whose name came up constantly. She was evidently a talented and a very

unusual woman. Perhaps the latter fact partially accounted for the

unusual difficulties in which she was now involved. Her husband,

Councilor to the British Embassy at Constantinople, charged her with

misconduct, and had cited two co-respondents,--Hadi Bey, a Turkish

officer, and Aristide Dumeny, a French diplomat,--both apparently men

of intellect and of highly cultivated tastes, and both slightly younger

than Mrs. Clarke. A curious fact in the case was that Beadon Clarke was

deeply in love with his wife, and had--so Dion gathered from a remark of

Bruce Evelin’s--probably been induced to take action against her by

his mother, Lady Ermyntrude Clarke, who evidently disliked, and perhaps

honestly disbelieved in, her daughter-in-law. There was one child of

the marriage, a boy, to whom both the parents were deeply attached. The

elements of tragedy in the drama were accentuated by the power to love

possessed by accuser and accused. As Dion listened to the discussion

he realized what a driving terror, what a great black figure, almost

monstrous, love can be--not only the sunshine, but the abysmal darkness

of life.

Presently, in a pause, while Daventry was considering some difficult

point, Dion remembered that Beatrice was sitting upstairs alone. Her

complete unselfishness always made him feel specially chivalrous towards

her. Now he got up.

“It’s tremendously interesting, but I’m going upstairs to Beattie,” he

said.

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

“Subtle! Why?”

“I was just coming to the professional secrets.”

Dion smiled and went off to Beattie. He found her working quietly,

almost dreamily, on one of those fairy garments such as he had seen

growing towards its minute full size in the serene hands of his

Rosamund.

“You too!” he said, looking down at the filmy white. “How good you are

to us, Beattie!”

He sat down.

“What’s this in your lap?”

The filmy white had been lifted in the process of sewing, and a little

exquisitely bound white book was disclosed beneath it.

“May I look?”

“Yes, do.”

Dion took the book up, and read the title, “The Kasidah of Haji Abdu

El-Yezdi.”

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

“Guy Daventry left it here by mistake yesterday. I must give it to him

to-night.”

Dion opened the book, and saw on the title page: “Cynthia Clarke,

Constantinople, October 1896,” written in a curiously powerful, very

upright caligraphy.

“It doesn’t belong to Guy.”

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

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

immediately absorbed.

“By Jove, it’s wonderful, it’s simply splendid!” he said in a moment.

“Just listen to this:

“True to thy nature, to thyself,

Fame and disfame nor hope, nor fear;

Enough to thee the still small voice

Aye thundering in thine inner ear.

From self-approval seek applause:

What ken not men thou kennest thou!

Spurn every idol others raise:

Before thine own ideal bow.”

He met the dark eyes of Beatrice.

“You care for that?”

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

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

Suddenly he felt aware of a peculiar sort of strength in her, in her

softness, a strength not at all as of iron, mysterious and tenacious.

“Dear old Beattie!” he said.

Moisture had sprung into his eyes.

“How lonely our lives are,” he continued, looking at her now with a sort

of deep curiosity. “The lives of all of us. I don’t care who it is, man,

woman, child, he or she, every one’s lonely. And yet----”

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

“When I think of Rosamund I can’t think of her as lonely.”

“Can’t you?”

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

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

there.

“Rosamund would hate this book,” he said presently. “It seems thoroughly

anti-Christian. But it’s very wonderful.”

He put the book down.

“Dear Beattie! Guy cares very much for you.”

“Yes, I know,” said Beatrice, with a great simplicity.

“If he comes well out of this case, and feels he’s on the road to

success, he’ll be another man. He’ll dare as a man ought to dare.”

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

“I’ll walk across the Park with you, old Dion,” said Daventry that

night, as they left the house in Great Cumberland Place, “whether you’re

going to walk home or whether you’re not, whether you’re in a devil of

a hurry to get back to your Rosamund, or whether you’re in a mood for

friendship. What time is it, by the way?”

He was wrapped in a voluminous blue overcoat, with a wide collar,

immense lapels, and apparently only one button, and that button so

minute that it was scarcely visible to the naked eye. From somewhere he

extracted a small, abnormally thin watch with a gold face.

“Only twenty minutes to eleven. We dined early.”

“You really wish to walk?”

“I not only wish to walk, I will walk.”

The still glory of frost had surely fascinated London, had subdued the

rumbling and uneasy black monster; it seemed to Dion unusually quiet,

almost like something in ecstasy under the glittering stars of frost,

which shone in a sky swept clear of clouds by the hand of the lingering

winter. It was the last night of February, but it looked, and felt, like

a night dedicated to the Christ Child, to Him who lay on the breast of

Mary with cattle breathing above Him. As Dion gazed up at the withdrawn

and yet almost piercing radiance of the wonderful sky, instinctively he

thought of the watching shepherds, and of the coming of that Child who

stands forever apart from all the other children born of women into this

world. He wished Rosamund were with him to see the stars, and the frost

glistening white on the great stretches of grass, and the naked trees in

the mysterious and romantic Park.

“Shall we take the right-hand path and walk round the Serpentine?” said

Daventry presently.

“Yes. I don’t mind. Rosamund will be asleep, I think. She goes to bed

early now.”

“When will it be?”

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

Daventry was silent. He wanted and meant to talk about his own affairs,

but he hesitated to begin. Something in the night was making him feel

very small and very great. Dion gave him a lead by saying:

“D’you mind my asking you something about the Clarke case?”

“Anything you like. I’ll answer if I may.”

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

“Oh, innocent!” exclaimed Daventry, with unusual warmth.

“And does Bruce Evelin?”

“I believe so. I assume so.”

“I noticed that, while I was listening to you both, he never expressed

any opinion, or gave any hint of what his opinion was on the point.”

“I feel sure he thinks her innocent,” said Daventry, still almost with

heat. “Not that it much matters,” he added, in a less prejudiced voice.

“The point is, we must prove her to be innocent whether she is nor not.

I happen to feel positive she is. She isn’t the least the siren type of

woman, though men like her.”

“What type is she?”

“The intellectual type. Not a blue-stocking! God forbid! I couldn’t

defend a blue-stocking. But she’s a woman full of taste, who cares

immensely for fine and beautiful things, for things that appeal to the

eye and the mind. In that way, perhaps, she’s almost a sensualist.

But, in any other way! I want you to know her. She’s a very interesting

woman. Esme Darlington says her perceptions are exquisite. Mrs.

Chetwinde’s backing her up for all she’s worth.”

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

“Of course. Come with me to Mrs. Chetwinde’s next Sunday afternoon.

She’ll be there.”

“On a night like this, doesn’t a divorce case seem preposterous?”

“Well, you have the tongue of the flatterer!”--he looked up--“But

perhaps it does, even when it’s Mrs. Clarke’s.”

“Are you in love with Mrs. Clarke?”

“Deeply, because she’s my first client in a _cause celebre_.”

“Have you forgotten her book again?”

“Her book? ‘The Kasidah’? I’ve got it here.”

He tapped the capacious side pocket of his coat.

“You saw it then?” he added.

“Beattie had it when I went upstairs.”

“I wonder what she made of it,” Daventry said, with softness in his

voice. “Don’t ever let Rosamund see it, by the way. It’s anything

rather than Christian. Mrs. Clarke gets hold of everything, dives into

everything. She’s got an unresting mind.”

They had come to the edge of the Serpentine, on which there lay an

ethereal film of baby ice almost like frosted gauze. The leafless trees,

with their decoration of filigree, suggested the North and its peculiar

romance--nature trailing away into the mighty white solitudes where the

Pole star reigns over fields of ice.

“Hyde Park is bringing me illusions to-night,” said Daventry. “That

water might be the Vistula. If I heard a wolf howling over there near

the ranger’s lodge, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

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

among the trees.

“I love Mrs. Clarke as a client, but perhaps I love her even more

because, through her, I hope to get hold of something I’ve--I’ve let

drop,” continued Daventry.

“What’s that?”

Daventry put his arm through Dion’s.

“I don’t know whether I can name it even to you; but it’s something a

man of great intelligence, such as myself, should always keep in his

fist.”

He paused.

“The clergy are apt to call it self-respect,” he at length added, in a

dry voice.

Dion pressed his arm.

“Bruce Evelin wants you to marry Beatrice.”

“He hasn’t told you so?”

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

Daventry stood still.

“I’m going to ask her--almost directly.”

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

there.”

Not far off, among the trees, two slinking and sinister shadows of men

seemed to be intent upon them.

“Isn’t it incredible to practise the profession of a blackmailer out of

doors on a night like this?” said Dion. “D’you remember when we were in

the night train coming from Burstal? You had a feather that night.”

“Damn it! Why rake up--?”

“And I said how wonderful it would be if some day I were married to

Rosamund.”

“Is it wonderful?”

“Yes.”

“Very wonderful?”

“Yes.”

“Children too!”

Daventry sighed.

“One wants to be worthy of it all,” he murmured. “And then”--he laughed,

as if calling in his humor to save him from something--“the children, in

their turn, feel they would like to live up to papa. Dion, people can be

caught in the net of goodness very much as they can be caught in the net

of evil. Let us praise the stars for that.”

They arrived at the bridge. The wide road, which looked to-night

extraordinarily clean, almost as if it had been polished up for the

passing of some delicate procession in the night, was empty. There were

no vehicles going by; the night-birds kept among the trees. The quarter

after eleven chimed from some distant church. Dion thought of Rosamund,

as he paused on the bridge, thought of himself as a husband yielding his

wife up to the solitude she evidently desired. He took Daventry for his

companion; she had the child for hers. There was suffering of a kind

even in a very perfect marriage, but what he had told Daventry was true;

it had been very wonderful. He had learnt a great deal in his marriage,

dear lessons of high-mindedness in desire, of purity in possession.

If Rosamund were to be cut off from him even to-night he had gained

enormously by the possession of her. He knew what woman can be, and

without disappointment; for he did not choose to reckon up those small,

almost impalpable things which, like passing shadows, had now and

then brought a faint obscurity into his life with Rosamund, as

disappointments. They came, perhaps, from himself. And what where they?

He looked out over the long stretch of unruffled water, filmed over with

ice near the shores, and saw a tiny dark object traveling through it

with self-possession and an air of purpose beneath the constellations;

some aquatic bird up to something, heedless of the approaching midnight

and the Great Bear.

“Look at that little beggar!” said Daventry. “And we don’t know so very

much more about it all than he does. I expect he’s a Muscovy duck, or

drake, if you’re a pedant about genders.”

“He’s evidently full of purpose.”

“Out in the middle of the ice-cold Serpentine. He’s only a speck now,

like our world in space. Now I can’t see him.”

“I can.”

“You’re longer-sighted than I am. But, Dion, I’m seeing a longish way

to-night, farther than I’ve seen before. Love’s a great business,

the greatest business in life. Ambition, and greed, and vanity, and

altruism, and even fanaticism, must give place when it’s on hand, when

it harnesses its winged horses to a man’s car and swings him away to the

stars.”

“Ask her. I think she’ll have you.”

A star fell through the frosty clear sky. Dion remembered the falling

star above Drouva. This time he was swift with a wish, but it was not a

wish for his friend.

They reached Hyde Park Corner just before midnight and parted there.

Dion hailed a hansom, but Daventry declared with determination that he

was going to walk all the way home to Phillimore Gardens.

“To get up my case, to arrange things mentally,” he explained. “Big

brains always work best at night. All the great lawyers toil when

the stars are out. Why should I be an exception? I dedicate myself to

Cynthia Clarke. She will have my undivided attention and all my deepest

solicitude.”

“I know why.”

“No, no.”

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

“No, really, you’re wrong. I am deeply interested in Mrs. Clarke because

she is what she is. I want her to win because I’m convinced she’s

innocent. Will you come to Mrs. Chetwinde’s next Sunday and meet her?”

“Yes, unless Rosamund wants me.”

“That’s always understood.”

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

under the stars.

When the cab turned the corner of Great Market Street, Westminster, and

came into Little Market Street, Dion saw in the distance before him two

large, staring yellow eyes, which seemed to be steadily regarding

him like the eyes of something on the watch. They were the lamps of a

brougham drawn up in front of No. 5. Dion’s cabman, perforce, pulled up

short before the brown door of No. 4.

“A carriage in front of my house at this time of night!” thought Dion,

as he got out and paid the man.

He looked at the coachman and at the solemn brown horse between the

shafts, and instantly realized that this was the carriage of a doctor.

“Rosamund!”

With a thrill of anxiety, a clutch at his heart, he thrust his latchkey

into the door. It stuck; he could not turn it. This had never happened

before. He tried, with force, to pull the key out. It would not move.

He shook it. The doctor’s coachman, he felt, was staring at him from

the box of the brougham. As he struggled impotently with the key his

shoulders began to tingle, and a wave of acute irritation flooded him.

He turned sharply round and met the coachman’s eyes, shrewd, observant,

lit, he thought, by a flickering of sarcasm.

“Has the doctor been here long?” said Dion.

“Sir?”

“This is a doctor’s carriage, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. Doctor Mayson.”

“Well, I say, has he been here long?”

