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