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