“About an hour, sir, or a little more.”

“Thanks.”

Dion turned again and assaulted the latchkey.

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

excited, he said:

“I don’t know what on earth’s the matter with this key. I can’t either

turn it or get it out.”

“No, sir?”

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

of the door.

“I don’t know--I couldn’t!”

The girl shut the door.

“What’s the matter? Why’s the doctor here? It isn’t----?”

“Yes, sir,” said the girl, with a sort of intensely feminine

significance. “It came on quite sudden.”

“How long ago?”

“A good while, sir. I couldn’t say exactly.”

“But why wasn’t I sent for?”

“My mistress wouldn’t have you sent for, sir. Besides, we were expecting

you every moment.”

“Ah! and I--and now it’s past midnight.”

He had quickly taken off his coat, hat and gloves. Now he ran up the

shallow steps of the staircase. There was a sort of tumult within him.

He felt angry, he did not know why. His whole body was longing to do

something strong, eager, even violent. He hated his latchkey, he hated

the long stroll in Hyde Park, the absurd delay upon the bridge, his

preoccupation with the Muscovy duck, or whatever bird it was, voyaging

over the Serpentine. Why had nothing told him not to lose a moment but

to hurry home? He remembered that he had been specially reluctant to

leave Rosamund that evening, that he had even said to her, “I don’t know

why it is, but this evening I hate to leave you.” Perhaps, then, he had

been warned, but he had not comprehended the warning. As he had looked

at the stars he had thought of the coming of the most wonderful Child

who had ever visited this earth. Perhaps then, too----He tried to

snap off his thought, half confusedly accusing himself of some sort of

blasphemy. At the top of the staircase he turned and looked down into

the hall.

“The nurse?”

“Sir?”

“Have you managed to get the nurse?”

“Yes, sir; she’s been here some time.”

At this moment Doctor Mayson opened the door of Rosamund’s room and came

out upon the landing--a tall, rosy and rather intellectual-looking

man, with tranquil gray eyes, and hair thinning above the high knobby

forehead. Dion had never seen him before. They shook hands.

“I shouldn’t go into your wife’s room,” said Doctor Mayson in a low bass

voice.

“Why? Doesn’t she wish it?”

“She wished you very much to be in the house.”

“Then why not send for me?”

“She was against it, I understand. And she doesn’t wish any one to be

with her just now except the nurse and myself.”

“When do you expect? . . .”

“Some time during the night. It’s evidently going to be an easy

confinement. I’m just going down to send away my carriage. It’s no use

keeping the horse standing half the night in this frost. I’m very fond

of horses.”

“Fond of horses--are you?” said Dion, rather vacantly.

“Yes. Are you?”

The low bass voice almost snapped out the question.

“Oh, I dare say. Why not? They’re useful animals. I’ll come down with

you if I’m not to go into my wife’s room.”

He followed the doctor down the stairs he had just mounted. When the

carriage had been sent away, he asked Doctor Mayson to come into his den

for a moment. The pains of labor had come on unexpectedly, but were not

exceptionally severe; everything pointed to an easy confinement.

“Your wife is one of the strongest and healthiest women I have ever

attended,” Doctor Mayson added; “superb health. It’s a pleasure to see

any one like that. I look after so many neurotic women in London. They

give themselves up for lost when they are confronted with a perfectly

natural crisis. Mrs. Leith is all courage and self-possession.”

“But then why shouldn’t I see her?”

“Well, she seems to have an extraordinary sense of duty towards the

child that’s coming. She thinks you might be less calm than she is.”

“But I’m perfectly calm.”

Doctor Mayson smiled.

“D’you know, it’s really ever so much better for us men to keep right

out of the way in such moments as these. It’s the kindest thing we can

do.”

“Very well. I’ll do it of course.”

“I never go near my own wife when she’s like this.”

Dion stared into the fire.

“Have you many children?”

“Eleven,” remarked the bass voice comfortably. “But I married very

young, before I left Guy’s. Now I’ll go up again. You needn’t be the

least alarmed.”

“I’m not,” said Dion bruskly.

“Capital!”

And Doctor Mayson went off, not treading with any precaution. It was

quite obvious that his belief in his patient was genuine.

Eleven children! Well, some people were prepared to take any risks and

to face any responsibilities. Was it very absurd to find in the coming

of one child a tremendous event? Really, Doctor Mayson had almost

succeeded in making Dion feel a great fool. Just another child in the

world--crying, dribbling, feebly trying to grasp the atmosphere; another

child to cut its first tooth, with shrieks, to have whooping-cough,

chicken-pox, rose rash and measles; another child to eat of the fruit of

the tree; another child to combat and love and suffer and die. No,

damn it, the matter was important. Doctor Mayson and his rosy face were

unmeaning. He might have eleven, or a hundred and eleven children, but

he had no imagination.

Dion shut himself into his room, sat down in a big armchair, lit his

pipe and thought about the Clarke case. He had just told Doctor Mayson

a white lie. He was determined not to think about his Rosamund: he dared

not do that; so his mind fastened on the Clarke case. Almost ferociously

he flung himself upon it, called upon the unknown Mrs. Clarke, the woman

whom he had never seen to banish from him his Rosamund, to interpose

between her and him. For Rosamund was inevitably suffering, and if he

thought about that suffering his deep anxiety, his pity, his yearning

would grow till they were almost unendurable, might even lead his feet

to the room upstairs, the room forbidden to him to-night. So he called

to Mrs. Clarke, and at last, obedient to his insistent demand, she came

and did her best for him, came, he imagined, from Constantinople, to

keep him company in this night of crisis.

As Daventry had described her, as Bruce Evelin had, with casual

allusions and suggestive hints, built her up before Dion in the talk

after dinner that night, so she was now in the little room: a woman

of intellect and of great taste, with an intense love for, and fine

knowledge of, beautiful things: a woman who was almost a sensualist in

her adoration for fine and rare things.

“I detest the sensation of sinking down in things!”

Who had said that once with energy in Dion’s hearing? Oh--Rosamund, of

course! But she must not be admitted into Dion’s life in these hours of

waiting. Mrs. Clarke must be allowed to reign. She had come (in Dion’s

imagination) all the way from the city of wood and of marble beside the

seaway of the Golden Horn, a serious, intellectual and highly cultivated

woman, whom a cruel fate--Kismet--was now about to present to the world

as a horrible woman. Pale, thin, rather melancholy she was, a reader of

many books, a great lover of nature, a woman who cared very much for

her one child. Why should Fate play such a woman such a trick? Perhaps

because she was very unconventional, and it is unwise for the bird which

sings in the cage of diplomacy to sing any but an ordinary song.

Daventry had dwelt several times on Mrs. Clarke’s unconventionality;

evidently the defense meant to lay stress on it.

So now Dion sat with a pale, thin, unconventional woman, and she told

him about the life at Stamboul. She knew, of course, that he had hated

Constantinople. He allowed her to know that. And she pointed out to him

that he knew nothing of the wonderful city, upon which Russia breathes

from the north, and which catches, too, strange airs and scents and

murmurs of voices from distant places of Asia. What does the passing

tourist of a Pera hotel know about the great city of the Turks? Nothing

worth knowing. The roar of the voices of the Levant deafens his ears;

the glitter of the shop windows in the Grande Rue blinds his eyes. He

knows not the exquisite and melancholy charm, full of nuances and of the

most fragile and evanescent subtleties, which Constantinople holds for

those who know her and love her well.

The defense was evidently going to make much of Mrs. Clarke’s passion

for the city on the Bosporus. Daventry had alluded to it more than once,

and Bruce Evelin had said, “Mrs. Clarke has always had an extraordinary

feeling for places. If her husband had accused her of a liaison with

Eyub, or of an unholy fancy for the forest of Belgrad, we might have

been in a serious difficulty. She had, I know, a regular romance once

with the Mosquee Verte at Brusa.”

Evidently she was a woman whom ordinary people would be likely to

misunderstand. Dion sat in his arm-chair trying to understand her. The

effort would help him to forget, or to ignore if he couldn’t forget,

what was going on upstairs in the little house. He pulled hard at his

pipe, as an aid to his mind; he sat alone for a long while with Mrs.

Clarke. Sometimes he looked across the Golden Horn from a bit of waste

ground in Pera, near to a small cemetery: it was from there, towards

evening, that he had been able to “feel” Stamboul, to feel it as an

unique garden city, held by the sea, wooden and frail, marble and

enduring. And somewhere in the great and mysterious city Mrs. Clarke had

lived and been adored by the husband who, apparently still adoring, was

now trying to get rid of her.

Sometimes Dion heard voices rising from the crowded harbor of the Golden

Horn. They crept up out of the mystery of the evening; voices from the

caiques, and from the boats of the fishermen, and from the big sailing

vessels which ply to the harbors of the East, and from the steamers at

rest near the Galata Bridge, and from the many craft of all descriptions

strung out towards the cypress-crowned hill of Eyub. And Mrs. Clarke,

standing beside him, began to explain to him in a low and hoarse voice

what these strange cries of the evening meant.

Daventry had mentioned that she had a hoarse voice.

At a little after three o’clock Dion sat forward abruptly in his chair

and listened intently. He fancied he had heard a faint cry. He waited,

surrounded by silence, enveloped by silence. There was a low drumming

in his ears. Mrs. Clarke had escaped like a phantom. Stamboul, with its

mosques, its fountains, its pigeons and its plane trees, had faded away.

The voices from the Golden Horn were stilled. The drumming in Dion’s

ears grew louder. He stood up. He felt very hot, and a vein in his left

temple was beating--not fluttering, but beating hard.

He heard, this time really heard, a cry overhead, and then the muffled

sound of some one moving about; and he went to the door, opened it and

passed out into the hall. He did not go upstairs, but waited in the

hall until Doctor Mayson came down, looking as rosy and serene and

unconcerned as ever.

“Well, Mr. Leith,” he said, “you’re a father. I congratulate you. You

wife has got through beautifully.”

“Yes?”

“By the way, it’s a boy.”

“Yes, of course.”

Doctor Mayson looked genuinely surprised.

“Why ‘of course’? I don’t quite understand.”

“She knew it was going to be a boy.”

The doctor smiled faintly.

“Women often have strange fancies at such times. I mean before they are

confined.”

“But you see she was right. It is a boy.”

“Exactly,” returned the doctor, looking at his nails.

Dion saw the star falling above the hill of Drouva.

Did the Hermes know?

CHAPTER III

On the following Sunday afternoon Dion was able to fulfil his promise

to Daventry. Rosamund and the baby were “doing beautifully”; he was not

needed at home, so he set out with Daventry, who came to fetch him, to

visit Mrs. Willie Chetwinde in Lowndes Square.

When they reached the house Daventry said:

“Now for Mrs. Clarke. She’s really a wonderful woman, Dion, and she’s

got a delicious profile.”

“Oh, it’s that--”

“No, it isn’t.”

He gently pushed Mrs. Chetwinde’s bell.

As they went upstairs they heard a soft hum of voices.

“Mrs. Clarke’s got heaps of people on her side,” whispered Daventry.

“This is a sort of rallying ground for the defense.”

“Where’s her child? Here?”

“No, with some relations till the trial’s over.”

The butler opened the door, and immediately Dion’s eyes rested on

Mrs. Clarke, who happened to be standing very near to it with Esme

Darlington. Directly Dion saw her he knew at whom he was looking.

Something--he could not have said what--told him.

By a tall pedestal of marble, on which was poised a marble statuette

of Echo,--not that Echo who babbled to Hera, but she who, after her

punishment, fell in love with Narcissus,--he saw a very thin, very pale,

and strangely haggard-looking woman of perhaps thirty-two talking to

Esme Darlington. At first sight she did not seem beautiful to Dion.

He was accustomed to the radiant physical bloom of his Rosamund. This

woman, with her tenuity, her pallor, her haunted cheeks and temples, her

large, distressed and observant eyes--dark hazel in color under brown

eyebrows drawn with a precise straightness till they neared the bridge

of the nose and there turning abruptly downwards, her thin and almost

white-lipped mouth, her cloudy brown hair which had no shine or sparkle,

her rather narrow and pointed chin, suggested to him unhealthiness, a

human being perhaps stricken by some obscure disease which had drained

her body of all fresh color, and robbed it of flesh, had caused to

come upon her something strange, not easily to be defined, which almost

suggested the charnel-house.

As he was looking at her, Mrs. Clarke turned slightly and glanced up at

the statue of Echo, and immediately Dion realized that she had beauty.

The line of her profile was wonderfully delicate and refined, almost

ethereal in its perfection; and the shape of her small head was

exquisite. Her head, indeed, looked girlish. Afterwards he knew that she

had enchanting hands--moving purities full of expressiveness--and slim

little wrists. Her expression was serious, almost melancholy, and in her

whole personality, shed through her, there was a penetrating refinement,

a something delicate, wild and feverish. She looked very sensitive and

at the same time perfectly self-possessed, as if, perhaps, she dreaded

Fate but could never be afraid of a fellow-creature. He thought:

“She’s like Echo after her punishment.”

