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
a