vered
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marble, withdrawn in her punishment, in her abasement beautiful and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 c