On his way to greet Mrs. Chetwinde, he passed by her; as he did so she

looked at him, and he saw that she thoroughly considered him, with a

grave swiftness which seemed to be an essential part of her personality.

Then she spoke to Esme Darlington. Dion just caught the sound of her

voice, veiled, husky, but very individual and very attractive--a voice

that could never sing, but that could make of speech a music frail and

evanescent as a nocturne of Debussy’s.

“Daventry’s right,” thought Dion. “That woman is surely innocent.”

Mrs. Chetwinde, who was as haphazard, as apparently absent-minded and as

shrewd in her own house as in the houses of others, greeted Dion with a

vague cordiality. Her husband, a robust and very definite giant, with a

fan-shaped beard, welcomed him largely.

“Never appear at my wife’s afternoons, you know,” he observed, in a fat

and genial voice. “But to-day’s exceptional. Always stick to an innocent

woman in trouble.”

He lowered his voice in speaking the last sentence, and looked very

human. And immediately Dion was aware of a special and peculiar

atmosphere in Mrs. Chetwinde’s drawing-room on this Sunday afternoon,

of something poignant almost, though lightly veiled with the sparkling

gossamer which serves to conceal undue angularities, something which

just hinted at tragedy confronted with courage, at the attempted stab

and the raised shield of affection. Here Mrs. Clarke was in sanctuary.

He glanced towards her again with a deepening interest.

“Canon Wilton’s coming in presently,” said Mrs. Chetwinde. “He’s

preaching at St. Paul’s this afternoon, or perhaps it’s Westminster

Abbey--something of that kind.”

“I’ve heard him two or three times,” answered Dion, who was on very

good, though not on very intimate, terms with Canon Wilton. “I’d rather

hear him than anybody.”

“In the pulpit--yes, I suppose so. I’m scarcely an amateur of sermons.

He’s a volcano of sincerity, and never sends out ashes. It’s all red-hot

lava. Have you met Cynthia Clarke?”

“No.”

“She’s over there, echoing my Echo. Would you like----?”

“Very much indeed.”

“Then I’ll--”

An extremely pale man, with long, alarmingly straight hair and wandering

eyes almost the color of silver, said something to her.

“Watteau? Oh, no--he died in 1721, not in 1722,” she replied. “The only

date I can never remember is William the Conqueror. But of course you

couldn’t remember about Watteau. It’s distance makes memory. You’re too

near.”

“That’s the fan painter, Murphy-Elphinston, Watteau’s reincarnation,”

she added to Dion. “He’s always asking questions about himself.

Cynthia--this is Mr. Dion Leith. He wishes----” She drifted away, not,

however, without dexterously managing to convey Mr. Darlington with her.

Dion found himself looking into the large, distressed eyes of Mrs.

Clarke. Daventry was standing close to her, but, with a glance at his

friend, moved away.

“I should like to sit down,” said Mrs. Clarke.

“Here are two chairs----”

“No, I’d rather sit over there under the Della Robbia. I can see Echo

from there.”

She walked very slowly and languidly, as if tired, to a large and low

sofa covered with red, which was exactly opposite to the statuette.

Dion followed her, thinking about her age. He supposed her to be about

thirty-two or thirty-three, possibly a year or two more or less. She was

very simply dressed in a gray silk gown with black and white lines in

it. The tight sleeves of it were unusually long and ended in points.

They were edged with some transparent white material which rested

against her small hands.

She sat down and he sat down by her, and they began to talk. Unlike Mrs.

Chetwinde, Mrs. Clarke showed that she was alertly attending to all that

was said to her, and, when she spoke, she looked at the person to whom

she was speaking, looked steadily and very unself-consciously. Dion

mentioned that he had once been to Constantinople.

“Did you care about it?” said Mrs. Clarke, rather earnestly.

“I’m afraid I disliked it, although I found it, of course, tremendously

interesting. In fact, I almost hated it.”

“That’s only because you stayed in Pera,” she answered, “and went about

with a guide.”

“But how do you know?”--he was smiling.

“Well, of course you did.”

“Yes.”

“I could easily make you love it,” she continued, in an oddly impersonal

way, speaking huskily.

Dion had never liked huskiness before, but he liked it now.

“You are fond of it, I believe?” he said.

His eyes met hers with a great deal of interest.

He considered her present situation an interesting one; there was drama

in it; there was the prospect of a big fight, of great loss or great

gain, destruction or vindication.

In her soul already the drama was being played. He imagined her soul in

turmoil, peopled with a crowd of jostling desires and fears, and he was

thinking a great many things about her, and connected with her, almost

simultaneously--so rapidly a flood of thoughts seemed to go by in the

mind--as he put his question.

“Yes, I am,” replied Mrs. Clarke. “Stamboul holds me very fast in its

curiously inert grip. It’s a grip like this.”

She held out her small right hand, and he put his rather large and

sinewy brown hand into it. The small hand folded itself upon his in a

curious way--feeble and fierce at the same time, it seemed--and held

him. The hand was warm, almost hot, and soft, and dry as a fire is

dry--so dry that it hisses angrily if water is thrown on it.

“Now, you are trying to get away,” she said. “And of course you can,

but----”

Dion made a movement as if to pull away his hand, but Mrs. Clarke

retained it. How was that? He scarcely knew; in fact he did not know.

She did not seem to be doing anything definite to keep him, did not

squeeze or grip his hand, or cling to it; but his hand remained in hers

nevertheless.

“There,” she said, letting his hand go. “That is how Stamboul holds. Do

you understand?”

Mrs. Chetwinde’s vague eyes had been on them during this little episode.

Dion had had time to see that, and to think, “Now, at such a time, no

one but an absolutely innocent woman would do in public what Mrs. Clarke

is doing to me.” Mrs. Chetwinde, he felt sure, full of all worldly

knowledge, must be thinking the very same thing.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I do. But I wonder whether it could hold me

like that.”

“I know it could.”

“May I ask how you know?”

“Why not? Simply by my observation of you.”

Dion remembered the swift grave look of consideration she had given to

him as he came into the room. Something almost combative rose up in him,

and he entered into an argument with her, in the course of which he

was carried away into the revelation of his mental comparison between

Constantinople and Greece, a comparison into which entered a moral

significance. He even spoke of the Christian significance of the

Hermes of Olympia. Mrs. Clarke listened to him with a very still, and

apparently a very deep, attention.

“I’ve been to Greece,” she said simply, when he had finished.

“You didn’t feel at all as I did, as I do?”

“You may know Greece, but you don’t know Stamboul,” she said quietly.

“If you had shown it to me I might feel very differently,” Dion said,

with a perhaps slightly banal politeness.

And yet he did not feel entirely banal as he said it.

“Come out again and I will show it to you,” she said.

She was almost staring at him, at his chest and shoulders, not at his

face, but her eyes still kept their unself-conscious and almost oddly

impersonal look.

“You are going back there?”

“Of course, when my case is over.”

Dion felt very much surprised. He knew that Mrs. Clarke’s husband was

accredited to the British Embassy at Constantinople; that the

scandal about her was connected with that city and with its

neighborhood--Therapia, Prinkipo, and other near places, that both the

co-respondents named in the suit lived there. Whichever way the case

went, surely Constantinople must be very disagreeable to Mrs. Clarke

from now onwards. And yet she was going back there, and apparently

intended to take up her life there again. She evidently either saw or

divined his surprise, for she added in the husky voice:

“Guilt may be governed by circumstances. I suppose it is full of alarms.

But I think an innocent woman who allows herself to be driven out of a

place she loves by a false accusation is merely a coward. But all this

is very uninteresting to you. The point is, I shall soon be settled down

again at Constantinople, and ready to make you see it as it really is,

if you ever return there.”

She had spoken without hardness or any pugnacity; there was no defiance

in her manner, which was perfectly simple and straightforward.

“Your moral comparison between Constantinople and Greece--it isn’t fair,

by the way, to compare a city with a country--doesn’t interest me at

all. People can be disgusting anywhere. Greece is no better than

Turkey. It has a wonderfully delicate, pure atmosphere; but that doesn’t

influence the morals of the population. Fine Greek art is the purest art

in the world; but that doesn’t mean that the men who created it had only

pure thoughts or lived only pure lives. I never read morals into art,

although I’m English, and it’s the old hopeless English way to do

that. The man who made Echo”--she turned her large eyes towards the

statuette--“may have been an evil liver. In fact, I believe he was. But

Echo is an exquisite pure bit of art.”

Dion thought of Rosamund’s words about Praxiteles as they sat before

Hermes. His Rosamund and Mrs. Clarke were mentally at opposite poles;

yet they were both good women.

“My friend Daventry would agree with you, I know,” he said.

“He’s a clever and a very dear little man. Who’s that coming in?”

Dion looked and saw Canon Wilton. He told Mrs. Clarke who it was.

“Enid told me he was coming. I should like to know him.”

“Shall I go and tell him so?”

“Presently. How’s your baby? I’m told you’ve got a baby.”

Dion actually blushed. Mrs. Clarke gazed at the blush, and no doubt

thoroughly understood it, but she did not smile, or look arch, or full

of feminine understanding.

“It’s very well, thank you. It’s just like other babies.”

“So was mine. Babies are always said to be wonderful, and never are.

And we love ours chiefly because they aren’t. I hate things with wings

growing out of their shoulders. My boy’s a very naughty boy.”

They talked about the baby, and then about Mrs. Clarke’s son of ten;

and then Canon Wilton came up, shook hands warmly with Dion, and was

introduced by Mrs. Chetwinde to Mrs. Clarke.

Presently, from the other side of the room where he was standing with

Esme Darlington, Dion saw them in conversation; saw Mrs. Clarke’s eyes

fixed on the Canon’s almost fiercely sincere face.

“It’s going to be an abominable case,” murmured Mr. Darlington in Dion’s

ear. “We must all stand round her.”

“I can’t imagine how any one could think such a woman guilty,” said

Dion.

“It has all come about through her unconventionality.” He pulled his

beard and lifted his ragged eyebrows. “It really is much wiser

for innocent people, such as Cynthia, to keep a tight hold on the

conventions. They have their uses. They have their place in the scheme.

But she never could see it, and look at the result.”

“But then don’t you think she’ll win?”

“No one can tell.”

“In any case, she tells me she’s going back to live at Constantinople.”

“Madness! Sheer madness!” said Mr. Darlington, almost piteously. “I

shall beg her not to.”

Dion suppressed a smile. That day he had gained the impression that Mrs.

Clarke had a will of iron.

When he went up to say good-by to her, Daventry had already gone; he

said he had work to do on the case.

“May I wish you success?” Dion ventured to say, as he took her hand.

“Thank you,” she answered. “I think you must go in for athletic

exercises, don’t you?”

Her eyes were fixed on the breadth of his chest, and then traveled to

his strong, broad shoulders.

“Yes, I’m very keen on them.”

“I want my boy to go in for them. It’s so important to be healthy.”

“Rather!”

He felt the Stamboul touch in her soft, hot hand. As he let it go, he

added:

“I can give you the address of a first-rate instructor if your boy ever

wants to be physically trained. I go to him. His name’s Jenkins.”

“Thank you.”

She was still looking at his chest and shoulders. The expression of

distress in her eyes seemed to be deepening. But a tall man, Sir John

Killigrew, one of her adherents, spoke to her, and she turned to give

him her complete attention.

“I’ll walk with you, if you’re going,” said Canon Wilton’s strong voice

in Dion’s ear.

“That’s splendid. I’ll just say good-by to Mrs. Chetwinde.”

He found her by the tea-table with three or four men and two very smart

women. As he came up one of the latter was saying:

“It’s all Lady Ermyntrude’s fault. She always hated Cynthia, and she has

a heart of stone.”

The case again!

“Oh, are you going?” said Mrs. Chetwinde.

She got up and came away from the tea-table.

“D’you like Cynthia Clarke?” she asked.

“Yes, very much. She interests me.”

“Ah?”

She looked at him, and seemed about to say something, but did not speak.

“You saw her take my hand,” he said, moved by a sudden impulse.

“Did she?”

“We were talking about Stamboul. She did it to show me----” He broke

off. “I saw you felt, as I did, that no one but a through and through

innocent woman could have done it, just now--like that, I mean.”

“Of course Cynthia is innocent,” Mrs. Chetwinde said, rather coldly and

very firmly. “There’s Canon Wilton waiting for you.”

She turned away, but did not go back to the tea-table; as Dion went out

of the room he saw her sitting down on the red sofa by Mrs. Clarke.

Canon Wilton and he walked slowly away from the house. The Canon, who

had some heart trouble of which he never spoke, was not allowed to walk

fast; and to-day he was tired after his sermon at the Abbey. He inquired

earnestly about Rosamund and the child, and seemed made happy by the

good news Dion was able to give him.

“Has it made all life seem very different to you?” he asked.

Dion acknowledged that it had.

“I was half frightened at the thought of the change which was coming,”

he said. “We were so very happy as we were, you see.”

The Canon’s intense gray eyes shot a glance at him, which he felt rather

than saw, in the evening twilight.

“I hope you’ll be even happier now.”

“It will be a different sort of happiness now.”

“I think children bind people together more often than not. There are

cases when it’s not so, but I don’t think yours is likely to be one of

them.”

“Oh, no.”

“Is it a good-looking baby?”

“No, really it’s not. Even Rosamund thinks that. D’you know, so far

she’s marvelously reasonable in her love.”

“That’s splendid,” said Canon Wilton, with a strong ring in his voice.

“An unreasonable love is generally a love with something rotten at its

roots.”

Dion stood still.

“Oh, is that true really?”

The Canon paused beside him. They were in Eaton Square, opposite to St.

Peter’s.

“I think so. But I hate anything that approaches what I call mania.

Religious mania, for instance, is abhorrent to me, and, I should think,

displeasing to God. Any mania entering into a love clouds that purity

which is the greatest beauty of love. Mania--it’s detestable!”

He spoke almost with a touch of heat, and put his hand on Dion’s

shoulder.

“Beware of it, my boy.”

“Yes.”

They walked on, talking of other things. A few minutes before they

parted they spoke of Mrs. Clarke.

“Did you know her before to-day?” asked the Canon.

“No. I’d never even seen her. How dreadful for her to have to face such

a case.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“The fact that she’s innocent gives her a great pull, though. I realized

what a pull when I was having a talk with her.”

“I don’t know much about the case,” was all that the Canon said. “I hope

justice will be done in it when it comes on.”

Dion thought that there was something rather implacable in his voice.

“I don’t believe Mrs. Clarke doubts that.”

“Did she say so?” asked Canon Wilton.

“No. But I felt that she expected to win--almost knew she would win.”

“I see. She has confidence in the result.”

“She seems to have.”

“Women often have more confidence in difficult moments than we men.

Well, here I must leave you.”

He held out his big, unwavering hand to Dion.

“Good-by. God bless you both, and the child, whether it’s plain or

not. One good thing’s added to us when we start rather ill-favored; the

chance of growing into something well-favored.”

He gripped Dion’s hand and walked slowly, but powerfully, away.

CHAPTER IV

As Dion had said, the baby was an ordinary baby. “In looks,” the nurse

remarked, “he favors his papa.” Certainly in this early stage of his

career the baby had little of the beauty and charm of Rosamund. As his

head was practically bald, his forehead, which was wrinkled as if by

experience and the troubles of years, looked abnormally high. His face,

full of puckers, was rather red; his nose meant very little as yet; his

mouth, with perpetually moving lips, was the home of bubbles. His eyes

were blue, and looked large in his extremely small countenance, which

was often decorated with an expression of mild inquiry. This expression,

however, sometimes changed abruptly to a network of wrath, in which

every feature, and even the small bald head, became involved. Then the

minute feet made feeble dabs, or stabs, at the atmosphere; the tiny

fists doubled themselves and wandered to and fro as if in search of the

enemy; and a voice came forth out of the temple, very personal and very

intense, to express the tempest of the soul.

“Hark at him!” said the nurse. “He knows already what he wants and what

he _don’t_ want.”

And Rosamund, listening as only a mother can listen, shook her head over

him, trying to condemn the rage, but enjoying the strength of her

child in the way of mothers, to whom the baby’s roar perhaps brings the

thought, “What a fine, bold man he’ll be some day.” If Rosamund had such

a thought the nurse encouraged it with her. “He’s got a proud spirit

already, ma’am. He’s not to be put upon. Have his way he will, and I

don’t altogether blame him.” Nor, be sure, did Rosamund altogether

blame the young varmint for anything. Perhaps in his tiny fisticuffs and

startlingly fierce cries she divined the Doric, in embryo, as it were;

perhaps when “little master” shrieked she thought of the columns of the

Parthenon.

But Dion told the truth to Canon Wilton when he had said that Rosamund

was marvelously reasonable, so far, in her love for her baby son. The

admirable sanity, the sheer healthiness of outlook which Dion loved in

her did not desert her now. To Dion it seemed that in the very calmness

and good sense of her love she showed its great depth, showed that

already she was thinking of her child’s soul as well as of his little

body.

Dion felt the beginnings of a change in Rosamund, but he did not find

either her or himself suddenly and radically changed by the possession

of a baby. He had thought that perhaps as mother and father they would

both feel abruptly much older than before, even perhaps old. It was not

so. Often Dion gazed at the baby as he bubbled and cooed, sneezed with

an air of angry astonishment, stared at nothing with a look of shallow

surmise, or, composing his puckers, slept, and Dion still felt young,

even very young, and not at all like a father.

“I’m sure,” he once said to Rosamund, “women feel much more like mothers

when they have a baby than men feel like fathers.”

“I feel like a mother all over,” she replied, bending above the child.

“In every least little bit of me.”

“Then do you feel completely changed?”

“Completely, utterly.”

Dion sat still for a moment gazing at her. She felt his look, perhaps,

for she lifted her head, and her eyes went from the baby to him.

“What is it, Rosamund? What are you considering?”

“Well----” She hesitated. “Perhaps no one could quite understand, but I

feel a sense of release.”

“Release! From what?”

Again she hesitated; then she looked once more at the child almost as if

she wished to gain something from his helplessness. At last she said:

“Dion, as you’ve given me _him_, I’ll tell you. Very often in the past

I’ve had an urgent desire some day to enter into the religious life.”

“D’you--d’you mean to become a Roman Catholic and a nun?” he exclaimed,

feeling, absurdly perhaps, almost afraid and half indignant.

“No. I’ve never wished to change my religion. There are Anglican

sisterhoods, you know.”

“But your singing!”

“I only intended to sing for a time. Then some day, when I felt quite

ready, I meant--”

“But you married me?” he interrupted.

“Yes. So you see I gave it all up.”

“But you said it was the child which had brought you a sensation of

release!”

“Perhaps you have never been a prisoner of a desire which threatens to

dominate your soul forever,” she said, quietly evading his point and

looking down, so that he could not see her eyes. “Look, he’s waking!”

Surely she had moved abruptly and the movement had awakened the child.

She began playing with him, and the conversation was broken.

The Clarke trial came on in May, when Robin was becoming almost elderly,

having already passed no less than ten weeks in the midst of this wicked

world. On the day before it opened, Daventry made Dion promise to come

into court at least once to hear some of the evidence.

“A true friend would be there every day,” he urged--“to back up his old

chum.”

“Business!” returned Dion laconically.

“What’s your real reason against it?”

“Well, Rosamund hates this kind of case. I spoke to her about it the

other day.”

“What did she say?”

“That she was delighted you had something to do, and that she hoped, if

Mrs. Clarke were innocent, she’d win. She pities her for being dragged

through all this mud.”

“Yes?”

“She said at the end that she hoped I wouldn’t think her unsympathetic

if she neither talked about the case nor read about it. She hates

filling her mind with ugly details and horrible suggestions.”

“I see.”

“You know, Guy, Rosamund thinks--she’s told me so more than once--that

the mind and the soul are very sensitive, and that--that they ought to

be watched over, and--and taken care of.”

Dion looked rather uncomfortable as he finished. It was one thing to

speak of such matters with Rosamund, and quite another to touch on them

with a man, even a man who was a trusted friend.

“Perhaps you’d rather not come at all?”

“No, no. I’ll come once. You know how keen I am on your making a good

start.”

Daventry took him at his word, and got him a seat beside Mrs. Chetwinde

on the third day of the trial, when Mrs. Clarke’s cross-examination,

begun on the previous day, was continued by Sir Edward Jeffson, Beadon

Clarke’s leading counsel.

Dion told Rosamund where he was going when he left the house in the

morning.

“I hope it will go well for poor Mrs. Clarke,” she said kindly, but

perhaps rather indifferently.

She had not looked at the reports of the case in the papers, and had not

discussed its progress with Dion. He was not sorry for that. It was a

horrible case, full of abominable allegations and suggestions such as

he would have hated to discuss with Rosamund. As he stood in the little

hall of their house, which was delicately scented with lavender and lit

by pale sunshine, bidding her good-by, he realized the impossibility of

such a woman as she was ever being “mixed up” in such a trial. Simply

that couldn’t happen, he thought. Instinct would keep her far from every

suggestion of a possible impurity. He felt certain that Mrs. Clarke

was innocent, but, as he looked into Rosamund’s honest brown eyes,

he thought that Mrs. Clarke must have been singularly imprudent. He

remembered how she had held his hand in Mrs. Chetwinde’s drawing-room.

Wisdom and unwisdom; he compared them: the one was a builder up, the

other a destroyer of beauty--the beauty that is in every completely sane

and perfectly poised life.

“Rose,” he said, leaning forward to kiss his wife, “I think you are very

wise.”

“Why wise all of a sudden?” she asked, smiling.

“You keep the door of your life.”

He glanced round at the little hall, simple, fresh, with a few white

roses in a blue pot, the pale sunshine lying on the polished floor of

wood, the small breeze coming in almost affectionately between snowy

curtains. Purity--everything seemed to whisper of that, to imply that;

simplicity ruling, complexity ruled out.

And then he was sitting in the crowded court, breathing bad air, hearing

foul suggestions, watching strained or hateful faces, surrounded by

people who were attracted by ugly things as vultures are attracted by

the stench of dead and decaying bodies. At first he loathed being there;

presently, however, he became interested, then almost fascinated by his

surroundings and by the drama which was being played slowly out in the

midst of them.

Daventry, in wig and gown, looked tremendously legal and almost severe

in his tense gravity. Sir John Addington, his leader, a man of great

fame, was less tense in his watchfulness, amazingly at his ease with the

Court, and on smiling terms with the President, who, full of worldly

and unworldly knowledge, held the balance of justice with an unwavering

firmness. The jury looked startlingly commonplace, smug and sleepy,

despite the variety of type almost inevitably presented by twelve human

beings. Not one of them looked a rascal; not one of them looked an

actively good man. The intense Englishness of them hit one in the face

like a well-directed blow from a powerful fist. And they had to give the

verdict on this complex drama of Stamboul! How much they would have

to tell their wives presently! Their sense of their unusual importance

pushed through the smugness heavily, like a bulky man in broadcloth

showing through a dull crowd.

Mrs. Clarke occasionally glanced at them with an air of almost

distressed inquiry, as if she had never seen such cabbages before, and

was wondering about their gray matter. Her life in Stamboul must have

effected changes in her. She looked almost exotic in this court, despite

the simplicity of her gown, her unpretending little hat; as if her mind,

perhaps, had become exotic. But she certainly did not look wicked. Dion

was struck again by the strong mentality of her and by her haggardness.

To him she seemed definitely a woman of mind, not at all an animal

woman. When he gazed at her he felt that he was gazing at mind rather

than at body. Just before she went into the box she met his eyes. She

stared at him, as if carefully and strongly considering him; then she

nodded. He bowed, feeling uncomfortable, feeling indeed almost a brute.

“She’ll think I’ve come out of filthy curiosity,” he thought, looking

round at the greedy faces of the crowd.

No need to ask why those faces were there.

He felt still more uncomfortable when Mrs. Clarke was in the

witness-box, and Sir Edward Jeffson took up the cross-examination which

he had begun late in the afternoon of the previous day.

Dion had very seldom been in a Court of Justice, and had never before

been in the Divorce Court. As the cross-examination of Mrs. Clarke

lengthened out he felt as if his clothes, and the clothes of all the

human beings who crowded about him, were being ruthlessly stripped off,

as if an ugly and abominable nakedness were gradually appearing. The

shame of it all was very hateful to him; and yet--yes, he couldn’t deny

it--there was a sort of dreadful fascination in it, too.

The two co-respondents, Hadi Bey and Aristide Dumeny of the French

Embassy in Constantinople, were in court, sitting not far from Dion, to

whom Mrs. Chetwinde, less vague than, but quite as self-possessed as,

usual, pointed them out.

Both were young men. Hadi Bey, who of course wore the fez, was a fine

specimen of the smart, alert, cosmopolitan and cultivated Turk of modern

days. There was a peculiar look of vividness and brightness about him,

in his piercing dark eyes, in his red lips, in his healthy and manly

face with its rosy brown complexion and its powerful decided chin.

He had none of the sleepiness and fatalistic languor of the fat

hubble-bubble smoking Turk of caricature. The whole of him looked

aristocratic, energetic, perfectly poised and absolutely self-possessed.

Many of the women in court glanced at him without any distaste.

Aristide Dumeny was almost strangely different--an ashy-pale, dark-eyed,

thin and romantic-visaged man, stamped with a curious expression of pain

and fatalism. He looked as if he had seen much, dreamed many dreams,

and suffered not a little. There was in his face something slightly

contemptuous, as if, intellectually, he seldom gazed up at any man. He

watched Mrs. Clarke in the box with an enigmatic closeness of attention

which seemed wholly impersonal, even when she was replying to hideous

questions about himself. That he had an interesting personality was

certain. When his eyes rested on the twelve jurymen he smiled every so

faintly. It seemed to him, perhaps, absurd that they should have power

over the future of the woman in the witness-box.

That woman showed an extraordinary self-possession which touched dignity

but which never descended to insolence. Despite her obvious cleverness

and mental resource she preserved a certain simplicity. She did not pose

as a passionate innocent, or assume any forced airs of supreme virtue.

She presented herself rather as a woman of the world who was careless of

the conventions, because she thought of them as chains which prevented

free movement and were destructive of genuine liberty. She acknowledged

that she had been a great deal with Hadi Bey and Dumeny, that she had

often made long excursions with each of them on foot, on horseback, in

caiques, that she had had them to dinner, separately, on many occasions

in a little pavilion which stood at the end of her husband’s garden and

looked upon the Bosporus. These dinners had frequently taken place when

her husband was away from home. Monsieur Dumeny was a good musician and

had sometimes sung and played to her till late in the night. Hadi Bey

had sometimes been her guide in Constantinople and had given to her the

freedom of his strange and mysterious city of Stamboul. With him she had

visited the mosques, with him she had explored the bazaars, with him

she had sunk down in the strange and enveloping melancholy of the vast

Turkish cemeteries which are protected by forests of cypresses. All this

she acknowledged without the least discomposure. One of her remarks to

the cross-examining counsel was this:

“You suggest that I have been very imprudent. I answer that I am not

able to live what the conventional call a prudent life. Such a life

would be a living death to me.”

“Kindly confine yourself to answering my questions,” retorted Counsel

harshly. “I suggest that you were far more than imprudent. I suggest

that when you and Hadi Bey remained together in that pavilion on

the Bosporus until midnight, until after midnight, you----” and then

followed another hideous accusation, which, gazing with her observant

eyes at the brick-red shaven face of her accuser, Mrs. Clarke quietly

denied. She never showed temper. Now and then she gave indications of a

sort of cold disgust or faint surprise. But there were no outraged

airs of virtue. A slight disdain was evidently more natural to the

temperament of this woman than any fierceness of protestation. Once when

Counsel said, “I shall ask the jury to infer”--something abominable,

Mrs. Clarke tranquilly rejoined:

“Whatever they infer it won’t alter the truth.”

Daventry moved his shoulders. Dion was certain that he considered this

remark ill-advised. The jury, however, at whom Mrs. Clarke gazed in the

short silence which followed, seemed, Dion thought, impressed by her

firmness. The luncheon interval prevented Counsel from saying anything

further just then, and Mrs. Clarke stepped down from the box.

“Isn’t she wonderful?”

Dion heard this murmur, which did not seem to be addressed to any

particular person. It had come from Mrs. Chetwinde, who now got up and

went to speak to Mrs. Clarke. The whole court was in movement. Dion went

out to have a hasty lunch with Daventry.

“A pity she said that!” Daventry said in a low voice to Dion, hitching

up his gown. “Juries like to be deferred to.”

“I believe she impressed them by her independence.”

“Do you, though? She’s marvelously intelligent. Perhaps she knows more

of men, even of jurymen, than I do.”

At lunch they discussed the case. Daventry had had two or three chances

given to him by Sir John Addington, and thought he had done quite well.

“Do you think Mrs. Clarke will win?” said Dion.

“I know she’s innocent, but I can’t tell. She’s so infernally

unconventional and a jury’s so infernally conventional that I can’t help

being afraid.”

Dion thought of his Rosamund’s tranquil wisdom.

“I think Mrs. Clarke’s very clever,” he said. “But I suppose she isn’t

very wise.”

“I’ll tell you what it is, old Dion; she prefers life to wisdom.”

“Well, but----” Dion Began.

But he stopped. Now he knew Mrs. Clarke a little better, from her own

evidence, he knew just what Daventry meant. He looked upon the life of

unwisdom, and he was able to feel its fascination. There were scents in

it that lured, and there were colors that tempted; in its night there

was music; about it lay mystery, shadows, and silver beams of the moon

shining between cypresses like black towers. It gave out a call to

which, perhaps, very few natures of men were wholly deaf. The unwise

life! Almost for the first time Dion considered it with a deep

curiosity.

He considered it more attentively, more curiously, during the afternoon,

when Mrs. Clarke’s cross-examination was continued.

It was obvious that during this trial two women were being presented to

the judge and jury, the one a greedy and abominably secret and clever

sensualist, who hid her mania beneath a cloak of intellectuality, the

other a genuine intellectual, whose mental appetites far outweighed the

appetites of her body, who was, perhaps, a sensualist, but a sensualist

of the spirit and not of the flesh. Which of these two women was the

real Cynthia Clarke? The jury would eventually give their decision,

but it might not be in accordance with fact. Meanwhile, the horrible

unclothing process was ruthlessly proceeded with. But already Dion was

becoming accustomed to it. Perhaps Mrs. Clarke’s self-possession helped

him to assimilate the nauseous food which was offered to him.

Beadon Clarke was in court, and had been pointed out to Dion, an

intellectual and refined-looking man, bald, with good features, and

a gentle, but now pained, expression; obviously a straight and

aristocratic fellow. Beside him sat his mother, that Lady Ermyntrude

who, it was said, had forced on the trial. She sat upright, her eyes

fixed on her daughter-in-law, a rather insignificant small woman,

not very well dressed, young looking, with hair done exactly in Queen

Alexandra’s way, and crowned with a black toque.

Dion noticed that she had a very firm mouth and chin. She did not

look actively hostile as she gazed at the witness, but merely

attentive--deeply, concentratedly attentive. Mrs. Clarke never glanced

towards her.

Perhaps, whatever Lady Ermyntrude had believed hitherto, she was now

beginning to wonder whether her conception of her son’s wife had been

a wrong one, was beginning to ask herself whether she had divined the

nature of the soul inhabiting the body which now stood up before her.

About an hour before the close of the sitting the heat in the court

became almost suffocating, and the Judge told Mrs. Clarke she might

continue her evidence sitting down. She refused this favor.

“I’m not at all tired, my lord,” she said.

“She’s made of iron,” Mrs. Chetwinde murmured to Dion. “Though she

generally looks like a corpse. She was haggard even as a girl.”

“Did you know her then?” he whispered.

“I’ve known her all my life.”

Daventry wiped his brow with a large pocket-handkerchief, performing the

action legally. One of the jurymen, who was too fat, and had something

of the expression of a pug dog, opened his mouth and rolled slightly

in his seat. The cross-examination became with every moment more

disagreeable. Beadon Clarke never lifted his eyes from his knees. All

the women in court, except Mrs. Chetwinde and Mrs. Clarke, were looking

strangely alive and conscious. Dion had forgotten everything except

Stamboul and the life of unwisdom. Suppose Mrs. Clarke had lived the

life imputed to her by Counsel, suppose she really were a consummately

clever and astoundingly ingenious humbug, driven, as many human beings

are driven, by a dominating vice which towered over her life issuing

commands she had not the strength to resist, how had it profited her?

Had she had great rewards in it? Had she been led down strange ways

guided by fascination bearing the torch from which spring colored fires?

Good women sometimes, perhaps oftener than many people realize, look

out of the window and try to catch a glimpse of the world of the wicked

women, asking themselves, “Is it worth while? Is their time so much

better than mine? Am I missing--missing?” And they shut the window--for

fear. Far away, turning the corner of some dark alley, they have seen

the colored gleam of the torch.

Rosamund would never do that--would never even want to do that. She was

not one of the good women who love to take just a peep at evil “because

one ought to know something of the trials and difficulties of those less

fortunately circumstanced than oneself.”

But, for the moment, Dion had quite forgotten his Rosamund. She was

in England, but he was in Stamboul, hearing the waters of the Bosporus

lapping at the foot of Mrs. Clarke’s garden pavilion, while Dumeny

played to her as the moon came up to shine upon the sweet waters of

Asia; or sitting under the plane trees of the Pigeon Mosque, while Hadi

Bey showed her how to write an Arabic love-letter--to somebody in the

air, of course. In this trial he felt the fascination of Constantinople

as he had never felt it when he was in Constantinople; but he felt, too,

that only those who strayed deliberately from the beaten paths could

ever capture the full fascination of the divided city, which looks to

Europe and to Asia, and is set along the way of the sea.

Whether innocent or guilty, Mrs. Clarke had certainly done that. He

watched her with a growing interest. How very much she must know that he

did not know. Then he glanced at Hadi Bey, who still sat up alertly, who

still looked bright and vivid, intelligent, ready for anything, a man

surely with muscles of steel and a courageous robust nature, and at

Aristide Dumeny. Upon the latter his eyes rested for a long time.

When at last he again looked at Mrs. Clarke he had formed the definite

impression that Dumeny was corrupt--an interesting man, a clever,

probably a romantic as well as a cynical man, but certainly corrupt.

Didn’t that tell against Mrs. Clarke?

She was now being questioned about a trip at night in a caique with Hadi

Bey down the sweet waters of Asia where willows lean over the stream.

Mrs. Chetwinde’s pale eyes were fastened upon her. Beadon Clarke bent

his head a little lower as, in her husky voice, his wife said that

he knew of the expedition, had apparently smiled upon her

unconventionalities, knowing how entirely free she was from the ugly

bias towards vice attributed to her by Counsel.

Lady Ermyntrude Clarke shot a glance at her son, and her firm mouth

became firmer.

The willows bent over the sweet waters in the warm summer night; the

Albanian boatmen were singing.

“She must have had wonderful times!”

The whisper came from an unseen woman sitting just behind Dion. His mind

echoed the thought she had expressed. Now the Judge was rising from the

bench and bowing to the Court; Mrs. Clarke was stepping down from the

witness-box; Dumeny, his eyes half closed, was brushing his shining silk

hat with the sleeve of his coat; Beadon Clarke was leaning to speak to

his mother.

The Court was adjourned.

As Dion got up he felt the heat as if it were heat from a furnace. His

face and his body were burning.

“Come and speak to Cynthia, and take us to tea somewhere--can you?” said

Mrs. Chetwinde.

“Of course, with pleasure.”

“Your Rosamund----?”

Her eyes were on him for a moment.

“She won’t expect me at any particular time.”

“Mr. Daventry can come too.”

Dion never forgot their difficult exit from the court. It made him feel

ashamed for humanity, for the crowd which frantically pressed to stare

at a woman because perhaps she had done things which were considered

by all right-minded people to be disgusting. Mrs. Clarke and her little

party of friends had to be helped away by the police. When at length

they were driving away towards Claridge’s Hotel, Dion was able once

more to meet the eyes of his companions, and again he was amazed at

the self-possession of Mrs. Clarke. Really she seemed as composed, as

completely mistress of herself, as when he had first seen her standing

near the statue of Echo in the drawing-room of Mrs. Chetwinde.

“You haven’t been in court before to-day, have you?” she said to Dion.

“No.”

“Why did you come to-day?”

“Well, I----” He hesitated. “I promised Mr. Daventry to come to-day.”

“That was it!” said Mrs. Clarke, and she looked out of the window.

Dion felt rather uncomfortable as he spoke to Mrs. Chetwinde and left

further conversation with Mrs. Clarke to Daventry; but when they were

all in a quiet corner of the tearoom at Claridge’s, a tea-table before

them and a band playing softly at a distance, he was more at his ease.

The composure of Mrs. Clarke perhaps conveyed itself to him. She spoke

of the case quite naturally, as a guilty woman surely could not possibly

have spoken of it--showing no venom, making no attack upon her accusers.

“It’s all a mistake,” she said, “arising out of stupidity, out of the

most widespread and, perhaps, the most pitiable and dangerous lack in

human nature.”

“And what’s that?” asked Daventry, rather eagerly.

“I expect you know.”

He shook his head.

“Don’t you?” she asked of Dion, spreading thinly some butter over a

piece of dry toast.

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Cynthia means the lack of power to read character, the lack of

psychological instinct,” drifted from the lips of Mrs. Chetwinde.

“Three-quarters of the misunderstandings and miseries of the world come

from that,” said Mrs. Clarke, looking at the now buttered toast. “If my

mother-in-law and my husband had any psychological faculty they would

never have mistaken my unconventionality, which I shall never give up,

for common, and indeed very vulgar, sinfulness.”

“Confusing the pastel with the oleograph,” dropped out Mrs. Chetwinde,

looking abstractedly at an old red woman in a turret of ostrich plumes,

who was spread out on the other side of the room before a plate of

cakes.

“You are sure Lady Ermyntrude didn’t understand?” said Daventry, with a

certain sharp legality of manner.

“You mean that she might be wicked instead of only stupid?”

“Well, yes. I suppose it does come to that.”

“Believe me, Mr. Daventry, she’s a quite honest stupid woman. She

honestly thinks that I’m a horrible creature.”

And Mrs. Clarke began to bite the crisp toast with her lovely teeth.

Mrs. Chetwinde’s eyes dwelt on her for a brief instant with, Dion

thought, a rather peculiar look which he could not quite understand. It

had, perhaps, a hint of hardness, or of cold admiration, something of

that kind, in it.

“Tell me some more about the baby,” was Mrs. Clarke’s next remark,

addressed to Dion. “I want to get away for a minute into a happy

domestic life. And yours is that, I know.”

How peculiarly haggard, and yet how young she looked as she said that!

She added:

“If the case ends as I feel sure it will, I hope your wife and I shall

get to know each other. I hear she’s the most delightful woman in

London, and extraordinarily beautiful. Isn’t she?”

“I think she is beautiful,” Dion said simply.

And then they talked about Robin, while Mrs. Chetwinde and Daventry

discussed some question of the day. Before they parted Dion could not

help saying:

“I want to ask you something.”

“Yes?”

“Why do you feel sure that the trial will end as it ought to end? Surely

the lack of the psychological instinct is peculiarly abundant--if a

lack can be abundant!”--he smiled, almost laughed, a little

deprecatingly--“in a British jury?”

“And so you think they’re likely to go wrong in their verdict?”

“Doesn’t it rather follow?”

She stared at him, and her eyes were, or looked, even more widely opened

than usual. After a long pause she said;

“You wish to frighten me.”

She got up, and began to draw on her dove-colored Swedish kid gloves.

“Tippie,” she said to Mrs. Chetwinde, “I must go home now and have a

little rest.”

Only then did Dion realize how marvelously she was bearing a tremendous

strain. He began to admire her prodigiously.

When he said good-by to her under the great porch he couldn’t help

asking:

“Are your nerves of steel?”

She leaned forward in the brougham.

“If your muscles are of iron.”

“My muscles!” he said.

“Haven’t you educated them?”

“Oh--yes.”

“And perhaps I’ve educated my nerves.”

Mrs. Chetwinde’s spirited horses began to prance and show temper. Mrs.

Clarke sat back. As the carriage moved away, Dion saw Mrs. Chetwinde’s

eyes fixed upon him. They looked at that moment not at all vague. If

they had not been her eyes, he would have been inclined to think them

piercing. But, of course, Mrs. Chetwinde’s eyes could never be that.

“How does one educate one’s nerves, Guy?” asked Dion, as the two friends

walked away.

“By being defendant in a long series of divorce cases, I should say.”

“Has Mrs. Clarke ever been in another case of this kind?”

“Good heavens, no. If she had, even I couldn’t believe in her innocence,

as I do now.”

“Then where did she get her education?”

“Where do women get things, old Dion? It seems to me sometimes straight

from God, and sometimes straight from the devil.”

Dion’s mental comment on this was, “What about Mrs. Clarke?” But he did

not utter it.

Before he left Daventry, he was pledged to be in court on the last day

of the case, when the verdict would be given. He wished to go to the

court again on the morrow, but the thought of Rosamund decided him not

to do this; he would, he knew, feel almost ashamed in telling her that

the divorce court, at this moment, fascinated him, that he longed,

or almost longed, to follow the colored fires of a certain torch down

further shadowy alleys of the unwise life. He felt quite sure that

Mrs. Clarke was an innocent woman, but she had certainly been very

unconventional indeed in her conduct. He remembered the almost stern

strength in her husky voice when she had said “my unconventionality,

_which I shall never give up_.” So even this hideous and widely

proclaimed scandal would not induce her to bow in the future before the

conventional gods. She really was an extraordinary woman. What would

Rosamund think of her? If she won her case she evidently meant to know

Rosamund. Of course, there could be nothing against that. If she

lost the case, naturally there could never be any question of such an

acquaintance; he knew instinctively that she would never suggest it.

Whatever she was, or was not, she was certainly a woman of the world.

That evening, when he reached home, he found Rosamund sitting in the

nursery in the company of Robin and the nurse. The window was partially

open. Rosamund believed in plenty of air for her child, and no

“cosseting”; she laughed to scorn, but genially, the nurse’s prejudice

against “the night air.”

“My child,” she said, “must get accustomed to night as well as day,

Nurse--and the sooner the better.” So now “Master Robin” was played upon

by a little wind from Westminster. He seemed in no way alarmed by it.

This evening he was serene, and when his father entered the room he

assumed his expression of mild inquiry, vaguely agitated his small

rose-colored fists, and blew forth a welcoming bubble.

Dion was touched at the sight.

“Little rogue!” he said, bending over Robin. “Little, little rogue!”

Robin raised his, as yet scarcely defined, eyebrows, stared tremendously

hard at the nursery atmosphere, pulled out his wet lips and gurgled, at

the same time wagging his head, now nicely covered with silky fair hair,

or down, whichever you chose to call it.

“He knows his papa, ma’am, and that he does, a boy!” said the nurse,

who approved of Dion, and had said below stairs that he was “as good a

husband as ever wore shoe-leather.”

“Of course he does,” said Rosamund softly. “Babies have plenty of

intelligence of a kind, and I think it’s a darling kind.”

Dion sat down beside her, and they both bent over Robin in the gathering

twilight, while the nurse went softly out of the room.

Dion had quite forgotten the Clarke case.

CHAPTER V

Three days later Daventry called in Little Market Street early, and

was shown into the dining-room where he found Rosamund alone at the

breakfast-table.

“Do forgive me for bursting in upon the boiled eggs,” he said, looking

unusually excited. “I’m off almost directly to the Law Courts and I want

to take Dion with me. It’s the last day of Mrs. Clarke’s case. We expect

the verdict some time this evening. I dare say the court will sit late.

Where’s Dion?”

“He’s just coming down. We were both disturbed in the night, so we slept

later than usual.”

“Disturbed? Burglars? Fire?”

“No; Robin’s not at all well.”

“I say! I’m sorry for that. What is it?”

“He’s had a very bad throat and been feverish, poor little chap. But I

think he’s better this morning. The doctor came.”

“You’ll never be one of the fussy mothers.”

“I hope not,” she said, rather gravely; “I’m not fond of them. Here’s

Dion.”

Daventry sat with them while they breakfasted, and Dion agreed to keep

his promise and go to the court.

“I told Uncle Biron I must be away from business to hear the

summing-up,” he said. “I’ll send a telegram to the office. Do you think

it will be all right for Mrs. Clarke?”

“She’s innocent, but nobody can say. It depends so much on the

summing-up.”

Dion glanced at Rosamund.

“You mustn’t think I’m going to turn into an idler, Rose. This is a very

special occasion.”

“I know. Mr. Daventry’s first case.”

“Haven’t you followed it at all?” Daventry asked.

She shook her head.

“No, but I’ve been wished you well all the same.”

When the two men got up to go, Dion said:

“Rosamund!”

“What is it?”

“If Mrs. Clarke wins and is completely exonerated, I think she would

like very much to make your acquaintance.”

Rosamund looked surprised.

“What makes you think so?”

“Well, she said something to that effect the other day.”

“She’s a very interesting, clever woman,” interposed Daventry, with

sudden warmth.

“I’m sure she is. We must see. It’s very kind of her. Poor woman! What

dreadful anxiety she must be in to-day! You’ll all be glad when it’s

over.”

When the two friends were out in the sunshine, walking towards the

Strand, Daventry said:

“Why is your wife against Mrs. Clarke?”

“She isn’t. What makes you thinks so?”

“I’m quite sure she doesn’t want to know her, even if she gets the

verdict.”

“Well, of course all this sort of thing is--it’s very far away from

Rosamund.”

“You don’t mean to say you doubt Mrs. Clarke?”

“No, but----”

“Surely if she’s innocent she’s as good as any other woman.”

“I know, but----I suppose it’s like this: there are different ways of

being good, and perhaps Mrs. Clarke’s way isn’t Rosamund’s. In fact, we

know it isn’t.”

Daventry said nothing more on the subject; he began to discuss the case

in all its bearings, and presently dwelt upon the great power English

judges have over the decisions of juries.

“Mrs. Clarke gave her evidence splendidly on the whole,” he said.

“And Hadi Bey made an excellent impression. My one fear is that fellow

Aristide Dumeny. You didn’t hear him, but, of course, you read his

evidence. He was perfectly composed and as clever as he could be in the

box, but I’m sure, somehow, the jury were against him.”

“Why?”

“I hardly know. It may be something in his personality.”

“I believe he’s a beast,” said Dion.

“There!” exclaimed Daventry, wrinkling his forehead. “If the Judge

thinks as you do it may just turn things against us.”

“Why did she make a friend of the fellow?”

“Because he’s chock-full of talent and knowledge, and she loves both.

Dion, my boy, the mind can play the devil with us as well as the body.

But I hope--I hope for the right verdict. Anyhow I’ve done well, and

shall get other cases out of this. The odd thing is that Mrs. Clarke’s

drained me dry of egoism. I care only to win for her. I couldn’t bear to

see her go out of court with a ruined reputation. My nerves are all on

edge. If Mrs. Clarke loses, how d’you think she’ll take it?”

“Standing up.”

“I expect you’re right. But I don’t believe I shall take it standing.

Perhaps some women make us men feel for them more than they feel for

themselves. Don’t look at me in court whatever you do.”

They had arrived at the Law Courts. He hurried away.

Dion’s place was again beside Mrs. Chetwinde, who looked unusually

alive, and whose vagueness had been swept away by something--anxiety

for her friend, perhaps, or the excitement of following day after day an

unusually emotional _cause celebre_.

Now, as Sir John Addington stood up to continue his speech on Mrs.

Clarke’s behalf, begun on the previous day, Mrs. Chetwinde leaned

forward and fixed her eyes upon him, closing her fingers tightly on the

fan she had brought with her.

Sir John spoke with an earnestness and conviction which at certain

moments rose almost to passion, as he drew the portrait of a woman whose

brilliant mind and innocent nature had led her into the unconventional

conduct which her enemies now asserted were wickedness. Beadon Clarke’s

counsel had suggested that Mrs. Clarke was an abominable woman,

brilliantly clever, exquisitely subtle, who had chosen as an

armor against suspicion a bold pretense of simplicity and harmless

unconventionality, but who was the prey of a hidden and ungovernable

vice. He, Sir John, ventured to put forward for the jury’s careful

examination a very different picture. He made no secret of the fact

that, from the point of view of the ordinary unconventional man or

woman, Mrs. Clarke had often acted unwisely, and, with not too fine a

sarcasm, he described for the jury the average existence of “a careful

drab woman” in the watchful and eternally gossiping diplomatic world.

Then he contrasted with it the life led by Mrs. Clarke in the wonderful

city of Stamboul--a life “full of color, of taste, of interest, of

charm, of innocent, joyous and fragrant liberty. Which of us,” he

demanded, “would not in our souls prefer the latter life to the

former? Which of us did not secretly long for the touch of romance,

of strangeness, of beauty, to put something into our lives which they

lacked? But we have not the moral courage to break our prison doors and

to emerge into the nobler world.”

“The dull, the drab, the platter-faced and platter-minded people,” he

said, in a passage which Dion was always to remember, “who go forever

bowed down beneath the heavy yoke of convention, are too often apt to

think that everything charming, everything lively, everything unusual,

everything which gives out, like sweet incense, a delicate aroma of

strangeness, must be, somehow, connected with wickedness. Everything

which deviates from their pattern must deviate towards the devil,

according to them; every step taken away from the beaten path must

be taken towards ultimate destruction. They have no conception of

intimacies between women and men cemented not by similar lusts

and similar vices, but by similar intellectual tastes and similar

aspirations towards beauty. In color such people always find blackness,

in gaiety wickedness, in liberty license, in the sacred intimacies

of the soul the hateful vices of the body. But you, gentlemen of the

jury----”

His appeal to the twelve in the box at this moment was, perhaps,

scarcely convincing. He addressed them as if, like Mrs. Clarke and

himself, they were enamored of the unwise life, which is only unwise

because we live in a world of censorious fools, and as if he knew it.

The strange thing was that the jury were evidently impressed if not

carried away, by his appeal. They sat forward, stared at Sir John as

if fascinated, and even began to assume little airs which were

almost devil-may-care. But when, with a precise and deliberately cold

acuteness, Sir John turned to the evidence adverse to his client, and

began to tear it to shreds, they stared less, frowned, and showed by

their expressions their efforts to be legal.

As soon as Sir John had finished his speech, the Court rose for the

luncheon interval.

“Are you going out?” said Mrs. Chetwinde to Dion. “I’ve brought some

horrible little sandwiches, and I shan’t stir.”

“I’m not hungry. I’ll stay with you.”

He sighed.

“What a crowd!” he said, looking over the sea of hot, staring faces.

“How horrid people look sometimes!”

“When they’re feeling cruel.”

She began to eat her sandwiches, which were tightly packed in a small

silver box.

“Isn’t Mrs. Clarke coming to-day?” Dion asked.

“Yes. I expect her in a moment. Esme Darlington is bringing her.”

“Mr. Darlington?”

“You’re surprised?”

“Well, I should hardly have expected somehow that--I don’t know.”

“I do. But Esme Darlington’s more of a man than he seems. And he’s

thoroughly convinced of Cynthia’s innocence. Here they are.”

There was a stir in the crowd. Many women present rustled as they turned

in their seats; some stood up and craned forward; people in the gallery

leaned over, looking eagerly down; a loud murmur and a wide hiss of

whispering emphasized the life in the court. The tall, loose-limbed

figure of Esme Darlington, looking to-day singularly dignified and

almost impressive, pushed slowly forward, followed by the woman whose

social fate was so soon to be decided.

Mrs. Clarke glanced round over the many faces without any defiance as

she made her way with difficulty to a seat beside her solicitor. The

lack of defiance in her expression struck Dion forcibly. This woman did

not seem to be mentally on the defensive, did not seem to be wishing to

repel the glances, fierce with curiosity, which were leveled at her from

all sides. Apparently she had no fear at all of bristling bayonets. Her

haggard face was unsmiling, not cold, but intense with a sort of living

calm which was surely not a mask. She looked at Mrs. Chetwinde and at

Dion as she passed near to them, giving them no greeting except with her

large eyes which obviously recognized them. In a moment she was sitting

down between her solicitor and Esme Darlington.

“It will quite break Guy Daventry up if she doesn’t get the verdict,”

said Dion in an uneven voice to Mrs. Chetwinde.

“Mr. Daventry?” she said, with an odd little stress of emphasis on the

name.

“Of course I should hate it too. Any man who feels a woman is

innocent--”

He broke off. She said nothing, and went on eating her little sandwiches

as if she rather disliked them.

“Mrs. Chetwinde, do tell me. I believe you’ve got an extraordinary

flair--will she win?”

“My dear boy, now how can I know?”

Dion felt very young for a minute.

“I want to know what you expect.”

Mrs. Chetwinde closed the small silver box with a soft snap.

“I fully expect her to win.”

“Because she’s innocent?”

“Oh no. That’s no reason in a world like this, unfortunately.”

“But, then, why?”

“Because Cynthia always does get what she wants, or needs. She has quite

abnormal will-power, and will-power is _the_ conqueror. If I’m to tell

you the truth, I see only one reason for doubt, I don’t say fear, as to

the result.”

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“Aristide Dumeny.”

At this moment the Judge returned to the bench. An hour later he began

to sum up.

He spoke very slowly and rather monotonously, and at first Dion thought

that he was going to be “let down” by this almost cruelly level finale

to a dramatic, sometimes even horrible, struggle between powerful

opposing forces. But presently he began to come under a new fascination,

the fascination of a cool and very clear presentation of undressed

facts. Led by the Judge, he reviewed again the complex life at

Constantinople, he followed again Mrs. Clarke’s many steps away from the

beaten paths, he penetrated again through some of the winding ways into

the shadows of the unwise life. And he began to wonder a little and a

little to fear for the woman who was sitting so near to him waiting for

the end. He could not tell whether the Judge believed her to be innocent

or guilty, but he thought he could tell that the Judge considered her

indiscreet, too heedless of those conventions on which social relations

are based, too determined a follower after the flitting light of her own

desires. Presently the position of Beadon Clarke in the Constantinople

_menage_ was touched upon, and suddenly Dion found himself imagining how

it would be to have as his wife a Mrs. Clarke. Suppose Rosamund were

to develop the unconventional idiosyncrasies of a Cynthia Clarke? He

realized at once that he was not a Beadon Clarke; he could never stand

that sort of thing. He felt hot at the mere thought of his Rosamund

making night expeditions in caiques alone with young men--such, for

instance, as Hadi Bey; or listening alone at midnight in a garden

pavilion isolated, shaded by trees, to the music made by a Dumeny.

Dumeny! The Judge pronounced his name.

“I come now to the respondent’s relation with the second co-respondent,

Aristide Dumeny of the French Embassy in Constantinople.”

Dion leaned slightly forward and looked at Dumeny. Dumeny was sitting

bolt upright, and now, as the Judge mentioned his name, he folded his

arms, raised his long dark eyes, and gazed steadily at the bench. Did he

know that he was the danger in the case? If he did he did not show any

apprehension. His white face, typically French, with its rather long

nose, slightly flattened temples, faintly cynical and ironic lips

and small but obstinate chin, was almost sinister in its complete

immobility.

“He’s certainly a corrupt beast,” Dion said to himself. “But as

certainly he’s an interesting, clever, knowledgeable beast.”

Dumeny’s very thick, glossy, and slightly undulating dark hair, growing

closely round his low forehead, helped to make him almost romantically

handsome, although his features were rather irregular. His white ears

were abnormally small, Dion noticed.

The Judge went with cold minuteness into every detail of Dumeny’s

intimacy with Mrs. Clarke that had been revealed in the trial, and dwelt

on the link of music which, it was said, had held them together.

“Music stimulates the passions, and may, in highly sensitive persons,

generate impulses not easy to control, provided that the situation

in which such persons find themselves, when roused and stirred,

is propitious. It has been given in evidence that Monsieur Dumeny

frequently played and sang to the respondent till late in the night in

the pavilion which has been described to you. You have seen Monsieur

Dumeny in the box, and can judge for yourselves whether he was a man

likely to avail himself of any advantage his undoubted talents may have

given him with a highly artistic and musical woman.”

There was nothing striking in the words, but to Dion the Judge’s voice

seemed slightly changed as it uttered the last sentence. Surely a frigid

severity had crept into it, surely it was colored with a faint, but

definite, contempt. Several of the jury started narrowly at Aristide

Dumeny, and the foreman, with a care and precision almost ostentatious,

took a note.

The Judge continued his analysis of Mrs. Clarke’s intimacy with Dumeny.

He was scrupulously fair; he gave full weight to the mutual attraction

which may be born out of common intellectual tastes--an attraction

possibly quite innocent, quite free from desire of anything but food for

the brain, the subtler emotions, and the soul “if you like to call

it so, gentlemen.” But, somehow, he left upon the mind of Dion, and

probably upon the minds of many others, an impression that he, the

Judge, was doubtful as to the sheer intellectuality of Monsieur Dumeny,

was not convinced that he had reached that condition of moral serenity

and purification in which a rare woman can be happily regarded as a sort

of disembodied spirit.

When the Judge at length finished with Dumeny and Dumeny’s relations

with Mrs. Clarke, Dion felt very anxious about the verdict. The Judge

had not succeeded in making him believe that Mrs. Clarke was a guilty

woman, but he feared that the jury had been made doubtful. It was

evident to him that the Judge had a bad opinion of Dumeny, and had

conveyed his opinion to the jury. Was the unwisdom of Mrs. Clarke to

prove her undoing? Esme Darlington was pulling his ducal beard almost

nervously. A faint hum went through the densely packed court. Mrs.

Chetwinde moved and used her fan for a moment. Dion did not dare to look

at Guy Daventry. He was realizing, with a sort of painful sharpness, how

great a change a verdict against Mrs. Clarke must make in her life.

Her boy, perhaps, probably indeed, would be taken from her. She had only

spoken to him casually about her boy, but he had felt that the casual

reference did not mean that she had a careless heart. The woman whose

hand had held his for a moment would be tenacious in love. He felt sure

of that, and sure that she loved her naughty boy with a strong vitality.

When the Judge had finished his task and the jury retired to consider

their verdict, it was past four o’clock.

“What do you think?” Dion said in a low voice to Mrs. Chetwinde.

“About the summing-up?”

“Yes.”

“It has left things very much as I expected. Any danger there is lies in

Monsieur Dumeny.”

“Do you know him?”

“Oh, yes. I stayed with Cynthia once in Constantinople. He took us

about.”

She made no further comment on Monsieur Dumeny.

“I wonder whether the jury will be away long?” Dion said, after a

moment.

“Probably. I shan’t be at all surprised if they can’t agree. Then there

will be another trial.”

“How appalling!”

“Yes, it wouldn’t be very nice for Cynthia.”

“I can’t help wishing----”

He paused, hesitating.

“Yes?” said Mrs. Chetwinde, looking about the court.

“I can’t help wishing Mrs. Clarke hadn’t been unconventional in quite

such a public way.”

A faint smile dawned and faded on Mrs. Chetwinde’s lips and in her pale

eyes.

“The public method’s often the safest in the end,” she murmured.

Then she nodded to Esme Darlington, who presently got up and managed to

make his way to them. He, too, thought the jury would probably disagree,

and considered the summing-up rather unfavorable to Mrs. Clarke.

“People who live in the diplomatic world live in a whispering gallery,”

he said, bending down, speaking in an under-voice and lifting and

lowering his eyebrows. “I told Cynthia so when she married. I ventured

to give her the benefit of my--if I may say so--long and intimate

knowledge of diplomatic life and diplomatists. I said to her, ‘Remember

you can _always_ be under observation.’ Ah, well--one can only hope

the jury will take the right view. But how can we expect British

shopkeepers, fruit brokers, cigar merchants, and so forth to understand

a--really, one can only say--a wild nature like Cynthia’s? It’s a wild

mind--I’d say this before her!--in an innocent body, just that.”

He pulled almost distractedly at his beard with bony fingers, and

repeated plaintively:

“A wild mind in an innocent body--h’m, ha!”

“If only Mr. Grundy can be brought to comprehension of such a

phenomenon!” murmured Mrs. Chetwinde.

It was obvious to Dion that his two friends feared for the result.

The Judge had left the bench. An hour passed by, and the chime of a

clock striking five dropped down coolly, almost frostily, to the hot and

curious crowd. Mrs. Clarke sat very still. Esme Darlington had returned

to his place beside her, and she spoke to him now and then. Hadi

Bey wiped his handsome rounded brown forehead with a colored silk

handkerchief; and Aristide Dumeny, with half-closed eyes, ironically

examined the crowd, whispered to a member of his Embassy who had

accompanied him into court, folded his arms and sat looking down. Beadon

Clarke’s face was rigid, and a fierce red, like the red of a blush of

shame, was fixed on his cheeks. His mother had pulled a thick black veil

with a pattern down over her face, and was fidgeting perpetually with a

chain of small moonstones set in gold which hung from her throat to her

waist. Daventry, blinking and twitching, examined documents, used

his handkerchief, glanced at his watch, hitched his gown up on his

shoulders, looked at Mrs. Clarke and looked away.

Uneasiness, like a monster, seemed crouching in the court as in a lair.

At a quarter-past five, the Judge returned to the bench. He had received

a communication from the jury, who filed in, to say, through their

foreman, that they could not agree upon a verdict. A parley took

place between the foreman and the Judge, who made inquiry about their

difficulties, answered two questions, and finally dismissed them to

further deliberations, urging them strongly to try to arrive at an

unanimous conclusion.

“I am willing to stay here till nightfall,” he said, in a loud and

almost menacing voice, “if there is any chance of a verdict.”

The jury, looking weary, harassed and very hot, once more disappeared,

the Judge left the bench, and the murmuring crowd settled down to

another period of waiting.

To Dion it seemed that a great tragedy was impending. Already Mrs.

Clarke had received a blow. The fact that the jury had publicly

announced their disagreement would be given out to all the world by the

newspapers, and must surely go against Mrs. Clarke even if she got a

verdict ultimately.

“Do you think there is any chance still?” he said to Mrs. Chetwinde.

“Oh, yes. As I told you, Cynthia always manages to get what she wants.”

“I shouldn’t think she can ever have wanted anything so much as she

wants the right verdict to-day.”

“I don’t know that,” Mrs. Chetwinde replied, with a rather disconcerting

dryness.

She was using her fan slowly and monotonously, as if, perhaps, she were

trying to make her mind calm by the repetition of a physical act.

“I’m sorry the foreman said they couldn’t agree,” Dion said, almost in

a whisper. “Even if the verdict is for Mrs. Clarke, I’m afraid that will

go against her.”

“If she wins she wins, and it’s all right. Cynthia’s not the sort of

woman who cares much what the world thinks. The only thing that really

matters is what the world does; and if she gets the verdict the world

won’t do anything--except laugh at Beadon Clarke.”

A loud buzz of conversation rose from the court. Presently the light

began to fade, and the buzz faded with it; then some lights were turned

on, and there was a crescendo of voices. It was possible to see more

clearly the multitude of faces, all of them hot, nearly all of them

excited and expressive. A great many people were standing, packed

closely together and looking obstinate in their determined curiosity.

Most of them were either staring at, or were trying to stare at Mrs.

Clarke, who was now talking to her solicitor. Esme Darlington was

eating a meat lozenge and frowning, evidently discomposed by the jury’s

dilemma. Lady Ermyntrude Clarke had lifted her veil and was whispering

eagerly to her son, bending her head, and emphasizing her remarks with

excited gestures which seemed to suggest the energy of one already

uplifted by triumph. Beadon Clarke listened with the passivity of a man

encompassed by melancholy, and sunk deep in the abyss of shame.

Aristide Dumeny was reading a letter which he held with long-fingered,

waxen-white hands very near to his narrow dark eyes. His close-growing

thick hair looked more glossy now that there was artificial light in

the court; from the distance its undulations were invisible, and it

resembled a cap of some heavy and handsome material drawn carefully down

over his head. Hadi Bey retained his vivid, alert and martial demeanor.

He was twisting his mustaches with a muscular brown hand, not nervously,

but with a careless and almost a lively air. Many women gazed at him

as if hypnotized; they found the fez very alluring. It carried their

thoughts to the East; it made them feel that the romance of the East was

not very far from them. Some of them wished it very near, and thought of

husbands in silk hats, bowlers, and flat caps of Harris tweed with

the dawning of a dull distaste. The woman just behind Dion was talking

busily to her neighbor. Dion heard her say:

“Some women always manage to have a good time. I wish I was one of them.

Dick is a dear, but still----” She whispered for a minute or two; then

out came her voice with, “There must be great chances for a woman in

the diplomatic world. I knew a girl who married an _attache_ and went

to Bucharest. You can have no idea what the Roumanians----” whisper,

whisper, whisper.

That woman was envying Mrs. Clarke, it seemed, but surely not envying

her innocence. Dion began to be conscious of faint breaths from the

furnace of desire, and suddenly he saw the gaunt and sickly-smiling head

of hypocrisy, like the flat and tremulously moving head of a serpent,

lifted up above the court. Only a little way off Robin, now better, but

still “not quite the thing,” was lying in his cozy cot in the nursery of

No. 5 Little Market Street, with Rosamund sitting beside him. The window

to-day, for once, would probably be shut as a concession to Robin’s

indisposition. A lamp would be burning perhaps. In fancy, Dion saw

Rosamund’s head lit up by a gentle glow, her hair giving out little

gleams of gold, as if fire were caught in its meshes. How was it that

her head always suggested to him purity; and not only her purity but the

purity of all sweet, sane and gloriously vigorous women--those women

who tread firmly, nobly, in the great central paths of life? He did not

know, but he was certain that the head of no impure, of no lascivious

woman could ever look like his Rosamund’s. That nursery, holding little

Robin and his mother in the lamplight, was near to this crowded court,

but it was very far away too, as far as heaven is from hell. It would be

good, presently, to go back to it.

Chime after chime dropped down frostily into the almost rancid heat of

the court. Time was sending its warning that night was coming to London.

An epidemic of fidgeting and of coughing seized the crowd, which was

evidently beginning to feel the stinging whip of an intense irritation.

“What on earth,” said the voice of a man, expressing the thought which

bound all these brains together, “what on earth can the jury be up to?”

Surely by now everything for and against Mrs. Clarke must have been

discussed _ad nauseam_. Only the vainest of repetitions could be

occupying the time of the jury. People began positively to hate those

twelve uninteresting men, torn from their dull occupations to decide a

woman’s fate. Even Mrs. Chetwinde showed vexation.

“This is really becoming ridiculous,” she murmured. “Even twelve fools

should know when to give their folly a rest.”

“I suppose there must be one or two holding out against all argument and

persuasion. Don’t you think so?” said Dion, almost morosely.

“I dare say. I know a great deal about individual fools, but very little

about them in dozens. The heat is becoming unbearable.”

She sighed deeply and moved in her seat, opening and shutting her fan.

“She must be enduring torment,” muttered Dion.

“Yes; even Cynthia can hardly be proof against this intolerable delay.”

Another dropping down of chimes: eight o’clock! A long murmur went

through the crowd. Some one said: “They’re coming at last.”

Every one moved. Instinctively Dion leant forward to look at Mrs.

Clarke. He felt very much excited and nervous, almost as if his own fate

were about to be decided. As he looked he saw Mrs. Clarke draw herself

up till she seemed taller than usual. She had a pair of gloves in

her lap, and she now began to pull one of these gloves on, slowly and

carefully, as if she were thinking about what she was doing. The jury

filed in looking feverish, irritable and battered. Three or four of them

showed piteous and injured expressions. Two others had the peculiar look

of obstinate men who have been giving free rein to their vice, indulging

in an orgy of what they call willpower. Their faces were, at the same

time, implacable and ridiculous, but they walked impressively. The Judge

was sent for. Two or three minutes elapsed before he came in. During

those minutes there was no coughing and scarcely any moving. The silence

in the court was vital. During it, Dion stared hard at the jury and

strove to read the verdict in their faces. Naturally he failed. No

message came from them to him.

The Judge came back to the bench, looking weary and harsh.

“Do you find that the respondent has been guilty or not guilty of

misconduct with the co-respondent, Hadi Bey?” said the clerk of the

court.

“We find that the respondent has not been guilty of misconduct with Hadi

Bey.”

After a slight pause, speaking in a louder voice than before, the clerk

of the court said:

“Do you find that the respondent has been guilty or not guilty of

misconduct with the co-respondent, Aristide Dumeny?”

“We find that the respondent has not been guilty of misconduct with

Aristide Dumeny.”

Dion saw the Judge frown.

Slight applause broke out in the court, but it was fitful and uncertain

and almost immediately died away.

Mrs. Chetwinde said in a low voice, almost as if to herself:

“Cynthia has got what she wants--again.”

Then, after the formalities, the crowd was in movement; the weary and

excited people, their curiosity satisfied at last, began to melt away;

the young barristers hurried out, eagerly discussing the rights and

wrongs of the case; and Mrs. Clarke’s adherents made their way to her to

offer her their congratulations.

Daventry was triumphant. He shook his client’s hand, held it, shook

it again, and could scarcely find words to express his excitement and

delight. Even Esme Darlington’s usual careful serenity was for the

moment obscured by an emotion eminently human, as he spoke into Mrs.

Clarke’s ear the following words of a ripe wisdom:

“Cynthia, my dear, after this do take my advice and live as others live.

In a conventional world conventionality is the line of least resistance.

Don’t turn to the East unless the whole congregation does it.”

“I shall never forget your self-sacrifice in facing the crowd with me

to-day, dear Esme,” was her answer. “I know how much it cost you.”

“Oh, as to that, for an old friend--h’m, ha!”

His voice failed in his beard. He drew forth a beautiful Indian

handkerchief--a gift from his devoted friend the Viceroy of India--and

passed it over a face which looked unusually old.

Mrs. Chetwinde said:

“I expected you to win, Cynthia. It was stupid of the jury to be so

slow in arriving at the inevitable verdict. But stupid people are as

lethargic as silly ones are swift. How shall we get to the carriage? We

can’t go out by the public exit. I hear the crowd is quite enormous, and

won’t move. We must try a side door, if there is one.”

Then Dion held Mrs. Clarke’s hand, and looked down at her haggard but

still self-possessed face. It astonished him to find that she preserved

her earnestly observant expression.

“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.”

“How?” said Rosamund simply.

“By giving her every chance with the boy.”

“I’m glad the child likes you.”

“I’ve only seen him once.”

“Twice won’t kill his liking,” she returned affectionately.

And then she went out of the room. She always had plenty to do. Small

though he was, Robin was a marvelous consumer of his mother’s time.

When Dion got to the gymnasium Mrs. Clarke and Jimmy were already there,

and Jimmy, in flannels and a white sweater, his dark hair sticking up in

disorder, and his face scarlet with exertion, was performing feats with

an exerciser fixed to the wall, while Mrs. Clarke, seated on a hard

chair in front of a line of heavy weights and dumb-bells, was looking

on with concentrated attention. Jenkins was standing in front of

Jimmy, loudly directing his movements with a stentorian:

“One--two--one--two--one--two! Keep it up! No slackening! Put some guts

into it, sir! One--two--one--two!”

As Dion came in Mrs. Clarke looked round and nodded; Jimmy stared,

unable to smile because his mouth and lower jaw were working, and he had

no superfluous force to spare for polite efforts; and Jenkins uttered a

gruff, “Good day, sir.”

“How are you, Jenkins?” returned Dion, in his most off-hand manner.

Then he jerked his hand at Jimmy with an encouraging smile, went over to

Mrs. Clarke, shook her hand and remained standing beside her.

“Do you think he’s doing it well?” she murmured, after a moment.

“Stunningly.”

“Hasn’t he broadened in the chest?”

“Rather!”

She looked strangely febrile and mental in the midst of the many

appliances for developing the body. Rosamund, with her splendid physique

and glowing health, would have crowned the gymnasium appropriately,

have looked like the divine huntress transplanted to a modern city

where still the cult of the body drew its worshipers. The Arcadian

mountains--Olympia in Elis,--Jenkins’s “gym” in the Harrow

Road--differing shrines but the cult was the same. Only the conditions

of worship were varied. Dion glanced down at Mrs. Clarke. Never had she

seemed more curiously exotic. Yet she did not look wholly out of place;

and it occurred to him that a perfectly natural person never looks

wholly out of place anywhere.

“Face to the wall, sir!” cried Jenkins.

Jimmy found time for a breathless and half-inquiring smile at Dion as he

turned and prepared for the most difficult feat.

“His jaw always does something extraordinary in this exercise,” said

Mrs. Clarke. “It seems to come out and go in again with a click. Jenkins

says it’s because Jimmy gets his strength from there.”

“I know. Mine used to do just the same.”

“Jimmy doesn’t mind. It amuses him.”

“That’s the spirit!”

“He finishes with this.”

“Already?” said Dion, surprised.

“You must have been a little late. How did you come?”

“On my bicycle. I had a puncture. That must have been it. And there was

a lot of traffic.”

“Keep it up, sir!” roared Jenkins imperatively. “What’s the matter with

that left arm?”

Click went Jimmy’s lower jaw.

“Dear little chap!” muttered Dion, full of sympathetic interest. “He’s

doing splendidly.”

“You really think so?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“You understand boys?”

“Better than I understand women, I expect,” Dion returned, with a sudden

thought of Rosamund at home and the wonderful Turkish songs Mrs. Clarke

wished to show to her.

Mrs. Clarke said nothing, and just at that moment Jenkins announced:

“That’ll do for to-day, sir.”

In a flood of perspiration Jimmy turned round, redder than ever, his

chest heaving, his mouth open, and his eyes, but without any conceit,

asking for a word of praise from Dion, who went to clap him on the

shoulder.

“Capital! Hallo! What muscles we’re getting! Eh, Jenkins?”

“Master Jimmy’s not doing badly, sir. He puts his heart into it. That I

must say.”

Jimmy shone through the red and the perspiration.

“He sticks it,” continued Jenkins, in his loud voice. “Without grit

there’s nothing done. That’s what I always tell my pupils.”

“I say”--began Jimmy, at last finding a small voice--“I say, Mr. Leith,

you haven’t hurried over it.”

“Over what?”

“Letting me see you again. Why, it’s--”

“Run along to the bath, sir. You’ve got to have it before you cool

down,” interposed the merciless Jenkins.

And Jimmy made off with an instant obedience which showed his private

opinion of the god who was training him.

When he was gone Jenkins turned to Dion and looked him over.

“Haven’t seen much of you, sir, lately,” he remarked.

“No, I’ve been busy,” returned Dion, feeling slightly uncomfortable as

he remembered that the reason for his absence from the Harrow Road was

listening to the conversation.

“Going to have a round with the gloves now you are here, sir?” pursued

Jenkins.

Dion looked at Mrs. Clarke.

“Well, I hadn’t thought of it,” he said, rather doubtfully.

“Just as you like, sir.”

“Do, Mr. Leith,” said Mrs. Clarke, getting up from the hard chair, and

standing close to the medicine ball with her back to the vaulting-horse.

“Jimmy and I are going in a moment. You mustn’t bother about us.”

“Well, but how are you going home?”

“We shall walk. Of course have your boxing. It will do you good.”

“You’re right there, ma’am,” said Jenkins, with a sort of stern

approval. “Mr. Leith’s been neglecting his exercises lately.”

“Oh, I’ve been doing a good deal in odd times with the Rifle Corps.”

“I don’t know anything about that, sir.”

“All right, I’ll go and change,” said Dion, who always kept a singlet

and flannels at the gymnasium. “Then----” he turned to Mrs. Clarke as if

about to say good-by.

“Oh, Jimmy will want to see you for a moment after his bath. We’ll say

good-by then.”

“Yes, I should like to see him,” said Dion, and went off to the dressing

cubicles.

When he returned ready for the fray, with his arms bared to the

shoulder, he found Jimmy, in trousers and an Eton jacket, with still

damp hair sleeked down on his head, waiting with his mother, but not to

say good-by.

“We aren’t going,” he announced, in a voice almost shrill with

excitement, as Dion came into the gymnasium. “The mater was all for a

trot home, but Jenkins wishes me to stay. He says it’ll be a good lesson

for me. I mean to be a boxer.”

“Why not?” observed the great voice of Jenkins. “It’s the best sport in

the world bar none.”

“There!” said Jimmy. “And if I can’t be anything else I’ll be a bantam,

that’s what I’ll be.”

“Oh, you’ll grow, sir, no doubt. We may see you among the heavy-weights

yet.”

“What’s Mr. Leith? Is he a heavy-weight?” vociferated Jimmy. “Just look

at his arms.”

“You’ll see him use them in a minute,” observed Jenkins, covering Dion

with a glance of almost grim approval, “and then you can judge for

yourself.”

“You can referee us, Jimmy,” said Dion, smiling, as he pulled on the

gloves.

“I say, by Jove, though!” said Jimmy, looking suddenly overwhelmed and

very respectful.

He shook his head and blushed, then abruptly grinned.

“The mater had better do that.”

They all laughed except Mrs. Clarke. Even Jenkins unbent, and his

bass “Ha ha!” rang through the large vaulted room. Mrs. Clarke smiled

faintly, scarcely changing the expression of her eyes. She looked

unusually intent and, when the smile was gone, more than usually grave.

“I hope you don’t mind our staying just for a few minutes,” she said to

Dion. “You see what he is!”

She looked at her boy, but not with deprecation.

“Of course not, but I’m afraid it will bore you.”

“Oh no, it won’t. I like to see skill of any kind.”

She glanced at his arms.